Instagram contests

The Instagram contests module facilitates brand owners to drive customer-generated content by setting up two types of contests:

• Instagram #hashtag contest: offers a prize to those who post the best picture using the brand’s #hashtag and mention the @brand.

• Instagram comment contest: offers a prize to those who leave the best comment on either of the selected Instagram posts.

Find the configuration page of the module by clicking the icon in the sidebar. The page will open to the list of contests that have been set up previously with the following information:

• Name of the contest
  A text label below the name specifies the status of the contest.

• Type of the contest

• Start date

• End date

Connecting your Instagram account

Before you can create a contest, first you need to make sure you have connected your Instagram app created under your Facebook Business Account by entering the credentials under the Social accounts module.

On the module configuration interface, you’ll find a 'Continue with Facebook' button that will redirect you to the page where you can give access to your Facebook Business Account through the app that has been connected under the Social accounts module so that Antavo can query the contest entries from the Instagram page.

Open

Once you have connected your Instagram account, you can start creating contests.

Creating a new Instagram contest

• Click ‘Create new contest' in the left-hand side menu of the module

• Select the type of contest you’d like to create

• Click 'Next’

Open

Instagram hashtag contest

Basic information

• Name
  Set the name of your contest.

• Description
  Describe the specifics and rules of the contest.

• Starts at
  Set the start date of the contest.

• Ends at
  Set the end date of the contest.

Hashtag

Specify the #hashtag to scrape from Instagram. The contestant has to fulfill the following criteria to be eligible to participate:

• use this ‘#hashtag’ to tag the image

• mention your ‘@brand’s business account’ in the post

Points economy

If your brand uses Multi-accounts, use the ‘Accounts’ field to select the account to which the related events and earn points should be registered.

Click ‘Create’ to finalize the setup.

Instagram comment contest

Basic information

• Name
  Set the name of your contest.

• Description
  Describe the specifics and rules of the contest.

• Starts at
  Set the start date of the contest.

• Ends at
  Set the end date of the contest.

Instagram Settings

Select the post. You will be offered a list of posts that are already uploaded to your connected Instagram account. Select the one you wish to present as the topic of the contest.
The contestants need to fulfill the following criteria to be eligible to participate:

• comment under the selected post

• mention your ‘@brand’s business account’ in the post

Points economy

If your brand uses Multi-accounts, use the ‘Accounts’ field to select the account to which the related events and earn points should be registered.

Click ‘Create’ to finalize the setup.

Activating a contest

After saving for the first time, the status of an Instagram contest is ‘inactive’, which means it appears only in the list of contests on the module configuration page.

You can activate it right away using the ‘Set active’ button on the upper right-hand side of the setup page and confirm the activation in the dialog that subsequently appears.

Entry logs

A instagram-contests cron job is automatically created that periodically checks the Instagram account for new entries to any Instagram contest that is running currently. The default frequency of the cronjob running is 1 hour for comment contests and 15 minutes for hashtag contests. You can modify the interval under the Jobs tab of the Settings menu.

Instagram hashtag contest

When a new post is found by the job, an instagram_contest_enter event is registered with the instagram_mentions attribute value on the customer’s events history, and the post is added to the list of entries under the Entries tab.

Instagram comment contest

When a new comment under the selected post is found by the cronjob, an instagram_contest_enter event is registered with the instagram_comments attribute value on the customer’s events history, and the post is added to the list of entries under the Comments tab.

Selecting winners

• Navigate to the Entries/Comments tab

• Tick the checkbox next to the entries that you’d like to select as winners

• Click the ‘Select winner’ button that appears at the right-side end of the green bar

When the ‘Select winner’ button is clicked, the instagram_contest_non_winner/ instagram_contest_winner events are automatically registered on the event history of each contestant, in case the contestant has the Instagram username added to their profile.

Managing contests

Edit a contest

• Navigate to the Contests tab

• Click the ‘Edit’ button of the contest you want to edit

• Edit the contest

• Save your changes by clicking ‘Update’

Deactivate a contest

Follow these steps in case you chose to inactivate a contest:

• Navigate to the Contests tab

• Click the ‘Edit’ button of the contest you want to inactivate

• Click the ‘Set inactive’ button on the upper right-hand side of the page

• Confirm your choice in the dialog that appears

Archive a contest

You can delete inactive contests by archiving them.

• Navigate to the Contests tab

• Click the ‘Edit’ button of the inactive contest you want to archive

• Click the ‘Archive’ button on the upper right-hand side of the page

• Confirm your choice in the dialog that appears

Archiving is irreversible. Once a contest is archived, it cannot be restored anymore.