15 Video Contest Ideas That Actually Get Entries (Not Just Views)

If you’re trying to grow your email list or boost your followers on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube, video contests are one of the fastest ways to do it.

Video contests regularly outperform standard giveaways on entry volume. The combination of effort investment and shareability brings in more serious participants.

The hard part isn’t running the contest; it’s coming up with a video idea people actually want to join and share. That’s where this list comes in.

Quick list of the best video contest ideas:

• 1. TikTok Dance Challenge Contest
• 2. Branded Hashtag Video Challenge
• 3. Sports-Themed Video Contest
• 4. Talent Show Video Contest
• 5. Dare-Based Video Contest
• 6. Facebook Video Poll Giveaway
• 7. Funny Video Caption Contest
• 8. UGC (User-Generated Content) Video Contest
• 9. Customer Feedback Video Contest
• 10. Milestone Celebration Video Contest
• 11. Product Demo Video Contest
• 12. Crowdsourced Content Video Giveaway
• 13. Seasonal or Holiday Video Contest
• 14. Home Video Comedy Contest
• 15. Ongoing Video Giveaway Series

What Is a Video Contest?

A video contest is a type of giveaway that asks people to perform an action via video to enter a prize draw. You can run a video contest on almost any social media network, such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. They’re also easy to run directly on your business website.

Video contests are an excellent way to…

• Get more fans on your Facebook page
• Grow your email newsletter subscribers
• Increase your Instagram followers
• Drive more subscribers to your YouTube channel

Plus, if your video contest has a voting stage, everyone who enters has a huge incentive to share your contest with friends to secure more votes. That means they’re doing the work for you, bringing you free traffic, subscribers, and new potential customers.

Which Video Contest Type Works Best on Each Platform?

Not every contest type works equally well everywhere. The platform shapes what kind of video people will actually record and share.

Here’s a quick guide to help you match your idea to the right channel:

Platform	Best Contest Type	Why It Works
TikTok	Dance challenge, dare contest	Short-form video is native here; challenges spread via the For You page
Instagram	Reels challenge, UGC with branded hashtag	Reels get boosted reach; hashtags extend discoverability beyond your audience
YouTube	Product demo, tutorial contest, ongoing series	Longer format suits demos and tutorials; subscribers return for recurring contests
Facebook	Video poll giveaway, milestone celebration	Poll mechanic drives engagement; Facebook Live is great for milestone announcements
LinkedIn	Customer feedback video, product story contest	Professional audience responds to authentic testimonials and business results

For any of these platforms, hosting the actual contest entry and winner selection on your WordPress site gives you better tracking and keeps your subscriber data where you control it. I’ll show you exactly how to set that up using RafflePress throughout the ideas below.

Video Contest Ideas to Grow Your Subscribers

1. TikTok Dance Challenge Contest

TikTok now has over 1 billion monthly active users and is the leading platform for short video. The same challenge format also works on Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. All three are now the dominant short-video formats, so there’s no reason to limit your contest to a single platform.

The great thing about these videos is that they’re short enough to keep peoples’ attention and highly shareable, resulting in easy viral content. Running a TikTok video contest is an easy way to attract more visits and subscribers from a young demographic.

To run a dance challenge contest, create your own dance sequence for people to follow. Or use one of the many examples already out there and ask participants to send their videos for a chance to win a prize.

The easiest way to set up the contest is to host it from your business website using RafflePress — a WordPress giveaway plugin that lets you run viral contests to grow your email list and social following.

You can have your first video contest live in minutes. Just choose a goal-based template (email growth, social following, or subscriber boost), add your video entry action, and publish.

This ensures you generate more traffic as well as subscribers, and the refer-a-friend mechanic makes video contests self-promoting.

Then you can add easy ways for people to enter and earn bonus entries with pre-built entry actions that require subscribers to join your newsletter, follow you on Twitter, visit your YouTube channel, and more.

For participants to submit their TikTok, Reels, or Shorts videos, use RafflePress’s Invent Your Own entry action. Rename the action and tell participants to leave a link to their video to enter.

Drawing a winner is just as easy. You can use the random winner picker included with RafflePress, judge the contest yourself, or ask your followers to vote for the best video.

What’s more, once the contest is over, you’ll have tons of user-generated content (UGC) to use for future campaigns (with the owner’s permission).

Why host your video contest on WordPress?RafflePress’s Invent Your Own entry action accepts video links from any platform: TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook. Participants paste their video link to enter, you verify and award entries, and the contest stays on your site. That means you keep the email subscribers and growth data regardless of which platform the video lives on.

