Facebook Competitions: Don’t Run One Till You’ve Read This!

Facebook-based competitions are a big problem. I touched on this in an earlier blog, but I got a lot of messages from shocked FB users asking for more information… So here it is.

You can only run a competition – which Facebook often calls a promotion – via a third-party app in a competitions tab on the page. It’s all laid out in theirPromotional Guidelines, but in a nutshell there are no wall-based “‘like’ to enter” or “comment to enter” competitions acceptable to Facebook. You can’t have a “like our page to enter” competition, either.

You can run a competition on a tab that’s only visible when someone’s liked a page, which is the best way to run a competition that users can opt into entering. The easiest way to do this is using a FBML tab, and hosting the entry mechanism on your own site.

Here’s a copy of an email warning sent by Facebook to a friend about a ‘comment to win’ competition run recently:

Hi,

Our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and the related Promotions Guidelines govern how a promotion may be run on Facebook. You are receiving this warning because we have determined that you are violating our guidelines.

Please correct and/or remove any violations within the 24-hour period after this email was sent to you, or we may disable or unpublish your Page. We recommend that you review the following guidelines and remove the promotions violations as soon as possible.

Promotions Guidelines: http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php
Statement of Rights & Responsibilities: http://www.facebook.com/terms.php(Section 3.9)

After removing the violating content, if you’re interested in working with an Account Representative to develop a new promotion, please visit:http://www.facebook.com/business/contact.php

Thanks,

Macarena
User Operations
Facebook

 

They’re watching, and if you don’t comply, they reserve the right to remove your promotion, or even your page.

Is it worth the risk?