Introduction
This document introduces the Instagram Contests module. This feature facilitates brand owners to drive customer-generated content by setting up two types of contests:
Instagram #hashtag contest: the winner is the one who posts the best picture using the brand’s #hashtag and mentions the @brand.
Instagram comment contest: offering a prize to those who leave the best comment on one of the selected Instagram posts.
First, the connection configuration will be explained between Antavo and Instagram. Then, the two ways to conduct Instagram contests (hashtagging and commenting) will also be discussed.
Configuring the connection between Antavo and Meta
Instagram is part of Meta Platforms, Inc. (also mentioned as Facebook) and there are several prerequisites that need to be met on both Antavo’s and Meta’s platform settings to run the contests.
Accessing the Instagram Contests module
In the Antavo Backoffice, go to the “Modules” icon on the sidebar, search for “Instagram contests”, then click on enabling the module to access the configuration page. The page will open to the fields requesting the App ID and the App Secret.
Accessing the App ID and App Secret from the Developers’ app
First, you need to create an account in the Meta for Developers application and as soon as it is set up, the App ID and App Secret can be located under the Settings menu’s Basic page.
Paste the strings to the designated fields in the module settings in Antavo’s Backoffice, then click Submit. This will lead you to a link that asks you to Continue with Facebook.
Before connecting with Facebook, go back to the developers’ app. There are three products that need to be added here to run Instagram Contests successfully. These are:
Facebook Login
Instagram Graph API
Instagram Basic Display
After adding them, the next step is to go to the “Facebook Login” product. Click on Settings and add the Antavo brand’s URL to the Facebook login page’s Valid OAuth Redirect URL list. The following screenshot illustrates these three products and how to navigate to their Settings page.
Selecting the accounts where to run the contests
Afterwards, go back to the Antavo Backoffice and click on “Continue with Facebook”. Here, you need to log in with your company’s Facebook account which also has an associated Instagram business account. This login will lead to a page where you need to pick the specific Facebook page and the Instagram business account where you wish to run the contests.
Creating a card for the customer
The final step to configure your brand’s loyalty settings with Meta is to create a card that serves as a bridge: by using the URL generated by this card, your customers can connect their Instagram accounts to their shopper accounts.
Creating Instagram contests
Go to “Create new contest” in the left-hand side menu of the module. Here, the two contest options will show the two types of contests.
Instagram Hashtag contest
Except for Description, all of these fields are mandatory to fill for this type of contest:
Name
Description
Starts at
Ends at
Hashtag – specify here the #hashtag to scrape from Instagram. The players will use this to tag the picture they wish to submit to the game.
In order to successfully participate in the game, the players also need to mention your brand’s business account in their post’s text using a @ sign, for example.
To finalize, click Update and Set active.
Instagram comment contest
Except for Description, all of the fields are mandatory to fill for this type of contest:
Name
Description
Starts at
Ends at
Selecting the post – here you will be offered a list of posts that are uploaded to your brand’s Instagram business account. Pick which one you wish to present as the topic of the contest.
Running Instagram contests
There needs to be a Cron job set up to fetch the data from your contests to Antavo’s system. Follow these steps to create the job.
Go to the Cron page by clicking the Admin settings in the bottom left corner.
Give a name to the job and set the status to Active.
Type in your brand’s name.
In the Task field, put “instagram-contests”. Note that these need to be all lower-case, otherwise the job will fail to run.
and as action, type “processComments” or “processHashtag”, depending on the type of game you wish to submit.
Prepare the time schedule. If you put a star sign on the “Day of month”, “Month” and “Day of week”, the job runs daily.