2. Branded Hashtag Video Challenge

Hashtag challenge contests are another type of video contest with the power to make your business go viral. Hashtags are highly searchable, clickable, and used on many different social media platforms.

Many brands create branded hashtags to improve their discoverability. Often they use a combination of their brand or product names with more popular hashtags.

For instance, if we wanted to make a branded hashtag to use on Instagram, we might combine part of our brand name, “Raffle” with a popular Instagram hashtag like “gram” to create the branded hashtag of “#RaffleGram.”

Running a hashtag video contest is an excellent way to amplify the reach of your branded hashtag. You can set a challenge for your audience like:

• Try not to laugh challenge
• Speed drawing challenge
• Ghost pepper eating challenge

And get participants to send you the video for a chance to win your grand prize.

RafflePress’s Invent Your Own entry action is built for exactly this: participants paste their video link to enter, you verify and award entries, and the contest stays entirely on your site.

You can also include the Refer-a-Friend action to get participants to share your contest using your branded hashtag.

The more people that use this action, the more entries you’ll receive, and the more visible your brand will be on social media.

3. Sports-Themed Video Contest

Sports events are perfect pegs for a video contest, whether that’s something widespread like the Olympics or Wimbledon or something local that helps you target an audience in a specific location.

You can run a video contest to win tickets to the next local game or even merchandise related to the event. Just make sure the prize you offer is something your audience wants and is related to your brand.

To enter, you can ask people to send goal celebration videos, basketball tricks, or even a video of them crossing the finish line of a race. And to boost your social media subscribers, you can offer bonus entries for participants who choose to follow you on those platforms.

4. Talent Show Video Contest

Talent contests work well because the bar to entry is personal rather than product-specific. Your audience doesn’t need to own your product to participate. Theme your contest around a topic relevant to your brand and you’ll attract exactly the kind of audience you want.

For example, food brands could run a cake decorating contest. Participants can send in a time-lapse video of the process to enter, with the winner chosen based on the best cake.

Here are a few more ideas for running a video talent contest:

• Lip-sync talent contest
• Stand-up comedy
• Acapella singing
• Beatboxing
• Yo-yo tricks
• Juggling

Consider adding the Join an Email Newsletter entry action included in RafflePress as a bonus entry.

Not only will this boost your email subscribers, but it’ll also help you stay in touch and engage with participants after the contest ends.

5. Dare-Based Video Contest

This type of video contest is especially popular on YouTube and Instagram. The premise is you post a video announcing that if people help you reach a specific number of subscribers, you’ll complete a dare and reward a lucky winner with a prize.

The dare is usually something funny or embarrassing, like getting your chest hair waxed by a friend or cutting your lawn with a pair of nail scissors. But you’d be surprised to learn that it works because it creates anticipation that’s hard to resist.

If you’re going to run this video contest idea, try to avoid using clickbait titles and promising a dare you can’t follow through with. This would just create bad feelings and put people off the idea of helping you reach your goal. Instead, make sure it’s exciting enough to generate interest, but be realistic.

You can also ask your audience what they’d most like to win so you can offer a prize that’s more desirable (as long as it’s within your budget).

6. Facebook Video Poll Giveaway

Since videos’ rise in popularity, Facebook has made it easier than ever to add video content and run live broadcasts. Running a poll on a Facebook video is another useful way to engage and learn more about your audience.

You can run a video poll on Facebook with both live and standard news feed videos.

All you need to do is upload your video, then click the Edit Post option from the dotted menu in the right-hand corner.

Facebook UI note: Facebook updates its interface frequently. If the “Edit Post” flow shown in the screenshots below looks different in your account, look for the Poll option in the post creation toolbar or the video editing panel.

Then in the video editing options, scroll to the Polls section and click the Create Poll button.

After that, you can provide your poll question and include answer options. You can also choose where the poll is shown in your video.

To turn your Facebook video poll into a contest, create an online contest on your website using RafflePress and choose View a Facebook Post/Video as the main entry requirement, with bonus entries for visiting your page.

For help with this, see our guide on creating a Facebook contest.

7. Funny Video Caption Contest

Caption contests aren’t just limited to Twitter and standard photos. You can create a video caption contest for almost any platform and ask participants to comment with their best captions to win a prize.

The Art Assignment took a different approach to their caption contest by asking participants to caption a painting.

