Promoting a Competition on Facebook

How to promote a competition using Facebook…

by Linda Liebe

The “wrong” Way

The promotional image above states the following:

To be in the running to win a luxurious holiday for two follow these steps*

1. like our page on Facbook

2. upload a picture of you and your friend to our wall on facebook

3. share this picture with your friends on facebook

The winner will be notified via Facebook and announced on our wall.

*this is not a real promotion – this graphic has been created for illustrative purposes only

So what’s wrong with this picture? A few things… below is how a competition should be promoted on Facebook. Have a read of the rules and then see if you can spot the errors in the above image;

1. the competition must be hosted via a third a party website or facebook app – entrants must register for the competition using an entry form hosted somewhere other than on Facebook.
2. you CAN NOT ask entrants to use Facebook features and functionality to qualify for a competition (such as “like this picture to cast your vote” or “share to win”)
3. you CAN ask entrants to “like” your page, “check-in” or “connect” to your app as a condition of entry to your promotion – as long as they then register for the competition elsewhere.
4. you CAN NOT notify the winner of the competition via facebook, either via chat, instant message or by posting it on their (or your) wall.

The “right” way…

The image above shows an example of how to run a promotion on facebook safely and states the following;

To be in the running to win a luxurious holiday for two follow these steps*

1. like our page on Facebook

2. enter your details using the competition form on our website

3. forward the competition link on our website to your friends so they can enter too

The winner will be notified via email and announced on our website.

This promotion is not endorsed by or affiliated with Facebook in any way.
Entry details are provided to [business name here].

This promotion follows Facebook’s guidelines by sticking to the four rules mentioned above, and by following these additional guidelines;

1. you must acknowledge that the promotion you are running is in no way affiliated with Facebook
2. you must disclose that any information entrants and participants are providing when entering your competition (eg: name, email address etc.) is being collected by you (or whomever is running the promotion) and not Facebook.

For further information regarding Facebook’s rules and guidelines for Pages, please go here.

If you would like help designing a graphic for your promotion, please contact us.