Recently, Facebook announced some exciting changes to their page guidelines for promotions. Most notably, page administrators can now host contests right on their Facebook page. This means that businesses no longer need to use third-party apps to run promotions. These apps can take a while to set up and there is often a fee involved with using them, so this update is especially great for small businesses.
With these changes, page managers can now collect entries to their contests by having users:
-
Message the page directly
-
Make a post on the page
-
Like or comment on a page post
Similarly, post likes can be used as a voting mechanism. For example, you could ask users to submit their response to a question as a post on the page, and ask other users to vote on their favourite response by liking the post.
Restrictions on Facebook Promotions
There are still a few restrictions on running promotions on Facebook.
- Promotions can not be run on personal timeliness. In most cases, this won’t be an issue. Even businesses based around individuals should be using a fan page for their Facebook marketing. (If you’re still using a personal timeline for your business, let us know and we’ll help you get a page up and running.)
- There are now stricter rules on tagging. Previously, pages could tag users and encourage users to tag themselves in any post — regardless of the content. This is longer allowed.
- Pages may not tag or encourage people to tag themselves in posts which they are not actually depicted in. Most notably, this means that businesses will not be able to tag contest winners in a post. This remains true whether or not the contest is being hosted on Facebook or a third-party app. You can still write the name of the winner in a post without actually tagging them.
How does this affect businesses that want to run contests on Facebook?
The new page guidelines on promotions are good news for small businesses. Companies no longer need to do any complicated setup or pay to use contest apps. A contest hosted on Facebook can be active almost instantly and there’s no cost to run it.
However, many of the contest apps out there are still quite useful. They make it easier to manage contests, and more importantly, they can capture email addresses from all the entrants. This is extremely valuable for any businesses that do email marketing. Many of these apps also make it easier to capture new likes to the page by requiring users to like the page before they can enter a contest.
If you’re thinking about running a Facebook promotion, give us a call first. We’ll help you set it up in a way that truly benefits the business by setting the right goals, selecting a prize that only your target market will value, optimizing the contest for best success, and tracking the results.
