How To Create a #Hashtag Contest on Social Media

When running a contest or giveaway, entry forms can scare potential participants away. A hashtag contest removes those barriers to entry. Your participants need only use your hashtag, and their entry will be collected in an eye-catching display.

ShortStack hashtag contests allow you to collect hashtag entries from Instagram and Twitter while boosting your engagement with fans.

Collect User-Generated Content and Recruit Brand Ambassadors

A hashtag contest is the simplest way to gather user-generated content (UGC), increase brand awareness, and reach a new audience. It’s easier than ever to feature moderated UGC on your website, and anyone can use a hashtag to participate in your contest. And people who participate in UGC campaigns are more likely to become customers.

You can run hashtag contests without a landing page. However, for those who want to showcase entries and collect email addresses, ShortStack has some templates that will do the trick.

ShortStack will gather all images, videos, text, and usernames associated with any hashtags (and for Instagram, the profile @mention) you specify. Then you moderate and display the content, and use it in conjunction with our voting and sharing capabilities.

Most important, you can use ShortStack’s rights management tool to secure the rights to use the UGC you collect on Instagram and Twitter, protecting your business and turning that UGC into useable marketing content.

ShortStack makes choosing your winners easy. After setting up a hashtag feed, entries are collected in the Entries Manager instantly so you can generate a winner with our Random Entry Selector.

How to Create a Hashtag Contest with ShortStack

When running a hashtag campaign, ShortStack’s Voting Widget is used to display and manage the entries. The Voting Widget is connected to a list, where the posts from the feed are stored.

How to Create a Hashtag Contest on Twitter

Here are the steps to set up your Twitter hashtag feed:

From your Dashboard, click Feeds at the top.
Click the blue New Feed button.
You’ll be given the option of what type of feed you want to set up. Select Twitter.
If you haven’t already, you should see a pop-up appear. This pop-up opens Twitter, and allows you to authorize ShortStack to use your Twitter account for this tool. Log in (if needed), then click the Authorize App button to continue.
Use the fields provided to name your new feed. Also, select a Company Profile. If you want the entries to be added to a new list, select Automatically create new list – otherwise, select an existing list from the drop-down.
Now you’ll get the options of what type of Twitter feed you want to create. Select Hashtags.
In the field provided, enter the hashtag you want to use to pull in entries. If you want to use multiple hashtags, separate each one with a comma; do note that if you use multiple hashtags, the feed will only pull in entries that use all of the hashtags provided. An example post will display on the right with what a post should include to be pulled into the feed.
You can also click on all entries to change the types of entries you want the feed to pull in, or click on Manually to switch between approval modes for your entries.

Once you’re done, click the blue Continue button.
From there, add the start and stop dates and times; also, select a timezone.
If you want to add Twitter usernames to a blacklist, or set a maximum number of entries per user, click on Show Advanced Settings, and make the changes there. When you’re done, click Save & Exit.

How to Create a Hashtag Contest on Instagram

Here are the steps to set up your Instagram hashtag feed:

From your Dashboard, click Feeds at the top.
Click the blue New Feed button.
You’ll be given the option of what type of feed you want to set up. Select Instagram.
If you don’t already have a Facebook account linked to your ShortStack, a pop-up will appear asking you to log into Facebook – if it does, log into the account that has admin access to the Facebook Page to which your Instagram account is connected.
Once that’s done, you’ll be presented with a list of Pages and each one’s connected Instagram account; click the one you want to use.
Use the fields provided to name your new feed. Also, select a Company Profile. If you want the entries to be added to a new list, select Automatically create new list – otherwise, select an existing list from the drop-down.
In the field provided, enter the hashtag you want to use to pull in entries. If you want to use multiple hashtags, separate each one with a comma; do note that if you use multiple hashtags, the feed will only pull in entries that use all of the hashtags provided (as well as your account tag). An example post will display on the right with what a post should include to be pulled into the feed.
You can also click on all entries to change the types of entries you want the feed to pull in, or click on Manually to switch between approval modes for your entries.

Once you’re done, click the blue Continue button.
From there, add the start and stop dates and times; also, select a timezone.
If you want to add Instagram usernames to a blacklist, or set a maximum number of entries per user, click on Show Advanced Settings, and make the changes there. When you’re done, click Save & Exit.