Facebook Competitions or Promotions – How to and What Not to Do >Facebook has some very clear policies on how you can use Facebook for running any sort of competition or promotion through their website which are not for the feint hearted and are definitely a must read (Facebook's PROMOTIONAL GUIDELINES). However there are some very basic rules that should be followed and are invariably not by many businesses out of ignorance rather than bad practice. The trouble is, failure to follow Facebook's guidelines on use of Facebook as the vehicle for running your competition or promotion can result in your page being removed from Facebook and this is not any easy or assumed process.
If you run any competition or promotion directly with Facebook then you are violating their guideline. For example if you place a post on your timeline that asks people to like your page, leave a post or submit a photo in order to go into the draw for any sort of prize then you are violating the rules.
To quote Facebook.
You may require that an entrant like a Page, check in to a Place, or connect to your Platform integration before providing their full entry information for a promotion. You will not condition entry to the promotion upon taking any other action on Facebook, for example, liking a status update or photo, commenting on a Wall, or uploading a photo
You can't, as a condition of entry into your Facebook competition, require visitors to your Facebook page to:
You can however use a 3rd party application that, as a condition entry require people to submit content to that 3rd party application. This 3rd party application could be a Static HTML page you have created yourself or you may make use of one of any number of applications such as WooBox or WildFire that provide the tools to set up such Facebook competitions into your Facebook page.
Another key element that a lot of people overlook is that when you wish to announce the winner of your Facebook competition, you must do so through other media channels. You are in violation of Facebook guidelines if you use Facebook to announce the winner of your competition. This is where the facilities of your 3rd party app come into play. You want to make sure that it is collecting names, email addresses and possibly mobile phone number so you can contact your winner. preferably your app is also capturing all the entrant details so you can download them and feed their names and emails into your email marketing system. Then you will be able to send out an email to all entrants advising them personally of the winner(s). You can still post to Facebook that the competition is over and direct them to a link on your website that lists all winners.
Last word of advice, have clearly defined rules and terms for your competition and a link to these must be clearly shown in your 3rd party application form. Failure to comply with this guideline will also result in your site being pulled from Facebook.
Your use of Facebook is not limited to just competitions and promotions, you can also run polls, photo contests, coupons etc. All of these are terrific ways of use the social network to penetrate a wider market for your business.
For our Business Catalyst users, collecting details for entrants into any competition or survey is an easy process as you can create the page and forms within Business Catalyst and then host these pages within Facebook as a Static HTML iFrame (bit technical and apologies to those who don't quite understand). What this means is that you can integrate your Facebook competition entry form directly with your mail lists - one simple process all under your direct control.
If you would like to know more about placing any content in a custom Facebook TAB page, then contact us and we can discuss your needs and how simple the process can be.
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Written by: Greg Tomkins
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