How to Run a Successful Facebook Competition
Facebook competitions tend to pop up regularly when we’re scrolling through our feeds. “Submit your photo to win a prize!” or “Tag and share to win a luxurious island getaway” often have us entering, commenting, sharing, and tagging away. But do they actually work for businesses trying to grow their audience? And importantly, do they follow Facebook’s ever-changing regulations?
Why run a Facebook competition?
Facebook competitions are a great way to generate engagement and grow your audience on social media. They create excitement, build awareness, provide more incentives for your audience to follow (who doesn’t enjoy winning prizes?) and may also increase sales for your business e.g. a guest who wins a stay at a holiday park may become a return guest and recommend to others.
Rules and Regulations
Contest rules for Facebook are changed and updated regularly, so before you press post, it’s best to check if your competition is meeting the policy requirements. Facebook outlines their policies on their website, but we’ve listed some quick key points to follow below:
- Asking participants to tag their friends or share the post is not allowed – so the luxurious island getaway competition we mentioned earlier that required a tag and share isn’t permitted!
- You must let participants know that Facebook is not involved with the competition you are running.
- Make your competition terms and conditions crystal clear for participants.
In some cases, pages that haven’t adhered to these rules have had their Facebook business page shut down without notice, so it’s better to be safe than sorry.
What type of competition should I run?
Photo competitions are a favourite here at MOM. They not only get your audience involved but result in some fantastic user generated content that can be used elsewhere in your marketing (provided that permissions are specified and agreed to in your terms and conditions). Here is a great example of the beautiful content that can be shared from one of our client’s past photo competitions.
Some other competition types you may like to consider:
- Caption this photo or image – the best caption wins.
- In 25 words or less – the most creative response gets the prize.
We’re here to help
If a Facebook competition sounds like something you’d like to run for your page, the MOM team have the process down to a fine art, including what kinds of prizes to offer and the important information you should include in your terms and conditions.