Good afternoon, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.
Facebook updated their promotional guidelines on May 11th, they are MUCH shorter and MUCH easier to understand, but there are some changes you have to be aware of before you run any kind of competition on your Facebook page. I blogged about the December 2010 changes and I know after that there were lots of questions, so I will try to make it clearer this time.
First up whenever you run any competition make sure that you follow the rules and regulations that your country has around competitions. The guidelines that Facebook has are on top of those your country has.
- Your competition MUST be run on an application: This is the same as the previous rules, an app could be HTML or a Wildfire app or a North Social app basically DO NOT RUN a competition on your wall. That means you CAN’T post eg “the first 5 people to comment below win x”
- Make sure that you don’t in any way imply that your promotion is run by Facebook: read the full instructions and put disclosures on the bottom of your competition rules
- You can’t say LIKE the page or CHECKIN to enter the competition, they have to do more than that. This means that you can’t give your 1000th liker a prize.
- You can’t run a competition where for example you upload photos and whichever get the most likes wins, or ask for comments on a post and one comment wins, nor can you ask them to upload a photo to the wall to win.
- You can’t use the LIKE button to vote for a winner, ie which post/photo/video gets the the most likes wins
- You can’t notify winners through Facebook e.g. using chat, messages or posts: you will need to announce it on your website, in your newsletter or email people directly
- You can’t use Facebook’s name, logo etc. on your competition, except to say they aren’t involved (pt 2).
What can you do?
- Put the competition on your website and post on your wall “check out the website to win x” or something similar with a link to the page on your site
- Put a competition on an application, make it your landing tab for your page and also post on your wall “check out the competition tab”
- Put the competition in your newsletter tell them it is coming and to sign up for info
- Ask people to LIKE your page as a condition of entering the competition, but then they have to do more, eg email in an answer to a question
- If you want people to vote on a photo or video in a competition upload it to Flickr or YouTube and do it that way
Really there aren’t that many changes from the last set of guidelines, I think that they have tried to simplify them down to make it easier to understand. It is VERY annoying that you can’t just post on your wall comment below to enter, as I know when you used to be able to that gets the most responses, but hey we have to work with what we’ve got! With any competition try to….
- be creative
- make it easy for people to enter
- offer a great prize
- don’t expect people to spend hours entering to win a $10 prize, the more time required the bigger the prize needs to be
- have a list of rules so that everyone knows what to expect
- make it fun
I know that there are many pages out there NOT following the Facebook guidelines, and they haven’t as yet been shut down, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t be. It’s best to play by the rules, and make sure that your page isn’t shut down unexpectedly. Has anyone run a great competition that worked? Tell me in the comments below…..
17 Comments
Thanks for bringing some clarity to this mess
I’m still confused about one thing though….when they say “Promotions on Facebook must be administered within Apps on Facebook.com” – does that mean we can no longer use apps from places like AppBistro?
It’s all true, but it’s very hard to sell a “legit”, complaint contest application to the brand owners. They usually want an application that spams allover a user’s wall the minute he or she clicks “Like” on the page or enters a comment.
Every time we launch a new contest on a client’s page we have to go through hours of exhausting explanations why you can’t do all those things you listed above
Here’s a demo of a promo app that follows the guidelines:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sample-page/163361547049035?sk=app_135636729827676
Check out the Golfsmith page today at http://www.facebook.com/golfsmith and share with the audience if you believe what they are doing is a violation of these rules. It would give a visual clarification.
Thanks Chuck,
Good example. I’ll do a follow up post with what NOT to do!
SR
Hi Igor,
I am totally with you, people don’t understand. I’ve spent a lot of time with people talking about contests and they still don’t seem to get it. I think one of the things that they struggle with is that it is on their page so why do Facebook have rules, not understanding that Facebook is letting them use that space under the understanding that they don’t do x, y and z!
Great promo app example, love it – thank you.
SR
Hi Caro,
You can still use AppBistro, or Wildfire, or Involver, or North Social or any of those app’s that you can add to your page, you can even build your own – see Igor’s example. YOu just can’t use the wall.
Hope that helps,
SR
@Social Rabbit Thanx for your kind words!
Actually, it’s not a single app, it’s a platform for launching and managing “voting” contests on Facebook fan pages (now supports text, pics or videos).
It’s been quite successful in local market and right now we’re looking for a FB marketing company in either UK or US to distribute our contest application for commercial brand pages in English. My contact info is on our site, please drop me an email if you know a company that could be interested.
PS: If you’d like to have a contest for SR page on Facebook, I can give you a free ride in exchange to a feedback from you page admin.
Hi Igor,
Thanks I’d love to give your app a trial. I will drop you an email
SR
Hi Double checking is the EVENTS tab an App, I consider it an App because you add it to your page like any other app??? Also what about Auctions where you are simply through an EVENT asking people to bid on a product no liking jazz etc, if they are the highest bidder they have brought that prize. Does this sound like it is with in the guide lines, it seems a grey area to me, would love your thoughts
Thank you
There are still alot of pages running illegal Facebook competitions then! I hope more people figure out the rules soon as some people seem to make up their own rules as they go!
Hi Donna,
Yes, the events tab is an application. Bidding on an auction is not a competition, as far as I am aware, as although you “win” you actually have to pay money for the item.
I hope this helps,
SR
Yes totally Leonie
SR
Hi, thanks for this.
I was going to be running an auction as a fundraiser but don’t want my page to be shut down. Is this included in the guidlines? or how should I do this? I searched for an app but I can’t find one.
@VIctoria Drop me an email, maybe I can help you out.
Thanks again
Referring to Donna’s question about the Events tab being an app… Does this mean you can make RSVP’ing to events a qualification for entry?
Hi James,
It doesn’t seem to go again the rules – so I would say so!
Good Luck!
SR