Gamification for Instagram – an overview of the game designer for Instagram Sub.by

Sub.by is a game maker for Instagram that helps solve the problem of low audience engagement, low coverage and other scourges of this social network thanks to gamification on Instagram.

Overview of the gamification service on Instagram

This service is a great alternative to chats, cheats, comment exchanges, which require a lot of actions, are often checked by Instagram, banned, have an unnatural look, bring a lot of bots to the profile and, as a result, leave an unpleasant impression and a negative imprint.

Sub.by allows you to award points for likes and comments to users who leave them, while it is possible to filter out comments that are shorter than N words, limit the number of comments from one user under a post, and much more. The service monitors user activity every 2-3 hours, displays the results on a public board, and allows you to manually edit the scores of the desired users.

Gamification on Instagram – how to do it?

The service does not require you to login or pass a password, just add your username.

Competition launch

To start the competition, you must specify the cost of the actions themselves and additional settings.

Thus, you can assign a number of points for each action, limit the number of comments from one user for which points are awarded, avoid comment spam.

Also possible

• limit the time during which points are awarded for activity after the release of the post;
• set a limit in the form of last posts taken into account;
• determine the conditions for bonuses and assign remuneration.

Be sure to read the detailed description of all settings functions during the first setup.

Ideas for gamification on Instagram are offered by the service itself – and a lot!

After the initial setup, you can start the competition. The duration of the competition is up to you. The table will be updated for the first time after a few hours, and in the future you will see all the collected statistics. You can set the number of displayed rows in the table yourself or leave the default option – TOP 100, while if there are more than 100 participants, you can see statistics on them by entering the user’s login in the search bar.

At the top of the account panel there is a link to a public table that needs to be shared with subscribers (add to the profile header / story with a draw / taplink profile).

During the game, you can also assign any points for various actions, but manually. For example, for activities in Stories. You can only accrue points to a user who is already in the table, but if these are his first points in the competition, you must wait until he performs another target action and ends up in the table.

In addition to what to add, points can also be taken away. For example, you offered members the opportunity to spend their points on online consultations – why not?

After all the settings, do not forget to click the “Start the contest” button.

Public table

The public table looks similar to the one you see in your account. At the same time, it is convenient that the issue of member support is reserved by the service: there is a FAQ with answers to popular questions that your members may have, as well as a service account where you can contact with questions.

The only pity is that this paragraph does not provide for automatic indication of a link to the required account:

Also, the user cannot view the conditions of the competition directly on the same page. To do this, he has to return every time to the conditions that the organizer of the competition prescribed with his own hand.

Bonuses for organizers

Contest organizers can also earn bonuses from using the service. Here you can get them for completing tasks and getting Achievements.

They can be exchanged for discounts or useful functionality.

Also recently, another feature appeared in the service that can be unlocked for achievements: a photo for prizes (located in the contest settings). This feature allows you to show subscribers photos and the cost of prizes directly on the points check page.

Sub.by price

The cost of the service depends on the number of subscribers of the account: the more subscribers in the profile you connect, the higher the cost. In this case, account holders with fake followers will face another disadvantage of such a “promotion”.

For comparison:

Summing up

Service pluses:

• spam protection;
• public leaderboard with easy search;
• detailed setting;
• the ability to manually adjust the number of points;
• non-standard contest mechanics;
• almost complete automation.

An example of hemification on Instagram

The result of using this service by our client: according to the Socialinsders analytics service, account engagement more than doubled over the reporting period, also due to gamification in Instagram stories.

Engagement rate for the period of the contest:

Engagement rate for the previous period:

Service cons:

• lack of automation on the user page;
• the inability to customize the user page for the style of the business;
• lack of any profile statistics (dynamics of coverage, engaged audience, efficiency from using different mechanics, etc.);
• no test period.

In general, these disadvantages are not so critical, sub.by has much more advantages. This is a great safe tool that will help diversify and cheer up Instagram activities not only for subscribers, but also for the account owners themselves, if desired. However, you should not treat this service as a panacea. Subscribers will not flock to you just because you clicked the “launch the contest” button. To attract new live participants of the contest, it is recommended to launch an advertising campaign with the promotion of the post about the contest, remind subscribers about the contest in stories, offer to repost the record, etc. In addition, rewards play an important role: modern people value their time and are not ready to spend it on something that will not bring him a worthy result – offer a truly useful and interesting gift that will help you appreciate your goods or services!

And of course, it is important to understand that the use of this tool will not force your users to perform targeted actions after the end of the contest on a regular basis, the account still needs to be “pumped” with a certain frequency.