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How to integrate Instagram into your contests and sweepstakes

By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk

Instagram 4.1Next month Instagram will be celebrating it's third birthday. It launched on October 6, 2010, and two months later it's community grew to 1 million. It was the first social network that you could only participate in through a mobile app and its focus was just on sharing photos.

Today you can access a desktop version of the site and view both photos and videos shared by those you follow, but you still must use the mobile app to share upload your photos and videos. According to Instagram they now have over 150 million active monthly users, 1.2 billion likes, 55 million photos shared everyday and 16 billion photos shared in total. Last April, 2012, Instagram was acquired by Facebook. So it appears that this little photo app is not so little any more!

Last week I wrote about my key insights from attending the ACI’s 2nd Annual Summit on Digital Advertising Compliance: Social Media, Sweepstakes that took place in NYC earlier this month.  We discussed the many ways that participants can enter sweepstakes and contests. Instagram is a method of entry that many brands want to include in their promotions for obvious reasons. However, there really isn't an easy way to contact winners if you are just using Instagram and asking participants to upload a photo with a hashtag. Instagram doesn't have a direct message feature that Twitter offers, so the overall consensus of the speakers at the Summit was to still use some type of entry form. This method enables data collection and also can ensure that Official Rules will be easily accessible. Here are a couple of examples of Instagram promotions we currently are assisting clients with.

Rubys-Diner-Hershey-ContestLast week Ruby's Diner launched the "Show us your Hershey Smile" Photo Contest. Ruby's Diner is a Southern California restaurant chain famous for their burgers, Hershey shakes and comfort food served in a retro atmosphere. They are inviting their Facebook fans to post a photo of themselves, along with their friends and family, enjoying a delicious shake (doesn't have to be a Hershey shake) on Instagram with the hashtag #RubysHersheySmile. Once they follow Ruby's Diner on Instagram and post their photo they need to come back to the Ruby's Diner Facebook page to enter for a chance to be one of the weekly winners of a 5 lb. Hershey Chocolate Bar.

We are using our Facebook application to run this promotion. Participants need to first Like the page and become a Ruby's Diner fan in order to access the app. Once their they fill out the entry form and upload their photo from Instagram. The app will connect with their Instagram account and look for a photo with the proper hashtag to upload. While this method does include some extra steps, it does allow the sponsor to gain new Facebook likes as well as personal data on the participant. In this case we are asking for a mailing address as well to make it easy to ship the prizes to the seven weekly winners.

Ft.-Myers-InstagramAnother promotion is inviting participants to share a photo of The Beaches of Fort Myers & Sanibel on Instagram and tag it with the #MyFtMyersSanibel hashtag. Once their photo is approved, they'll receive a message from FtMyersSanibel asking them to go to the Sponsor's website and claim the photo by clicking on it and entering their name (first and last) and email address. Once they do that, their entry is complete.

The Sponsor is judging all the photos and selecting 5 winners based on creativity and the photo's representation of the destination, which include the following themes: sunsets, beaches, culinary experiences and water activities. Each of the 5 winners will receive a $55 gift certificate to CanvasPop which will cover the cost of a 12" x 12" canvas of their winning image. This concept for this contest came from our friends over at Sparkloft Media, the sponsor's agency, and was promoted on The Beaches of Fort Myers & Sanibel Facebook page.

So we have two different ways to execute a Instagram contest. If you have any other ideas and experience in using Instagram for contests and sweepstakes please share with us.

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