POPSMASH campaigns have high success rates for healthy Instagram audiences, resulting in strong engagement, follower growth, and email opt-in conversion rates above 40%.

But what if you don't have a healthy audience and your engagement is low?

The most common way to measure Instagram engagement is the engagement rate, which you can find in the Instagram app.

However, this is not a good indicator of campaign performance with Instagram giveaways. Why? Because likes count as engagement but are a very weak signal.

Comments measure true engagement, but not just any comments. We want authentic comments from followers. Spam comments don't count.

For a successful campaign, you typically want to see at least 2-3 comments on most of your Instagram posts. If you're not reaching this minimum, your campaign results may suffer, resulting in few entries or new email subscribers.

Low engagement comes from a low-quality Instagram following. For example, the Instagram account may not have authentic followers because they were purchased through 3rd party services, gained through follow/unfollow practices or bots, or something similar.

This doesn't always mean your campaign is doomed to fail, but you must do something to ensure your post gets in front of authentic followers, which we cover in the next section.

There are a few things you can do to increase your campaign's engagement, and they generally fall into two categories:

We'll cover each of these below.

There are two primary ways to expose your Instagram giveaway post to more authentic users:

Boosting posts is common, and you should boost your Instagram giveaway post (regardless of your engagement) to increase your ROI and improve engagement.

Collaborating with quality Instagram accounts that share your target audience is also a great way to reach new people. You can often offer to cover the cost of the prize to get other accounts onboard. Just ensure the accounts you collab with have a quality audience with decent engagement.

Two quick and easy ways to increase entries for your Instagram giveaway campaign are:

People scroll through their Instagram feeds fast, so overlaying the text 'GIVEAWAY' or using an obvious giveaway image makes it easier to capture attention and get more entries. See these good examples of Instagram giveaway images if you want some inspiration.

In closing, low engagement impacts the number of entries and subscribers you'll get from your campaign, but there are things you can try to help improve your results.