Instagram Actions
This documentation covers the actions that we support via Instagram.
Applications that support Instagram actions:
Want to run an Instagram contest but not sure where to start? Check out everything you need to know about running Instagram contests with Gleam including powerful demos, best practice examples, feature breakdowns and expert guides.
If a user tries to perform certain Instagram actions via Gleam they will be asked to authenticate the Gleam Competitions app to perform certain actions on their behalf.
The Instagram Entry action allows you to award an entry for logging into Instagram within the widget. This can be a great way of ensuring that you are able to identify the Instagram @profile of all users that enter your campaigns.
The Instagram visit action allows you to ask a user to check out a specific Instagram profile. This action will send the user externally to that profile where they are free to optionally engage.
This is the backend view of the action, you only need to enter the username of the account or the complete Instagram URL for the profile.
This is the public view of what the action will look like to the end user, users only need to click the action to visit the Instagram profile.
The View a photo action type allows you to ask users to check out a specific photo or view inside the widget without having to leave for Instagram. Users engaging on the photo is completely optional.
In the admin area you must include the full URL to the Instagram post containing the photo or video you want to include in the action.
Users will be able to hover to see the image before they click to give intent to open it (as there may be times when a user doesn't actually want to like your image).
Once they click the action it will expand to show them the full image or video. They are free to engage with it as they see fit, we do not force or ask the user to take any other actions.
Probably one of our most popular Instagram actions, the Select a Photo action type allows you to accept photo submissions from a users Instagram feed as an entry into a contest or to unlock a reward.
The setup for this action type is a little more complex than the previous ones, you must first give your action a title. The title is what users will see before they click on the action in the widget.
Title: Showoff your latest outfit from ASOS
The next thing you can do is to restrict the submission to a specific hashtag, this action currently is restricted to a single hashtag. This means that the user must have tagged a specific hashtag that you have specified in the photo on Instagram before it will be accepted.
You can then provide specific instructions for the user which will reveal when they click on the action.
When the user clicks on the action it will first ask them to authenticate with Instagram (if they haven't already), then the user will see the instructions & a list of their last 21 Instagram posts (if you haven't restricted by hashtag).
If you restrict by hashtag we will look for that hashtag automatically in their last 21 posts & show the filtered images in a list. The user can then choose which one they would like to submit.
Gleam now has the ability to send Instagram images submitted from the widget directly to a photo gallery.
You can do this by selecting Galleries in the left hand menu, creating a new gallery & choosing the campaign which feeds it photos. You can also choose to automatically show all photos or put them into a moderation queue before they appear in the gallery.
Please note, Galleries currently do not have the ability to vote on images or pull images directly from a #hashtag without the user interfacing directly with the widget.
Occasionally the Instagram API may go down (502 errors), which will prevent us from completing actions. In this scenario we will prompt users to try again later.
You can use these actions to grow your following and engagement on Instagram by using this template:
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Import Actions
Use Import actions to automatically import contest entries from social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter / X & Instagram into the Gleam platform.