Once upon a time, Instagram had no need for an Instagram tracker to gather your promotion entries. People did whatever they wanted because there were no promotion guidelines. It was like the wild, wild west in promotion land: no rules applied. Brands did whatever they wanted. Hashtags were untamed and unfiltered, and people wildly tagged anyone and everyone in their posts for fun.
Until the law came to town to clean Instagram up.
#TheresANewSheriffInTown
Instagram quietly formalized their promotion guidelines and their process for allowing you to search and gather posts by hashtag over the past few years. Here is what you need to know before you run a sweeps or contest on the Instagram platform.
- You Are Deputized: If your brand runs an Instagram promotion, your brand is responsible for the lawful operation of that promotion. This means you must have legal, official rules and abide by all laws in the states and countries where your promotion is run.
- Brand Only Your Own Cattle: Don’t encourage tagging of people or your brand for an entry in a Sweeps or Contest if they aren’t actually in a photo. If you make this a requirement for entry your brand could run into trouble with Instagram.
- You Are On Your Own: Instagram isn’t going to help you track down your entries, and you can no longer use an open API to search by hashtag to get all the entry data you will need. You need an approved Instagram tracker to track your promotion entries by hashtag.
And keep in mind: as part of the Instagram community guidelines: You can’t share other people’s photos. This means no entries for sharing someone else’s photo! Do this and you get kicked by a horse – or at least you could find yourself kicked off of Instagram.
Sound a little scary? It can be, but we can help. Contact us to run a legal, hassle-free promotion using our preapproved Instagram tracker for sweepstakes and contests that would make the Marshall proud.
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