In your video, clearly explain your contest’s rules, how people can enter, and the grand prize.

You can collect submissions for the contest using the Invent Your Own action in RafflePress. Just get participants to leave their caption in a comment and enter the link to their comment to verify the entry.

8. UGC (User-Generated Content) Video Contest

UGC is content created by your audience, and when the content is about your product, service, or brand, it’s powerful promotional material. Testimonies from actual customers tend to be more authentic and trustworthy, which improves the likelihood of people giving your brand a try.

You can run a UGC video contest in many ways. For example, you can ask people to:

• Send video product reviews
• Demonstrate via video how they use your goods
• Submit product unboxing videos

One thing worth deciding before you launch: will you accept AI-generated video entries?

Tools that can produce realistic video from text prompts are now widely available, and brands that don’t address this upfront have found themselves dealing with backlash when AI-assisted submissions appear. Add a clear line to your contest rules stating whether AI-generated or AI-assisted videos are eligible.

You can then draw a giveaway winner based on the best submission or randomly draw a winner to keep things fair.

If you try this video contest idea, make sure you promote your contest using your branded hashtag to improve its reach and visibility.

9. Customer Feedback Video Contest

Getting honest feedback about your products and services helps you know where your business needs improvement and how to keep your customers happy. It’s also a great way to learn about the opinions and tastes of your audience.

For this video contest idea, you can ask people to submit their feedback about your brand via video. As a reward for taking part, you can enter them into a prize draw and feature the best feedback on your social media channels and website.

It’s best to provide a few questions to prompt the type of feedback you need. For instance, you could ask people what they think the benefits of your products are or how they’d improve them.

You can also see our guide on how to run a review giveaway.

10. Milestone Celebration Video Contest

Reaching a certain follower goal is an excellent opportunity to celebrate with your audience. Running a video contest around a milestone gives your audience a chance to be part of the moment, and gives you a reason to promote the contest beyond just “we’re running a giveaway.”

One way to do this is to ask people to submit celebration videos in return for entry into your prize draw.

Alternatively, you can create a video yourself and get people to share it with their followers for a chance to win.

RafflePress makes this video contest idea easy. Simply add the viral Refer-a-Friend entry action for people to share your contest on:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Pinterest
• LinkedIn
• Email

You can also add extra actions to follow you on those platforms for bonus entries. Then drawing a winner is as simple as using the built-in random winner picker.

Here’s our step-by-step guide on how to run a refer-a-friend contest to help.

11. Product Demo Video Contest

Another take on a UGC video contest is a contest that asks people to submit video tutorials as a giveaway entry.

Not only is this a great way to learn how well your audience knows your products, but it’s also an opportunity to teach potential customers the many ways they can use your goods.

You can even use video tutorial contests to involve your local community. For instance, Friends of Lakemore held a children’s sandwich-making contest, with the winner receiving a $25 Amazon gift card.

While they judged the contest based on the number of likes each submission received, you could run a follow-up contest in RafflePress, asking people to vote for their favorite using the Surveys and Polls action.

12. Crowdsourced Content Video Giveaway

If your business generates a lot of content for its audience, coming up with useful ideas can be tricky. One way to overcome that issue is to ask.

Run a video contest asking people which topics they want you to cover. They can send their ideas with a simple video, or you can spice things up by asking them to show examples in their clips.

The best ideas could receive a relevant prize, with the bonus of knowing their ideas have helped shape your content creation strategy.

13. Seasonal or Holiday Video Contest

The shift in seasons isn’t just the perfect opportunity to dust off your seasonal promotions, but it’s also the best time to run a video contest. Many consumers have come to expect contests and giveaways during the holidays, so chances are they’ll already be keeping an eye out.

You can make your holiday video contest ideas as creative as you like. You could ask your followers to send a clip singing a Christmas song while wearing their ugliest Christmas sweater. Or you could get them to demonstrate their best Easter Bunny impression.

Try to keep things fun, engaging, and relevant to your business. It’s also a good idea to start promoting your contest weeks before it goes live to generate tons of excitement.

14. Home Video Comedy Contest

Chances are, we’ve all got a funny or embarrassing home video that never sees the light of day. These videos can be comedy gold and an excellent source of user engagement.

For your next video contest idea, run a giveaway asking people to submit their funniest home videos on a topic related to your company.

Fashion retailers could ask for school play recordings demonstrating homemade costumes. In contrast, pet stores could ask for hilarious clips of their furry friends.

