Facebook has made it easier to run promotions on Facebook, which is good news for all page owners. The requirement for all promotions to be run through dedicated applications has now been removed, meaning that you can promote your page and business on your Page Timeline as well as in an app.
That means you can:
- Collect entries by having users post on the Page or comment/like a Page post
- Collect entries by having users message the Page
- Utilize likes as a voting mechanism
One area which Facebook has now tightened up on is tagging – the new Page Terms now prohibits Pages from tagging or encouraging people to tag themselves in content they are not actually in:
- It’s OK to ask people to submit names of a new product in exchange for a chance to win a prize
- It’s not OK to ask people tag themselves in pictures of a new product in exchange for a chance to win a prize
You can download the full Facebook Promotion Guidelinesas a PDF, here.
Great news for small businesses:
This is particularly good news for smaller businesses who may not have had the knowledge or resources to choose a good Facebook Promotions or Competition App, or might have found the process to run it confusing.
While we’ve worked with several low cost Facebook Apps for this purpose, starting from a typical cost of $10, it can be slightly time consuming to set up, and dissuades brands from last minute offers, giveaways and competitions, which remains a prime reason for choosing to follow a company on Facebook.
And it will encourage more experimentation with promotions, which is only a good thing.
Also good for larger businesses:
It’s also good news for bigger companies, as often promotions and giveaways are constrained by time and effort, rather than budget and availability. This means that bigger Facebook pages will also be able to get more exposure and benefit from any contests and promotions which might be available last thing on a Friday, rather than missing the opportunity due to the hassles of setting up applications.
Top tip: Have boilerplate terms and conditions ready to go:
The one thing that all companies and promotions will still require are suitable terms and conditions to be legal in the country in which your business operates. Far too many companies fail to consider this in the planning stage and then find themselves unable to run offers and promotions, so it’s well worth investing some time and effort to ensure you have a standard boilerplate Terms and Conditions which can be easily changed to be applicable for any promotion, and possibly a longer version available via a link to your website.
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