5 Instagram Changes That Will Affect Your Hashtag & Comment Campaigns

On December 11th 2018, Instagram changed how data can be accessed for your marketing campaigns. Here are the important changes you need to be aware of if you run comment giveaways or hashtag contests on Instagram.

You’ll still be able to run these types of campaigns but how you plan for them and the type of data you can access is changing.

Instagram Comment Giveaway Changes

One of our favorite engagement strategies on Instagram is the comment giveaway, where you pick a random commenter from one of your Instagram posts as a winner.

Instagram has long maintained a limit where only the most recent 150 comments could be pulled for a post. This limit is now a thing of the past. Using Instagram’s new API, the Woobox winner picker and comment exporting tool can now collect all comments on your posts!  (even on your most popular posts)  You also don’t need to plan ahead. Once you’re ready to pick a winner, login to Woobox then select your Instagram post and you can export of pick winners from all of the comments. This is a big positive change!

Instagram Hashtag Contest Changes

We love hashtag contests. We power tons of them, and there are several changes you need to be aware of if you run contests that collect posts from hashtags on Instagram.

You Now Must Setup Your Campaign Before The First Hashtag Entry

Instagram used to provide all of the posts for a hashtag at any time. You could wait until the end of your contest to collect all of your entries that used the hashtag.

Now you must plan ahead. You’ll need to have a tool setup at the start of your contest! The reason is that Instagram now only provides the last 24 hours of posts using a hashtag.

Once your hashtag campaign is setup in Woobox, we automatically and constantly check for new Instagram posts with your chosen hashtag. This enables you to pull all hashtagged content in the new 24 hour window. If you instead wait until the end of your campaign, you’ll only capture the last 24 hours of the hashtagged posts.

Commenting And Editing Captions On Old Posts Will No Longer Be Collected

In the past, if a user added your hashtag to an old post or changed the caption on an old post to include your hashtag it would be collected. Now, the 24 hour rule applies in this case, and the edited post will not be collected if it was not posted within the past day.

We’ve seen many campaigns where participants have entered older posts into a contest by commenting on their old post using the contest hashtag. Those posts will no longer be included with the Instagram changes.

Username Are No Longer Collected

Instagram no longer provides the username of the profile who posted using a hashtag.

You may be wondering: Then how do I know who posted the winning submission?

Fortunately, Instagram does provide the URL of the post with the hashtag. Visiting that link will give you details of the user who posted the content. After picking your winners, you’ll need to use that provided URL link in the Woobox submissions area to identify who the winner is on Instagram.

Your Instagram Profile Must Be Connected To Your Facebook Page

You should do this right now to be ready for your next Instagram campaign:

In order to use the Instagram features on tools like Woobox after December 11th, Facebook requires that your Instagram profile is connected to a Facebook page. We’ve created instructions for how to do that here. This is now a requirement for all of Woobox’s Instagram campaign functions, once it’s done you’re all set.

Questions & Contacting Woobox Support

If you have any questions, our support team is happy to help you. Just contact us via email or by phone.

Woobox is the easiest way to manage all of your Instagram comment giveaway and hashtag contest campaigns. Signup today and try it for free.