15. Ongoing Video Giveaway Series

The last of our video contest ideas is probably the most valuable in terms of customer engagement and growing your subscriber base. Instead of running one-off giveaway contests, why not make it a regular feature?

Regular contests give people something to anticipate and look forward to. It also gives you room to experiment with different contest types to see which works best.

BlackBoxMyCar runs a monthly video contest where participants share the fantastic views their dashcam captures during the month. The winning video gets either $150 credit towards their next in-store purchase or a $50 Amazon gift card.

While this brand asks participants to submit their footage via their online form, you can make it easier with RafflePress.

Just use the Invent Your Own entry action and ask people to post the link to their video. That way, you can offer bonus entries for joining your email list, sharing the contest with friends, and more.

What Rules Does a Video Contest Need?

Before you launch, your contest needs a legal foundation. Skipping this step is how brands end up with disputes, platform bans, or disqualified entries. I use RafflePress to handle entry verification, but the rules document is still yours to write. Here’s what to cover:

• Official rules document: Required for any contest with a prize. Include eligibility requirements, entry period, prize description, winner selection method, and how winners are notified.
• Entry rights and copyright: You need explicit permission to repost submitted videos. Your rules should state whether entry grants you a license to use the content, and on which platforms.
• AI-generated entries: Decide upfront whether AI-assisted video entries are allowed and state this clearly. This is a 2026 issue that most brands still ignore until it causes problems.
• Platform-specific rules: TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook each have their own promotion guidelines. Running a contest that violates these can get your account flagged. Check each platform’s current policy before you promote.
• Prize value reporting: In the US, prizes over $600 in value may need to be reported to the IRS. Include a note in your rules if this applies to your contest.

For a full walkthrough, see our guide on how to write giveaway rules.

FAQs About Video Contests

What’s the best platform to run a video contest?

The best platform depends on where your audience already spends time. TikTok and Instagram Reels are best for viral challenge contests targeting younger audiences. YouTube works well for longer demos and ongoing series. Facebook suits poll-based contests and milestone celebrations. For any platform, I recommend hosting the entry form and winner selection on your own WordPress site using RafflePress. That way you keep the email subscribers and growth data regardless of which platform the videos live on.

How long should a video contest run?

Most video contests perform best when they run for 2 to 4 weeks. This gives people enough time to hear about it, film their video, and submit it without losing momentum. Shorter than two weeks and many potential participants won’t have time to create and submit a video. Longer than four weeks and engagement tends to drop off as the sense of urgency fades.

You can also build in a voting phase at the end to keep engagement going after entries close.

Do I need to get permission to use video contest entries?

Yes. Submitting a video to your contest does not automatically give you the right to repost it on your channels. Your official contest rules should include a content license clause stating that by entering, participants grant you permission to use their submitted video for marketing purposes, on which platforms, and for how long.

If you plan to feature entries prominently in ads or on your website, it’s worth including explicit confirmation language in the entry flow rather than burying it in the terms.

What’s the difference between a video contest and a video giveaway?

A video contest requires participants to submit a video as the entry mechanic. There’s usually a judging component: either by vote, editorial selection, or criteria-based scoring. A video giveaway uses video as the announcement or promotional medium, but entry is typically a standard action like following or commenting. The video contest format generates content for your brand; the video giveaway uses video to drive awareness of a standard entry-based promotion.

How do I track and verify video contest entries?

RafflePress handles this automatically when you use the Invent Your Own entry action. Participants submit their video link to enter, and you can review submissions in your RafflePress dashboard. Each entry is logged against an email address, which prevents duplicate entries from the same person.

For judging-based contests, export your entry list and review video links manually. For random-draw contests, use the built-in winner picker to select a verified entrant at random.

Start Your First Video Contest Today

I hope this article gave you plenty of video contest ideas to skyrocket your subscribers. Now all that’s left is for you to create one with RafflePress and see how viral contests can grow your business.

Over 200,000 WordPress sites run their giveaways with RafflePress. Get started right now and you can have your first video contest live before the end of the day.

You might also like:

• How to Create Custom Giveaway Images for Free
• How to Write Giveaway Rules Like a Pro
• How to Use Good Giveaway Copywriting to Drive Entries
• How to Use Contest SEO to Boost Your Website’s Rankings
• Social Media Contest Ideas
• Sweepstakes Definition Vs Contest Vs Lottery

And if you liked this article, why not follow us on YouTube for more helpful giveaway tips? You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. See you there!