Facebook Makes Big Changes to Contest Rules
By Cecily Kellogg for Babble
Facebook has announced some sweeping changes to how “don’t-call-them-contests-call-them-promotions” can be run on business pages.
I cannot tell you how much confusion there has been over the years about running promotions on Facebook – particularly over whether or not you could ask contestants to “like” a page as a way to enter the contest. In the old rules, no, you could not. You had to put the contest behind a “like wall” (in other words, you had to like the page to see the contest) only.
Or, of course, you could use a third-party app such as Rafflecopter to administer the contest to avoid violating Facebook’s terms of service.
But no more. Now you don’t have to use third-party apps, you can ask for likes to enter – or even just leaving comments can constitute an entry.
Here’s how Facebook lays it out:
We’ve removed the requirement that promotions on Facebook only be administered through apps. Now, promotions may be administered on Page Timelines and in apps on Facebook. For example, businesses can now:
- 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
As before, however, businesses cannot administer promotions on personal Timelines.
What hasn’t changed? You still can’t host promotions on your personal page. Also, you must be very careful about using tagged images to enter contests; here’s how Facebook explains that part:
In order to maintain the accuracy of Page content, our Pages Terms now prohibit Pages from tagging or encouraging people to tag themselves in content that they are not actually depicted in. So, for instance:
- 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
This is an excerpt. Click here to read the full article in Babble.
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