This guide is perfect for business owners, Facebook page owners and anyone who likes to enter competitions – especially when they are like and share Facebook competitions
I see so many competitions that aren’t following the correct rules so this will be handy to know…
How many of you have seen a competition on Facebook saying ‘To win, simply like and share this post!’? Well they are against Facebook’s rules and you could see your page closed down if you continue to run competitions like that.
There are many Facebook rules when it comes to competitions and if you are a page owner, you should be reading up on the T&Cs to make sure you are following the rules.
You will actually be surprised how many large companies don’t follow T&C’s so they can spread their brand further. After reading this guide, I bet you spot a competition within the next week that has broken Facebook’s T&C’s.
What you can’t do when promoting a competition on Facebook
- You can’t ask an entrant to ‘share’ as part of entering the competition – You often see pages asking for you to ‘like and share’ to be in with your chance of winning, however, if you have your posts set to be shared with friends only rather than the whole world, then the page owner won’t be able to see if you have actually shared the post, therefore it isn’t fair. If you are an entrant and you don’t want to ‘share’ to win then you don’t have to, the page owner can’t see who has and hasn’t shared anyway.
- You can’t ask an entrant to ‘tag a friend’ – You often see pages which ask you to ‘tag a friend who may like this’, but that is seen by Facebook as spamming and is against rules.
- You can’t ask an entrant to ‘like the page’ as part of the competition entry – This is a difficult one because most Facebook competition winners are announced on the companies Facebook page and if they don’t ‘like’ the page then they won’t see they have won. It is up to the entrant whether they would like to ‘like’ the page or not but you can’t ask someone to like the page in order to win a prize.
It is very important companies, businesses and Facebook page owners follow these rules at all times or it could see their Facebook pages closed down for good which will be bad for business.
What you can do when promoting a competition on Facebook
- You can ask the entrant to ‘like’ the competition post – This will still get you into entrants friends news feeds so it will do your business good without looking spammy.
- You can ask the entrant to ‘comment’ on the post – Again, this will get you into entrants friends news feeds so it’ll give you good reach. It also gives you the opportunity to find out a little more about your audience so you can find out their likes/dislikes so you can tailor your business towards their needs. I done this at Christmas when holding a competition, I asked which toy was top on their child’s Christmas list which helped me pick out the most popular toys and find bargains on those and help everyone save as much money as possible.
You will find most entrants will share a competition post anyway as they want their friends to know about this amazing prize that is up for grabs.
I hope this helps anyone wanting to hold a Facebook based competition in the future 🙂
If you see any competitions that are running that are breaking Facebook’s T&C’s then you may want to send them this post to ensure they don’t lose their Facebook page.
If you would like to know more about improving your chances of winning in a competition, click here…
