I Tried Loop Giveaways And Here's What Happened

Like most of us, I want to grow my social media and get seen by as many as possible. Over a year ago, I was contacted for participation in a loop giveaway on Instagram. After seeing a few of them, I decided to try it out. I used them for a few months and then abruptly stopped. That was a year ago. Here are my thoughts on loop giveaways:

What is a loop giveaway?

Essentially, you are in a giveaway with many other Instagrammers and each person has paid towards the prize. The average is 30 from what I've experienced but they can be smaller or much larger. At the same time, all participants post the same image on Instagram announcing the giving away a certain prize(s). The text for all pics is the same. The directions indicate to "like" the picture and to follow someone mentioned in the text by clicking on their account, which sends the entrant to that account. The account is followed and the entrant looks on that person's giveaway pic and text to see who to follow next. This liking and following is repeated until the entrant ends up where she started, thus the name "loop" giveaway.

Why did I enter loop giveaways?

As mentioned earlier, I wanted to grow my social media, which could possibly lead to blog visits. At that point I had been blogging nearly 5 years and wanted faster growth. And I had heard there were people who paid for followers, aka spam bots. That is not what I am after at all. I wanted real followers. The follow/unfollow method (a very, very, very basic definition: follow a ton of people, and once they follow you back, you delete them*) made me uncomfortable and felt fake. I wanted real followers, real people, and I thought loop giveaways were the way to do it.

Did I get results?

The first loop giveaway I tried, I got over a thousand followers. That never happened again. Never. But I was hooked. The most I would get after that was maybe 500. One time I got 20. I was able to double my following to 20 thousand. It depended on the group you were hosting with. If they had a good amount of followers, it would help. Sometimes I was the one with the followers and the others benefitted, not me.

 What I didn't like:

-Some hosts were unorganized, not available, you had to beg them to find out who the winner was

-Some people are idiots and wouldn't post on time, thus messing up the loop, or somehow screw it up (I can give examples but this post is long enough, hehe)

-Sore losers--there are some crazies out there

Another reason I don't like loop giveaways:

Scammers. Although I never encountered it, I heard from many people who entered loops that some would take your money. The recipient never got the prize and the host kept it for herself. That's the risk you take. I insisted on knowing who the winner was as well as package tracking info.

Here's where it went TERRIBLY wrong:

I used the same giveaway hosts over and over, because they had good loops. That meant the chances of me getting new followers went down every time. I was too nervous to really venture out and find other hosts because of scam worries (see further down for clarification)

Everyone started doing loops, thus making making an over saturation. People got tired of seeing loops clog up their feed. 

Some people have an Instagram just for giveaways. That is their hobby and I will never hate on a hobby. But those people aren't always into your Instagram and never engage with you. They just like entering giveaways.

You WILL get unfollowed. Some people only follow you for giveaways, and once they lose, they unfollow you. Some are mad they didn't win and unfollow. Some were mad at seeing loops in their feed and unfollowed for that. Sometimes I would lose every new loop follower.

My engagement with comments and likes went down. Now, with Instagram's new algorithm, my posts are barely seen by my followers. It looks like I have fake followers and it frustrates me SO much.

What happened after I stopped:

It's been a year since I've done loop giveaways. I lost a lot of engagement and followers. I think I went down to 18k. Using old-fashioned hard work and no Instagram tricks, I was able to grow to 25.4k.

My advice:

I completely regret doing loop giveaways. I'm never going to say I'd never enter one again (sometimes the prizes are so cute), but for me, it wasn't worth it.* 

*Note: I will never hate on anyone's hustle. If you earn money from hosting loops, go for it. If you love participating in them, go for it. If you love entering them, go for it. If you love using Instagram tricks because they do work, then go for it! You do you, sugar.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject in the comments.