Additional Information
You can request explicit permission to use a content creator's content that they posted to Instagram or Twitter. You can leave a comment on the user's post you'd like to use and ask them to reply with an approval hashtag, indicating that they agree for you to use their photos or videos. Approvals are stored on record in the Earned Content Platform.
If end users upload content directly to your website using the Widget Content Uploader, they must agree to terms of service prior to the upload, and those photos are marked as “Rights Approved”.
Commenting Limit on Instagram
Instagram imposes a commenting limit that a particular account can send in a given period of time.
In order to avoid this restriction, our system will queue up the Rights Request Comments to be sent at a frequency that doesn't violate Instagram's policy.
Instagram Commenting Guidelines
Comments must be written in the voice of the user account from which it is being generated.
Comments must not be automated.
The total length of the comment cannot exceed 300 characters.
The comment cannot contain more than 4 hashtags.
The comment cannot contain more than 1 URL.
The comment cannot consist of all capital letters.
Carousel on Instagram
Social Native collects all content from carousel posts that have an @mention. However, please keep in mind that you’ll still need to send a “rights request” for each carousel photo you want approved. Note: Only the first rights request message will be posted on the carousel post.
Requesting rights for each carousel photo helps ensure that you’re able to curate and select the content you want to approve, and provides the flexibility to tag each carousel image to relevant products. Once at least one carousel image is approved, each subsequent carousel photo that you request rights for will automatically be moved to your “Approved Content” section.
Character limit on Twitter comments
In order for a comment to be posted on Twitter via the Earned Content Platform, it must not exceed 135 characters.
Note:
Our admin will perform a check for Twitter username changes, once every 30 minutes, from the time the request is made. If a user changes their name again within this 30-minute window, the request will be attributed to the previous username.
Notes on Obtaining Rights from End-Users
The end-user that posted the photo must be the one to respond to the consent hashtag in order for rights to be properly obtained.
The end-user must precede the consent hashtag with the '@' symbol for our system to validate that rights have been given.
Rights Request Groups
Rights requests groups allows you to send up to twenty times more rights requests per hour on Instagram by creating a group and including a minimum of 5 different messages. Once you ask for rights, theUGC Solution will alternate through the group’s messages and pick one to post. By sending different messages, you’ll be able to increase the frequency of requests without being considered spam by Instagram.
More information on Rights request groups here.
Troubleshooting
There are several reasons why a rights request comment would fail to post:
The user's social media profile was set to private after the photo was collected. You will not be able to retry adding a comment to this image.
The image was deleted by the user after the photo was collected.
Your Instagram access token has expired, which can happen naturally after an extended period of time (please see Instagram Token Expiration section below). You can re-link your Instagram account by going to Settings then Social Profiles. Go to the line where the account that you'd like to re-add is located and click the corresponding trashcan button. Re-add the account and then you can retry posting your rights request comment.
The comment does not meet Instagram commenting guidelines. You should edit your rights comment to comply.
You used a bit.ly or @mention in the rights message or template. This will cause an error to appear and you will not be able to send your message or save your template.
The user has comments turned off for their account for that post.
If none of the previously mentioned reasons apply, your comment may be been stuck 'in-transit'. Please contact Support and they will help to resolve this.
Platform Specific Limitations
Expired Rights Requests
Once a rights request message has been posted, a user has 30 days to respond to it. If the content creator doesn’t respond within that timeframe, the request will be marked as expired and it will be flagged with an orange icon in the Content section.
Commenting Limit on Instagram
Instagram imposes a commenting limit that a particular account can send in a given period of time.
In order to avoid this restriction, our system will queue up the Rights Request Comments to be sent at a frequency that doesn't violate Instagram's policy.
Instagram Token Expiration
According to Instagram's authentication page:
The Instagram API requires authentication - specifically requests made on behalf of a user. Authenticated requests require an access_token. These tokens are unique to a user and should be stored securely. Access tokens may expire at any time in the future.
There can be a number of things that cause token expirations to happen. We are not given the specifics of this will not know exactly why this happens. Our platform, on its own, does not cause token expirations.
Instagram Commenting Guidelines
Comments must be written in the voice of the user account from which it is being generated.
Comments must not be automated.
The total length of the comment cannot exceed 300 characters.
The comment cannot contain more than 4 hashtags.
The comment cannot contain more than 1 URL.
URLs cannot contain link shorteners.
The comment cannot consist of all capital letters.
Character limit on Twitter comments
In order for a comment to be posted on Twitter via the Earned Content Platform, it must not exceed 135 characters.
Notes on Obtaining Rights from End-Users
The end user that posted the photo must be the one to respond with the consent hashtag for the photo to be classified as “Rights Approved”.
The end-user must precede the consent hashtag with the '#' symbol for our system to validate that we have received the rights approval.
The end-user must use the consent hashtag after the request is placed, i.e. if a user knows a brand will ask and put the consent hashtag in the original caption, it will not be marked as rights approved. It must be in a comment subsequent to the request.
Photos Collected via Upload Process
Images that are submitted in the Upload Process are automatically marked as “Rights Approved”. At the end of the Upload Process, the end-user must agree to the terms of service before submitting, and agrees to license the content to the brand. Since the image has rights, there will be no options to request rights in the admin.