Running a competition on Facebook is a great way to celebrate the launch of a new service or programme, get more likes on your business page and create lots of engagement, and they are good reason to use the other tools that are available on Facebook such as promoted posts or ads.
Facebook has announced that pages don’t need an app to run a competition anymore. This is great news for some as businesses often find this very confusing and aren’t quite sure how to go about it. Many pages had been breaking the rules anyway, so now they might not be.
The new guidelines state that:
- Promotions can be administered using the business page timeline and apps
- Entries can be collected through comments or likes on a post or messages to the page which will be great for engagement on your page
- likes on a post can be used for voting ie, as Facebook said, “the 100th person to like this post will receive…”
- Entries can not be by asking people to tag themselves on a post or to share the post, they need to be comments or likes – this is because it makes administering the promotion much easier! Page admins won’t be able to see a share or a tag if your settings aren’t set to public.
- Promotions still need to include a full release of Facebook and show that Facebook is not involved with the competition.
You can download the full guidelines for running a promotion on Facebook here and check out the page terms here (it’s right at the bottom, E)
There are still some benefits to using an app to run a competition –
- there’s more space to use – for information, your message, your branding
- you can collect data and build your list (this is a HUGE benefit to using an app rather than just using a post)
To clarify:
- Using a post on your business page will be better for ENGAGEMENT on your page
- Using an app will be better for collecting INFORMATION
so the type of competition you run will depend entirely on your social media strategy – why you are running the competition.
Either way, you’ll want to make sure that your business is effectively represented, that your branding is consistent with your page, your website, your printed materials etc.. and that you are making the most of the space used. Especially if you are using a page post as there’s less space to play with and this may be the first time that some people engage with your page!
As it happens I’m about to launch my Social Media Graphics packages, so if you need a hand building your brand on Facebook, get in touch and I’ll be happy to help you out 🙂