It’s Competition Time on Facebook! ...Or is it?

Facebook has been a game changer for businesses who want to interact and connect with their customers in order to grow audience loyalty. A tried and tested technique to gain interest in a company pre-Facebook was to run special offers and competitions, so using your company’s prebuilt follower base on Facebook to spread the word about a competition makes perfect sense.

On Facebook, you’re already likely to have loyal followers, and providing a promotion or a competitions is a great way to:

• Remind existing customers you exist
• Provide interesting posts that people want to share
• Expand your exposure through your existing followers, as each time they share a post, it appears in their news feed to all of their friends. The average person on Facebook has around 300 friends, so your reach grows exponentially!
• Gather new followers, who in turn become customers

The suprising rules about promoting yourself

Before diving in and creating a competition or promoting yourself, you should know that Facebook has set out some rules. It's important to comply with these, and some of them may come as a surprise. The rules have also changed since Facebook Timeline was introduced, so it's worth refreshing even if you've read them before.  The following rules have been taken from the Facebook website:

• Promotions on Facebook must be administered within Apps on Facebook.com, either on a Canvas Page or a Page App.
• Promotions on Facebook must include acknowledgment that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.
• The only Facebook functions you’re allowed to use to enter people into a promotion are: liking a Page, checking in to a Place, or connecting to your app.
• You must not condition registration or entry upon the user liking a Wall post, or commenting or uploading a photo on a Wall.
• You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion’s registration or entry mechanism. For example, the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant.
• You must not use Facebook features or functionality, such as the Like button, as a voting mechanism for a promotion.
• You must not notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles (timelines) or Pages.
• Facebook reserve the right to reject or remove Pages for any reason. These terms are subject to change at any time.
• Cover images may not include price or purchase information, such as "40% off" or "Download it on socialmusic.com"
• Cover images may not include contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your Page's "About" section

Click here for the complete list of rules

If you want to run a competition or promotion and would like to discuss your options or learn more about best practices, just get in touch with us at info@captovate.com.au and one of our team will be happy to help!