f you have organized an Instagram contest with hashtag and notice that the automatic mention monitor has not imported a photo/video published on Instagram by users, it means that for some reason Instagram's API has not returned these posts and, therefore, it has not been possible to import them.

In this tutorial we explain the 6 main reasons why a photo/video has not been imported automatically. In addition, we explain how the tool to manually add the photos/videos that have not been imported. 

1. Main reasons why a publication has not been imported:

   • The user has the profile set to private

   • The integration with Instagram is disabled

   • The photo/video has been published out of date

   • The post has been edited

2. How to manually add publications that have not been imported

1. Main reasons why a publication has not been imported

The 6 reasons why a photo/video has not been imported automatically can be:

1. The user has the profile set to private

Make sure that the participant's Instagram profile is public and not private. The profile of the user must be public at the moment of publishing the photo/video. It's not possible for the administrator to add them manually either.

The alternative for users with a private profile is to ask them to upload their photo through the contest participation form. For this, the Instagram Contest with hashtag application allows users with a private Instagram profile to participate in the contest: in this case, they must access the contest landing page in order to register and upload their photo through the participation form.

Find out here how the system for registering Instagram posts to the contest works.

2. The integration with Instagram is disabled

The integration with Instagram must be enabled from the beginning, as in order to import the photos/videos published by the users, these publications must be real-time monitored and imported. The reason is that the Instagram API does not allow retroactive searches.

Therefore, before launching the campaign, you must make sure that you have the Instagram integration enabled. To do this, go to the "Integrations" section of your promotion and verify that the integration with Instagram is enabled, as shown in the following image:

3. The photo/video has been published out of date

The photos/videos must have been published on Instagram within the "Entry Date" configured for the contest. Therefore, if a photo/video has not been imported, make sure that it has been published within the established entry date.

4. The post has been edited

The user must include the mention and the hashtag of the contest at the same time to upload the photo to Instagram, that is, the comment of the Instagram post can't be edited later to add the mention and the hashtag of the contest. This means that even if a user tags an old post with the mention and the hashtag of the contest, Instagram will not publish this post as one of the latest posts to use that hashtag, as Instagram indicates in its technical documentation. Therefore, the system will only add new Instagram posts.

2. How to manually add publications that have not been imported

If for any of these reasons the participation of a user has not been imported automatically, as administrator you can manually upload the participation in the contest.

Note: Due to a Meta API limitation, it is only possible to manually add publications that include a photo, it is not possible to add publications with video. 

We explain how you can add publications with photos manually: 

1. Access to the promotion's management page and click on "Users": 

2. Click on "Multimedia":

3. Then click on "Add Instagram post":

4. Obtain the URL of the Instagram post you want to insert and paste it into the corresponding field. Then, click on the magnifying glass icon:

5. You will see the information of post. Confirm that you can add it by clicking on "Add post" button.

The participation will be added to the entries list.