Facebook recently updated their competition rules when it comes to “liking” a page. If you run comps on your blog and promote them on facebook, you probably have heard the rumblings. Jax (aka Making it up) recently took a look at the new rules, and this is her take:
We’re all into using social media to promote our blogs – tweeting posts on twitter, sharing thethrough facebook. Many of us have run competitions on blogs, and some on Facebook, and there’s been plenty of furore on blogs about facebook voting competitions in the past. On Twitter a few weeks ago I saw a link shared by one of the compers (friendly name for people who enter competitions as a hobby) I follow, saying that Facebook has updated its promotion guidelines – you can read them here.
It kicks of with some stuff about legal obligations (important to be aware of but not my main focus at the moment) and then we get to the bits that I think are most likely to affect bloggers running Facebook pages to promote their blogs.
3. 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.
I would take that to mean that you can’t run the “I’ll give away a whatever when I get to 200 fans” type of competition that I’ve seen time and time again. Or you can’t run it just by counting up your likes anyway.
4. You must not condition registration or entry upon the user taking any action using any Facebook features or functionality other than liking a Page, checking in to a Place, or connecting to your app. For example, you must not condition registration or entry upon the user liking a Wall post, or commenting or uploading a photo on a Wall.
This one’s very clear. No more “comment here and I’ll choose someone to receive something”. No ifs and buts about that. Liking a page can still be a condition of entry, but that’s fairly obvious given you’ve got to like a page to interact with it, other than that it’s a no go. I’m also assuming that it’s no longer acceptable to require people to tag you in a wall post, which is something I’ve seen companies/bloggers doing.
5. You must not use Facebook features or functionality, such as the Like button, as a voting mechanism for a promotion.
So is this the end of facebook voting competitions? Not a bad thing if you ask me. They’ve caused huge amounts of heartache in the past, lots of aggro over twitter and huge anguish throughout facebook. I’m sure that companies will find other ways of doing them, but it should cut down on the numbers a little.
Also, you can’t use facebook to let someone know that they’ve won a competition – no more messaging, no announcements on pages or congratulatory posts.
Facebook is still allowing ppl to run competitions – but only via applications. Not something I’ve looked into yet, though I’m going to, so I’m not sure whether there is anything feasible for the small or beginning blogger to use. It was also pointed out though, that there’s no way of letting Facebook know that a company or blogger is breaching these guidelines, so it’s entirely possible we’ll see people continuing to do them for a while, but word will get out gradually I’m sure. For the moment, if you have a facebook page, and you want to keep it, I’d guess running competitions on it against these guidelines would be a very bad way to go.
Disclaimer – I’m just making an educated guess at this stuff. Check out the guidelines for yourself here, and make sure your giveaways are within the law wherever you are as well as Facebook’s regulations.
Jax, blogs at Making it up where she rants, wibbles and waffles on home education, books, technology and general stuff while bringing up three children as best she can.
When we had a contest on our Facebook page, we also wanted to invite users from Google+ and Twitter, we were using a special contest application for fan pages - http://toptabapp.com/?r=4
mummy@bodfortea
Tuesday 7th of June 2011
Great post. Had no idea this had happened so glad to know about it. Things change so quickly online it's great to have extra eyes and ears out there!
Di Coke
Monday 6th of June 2011
Thanks for bringing this to peoples attention Jax. I see many new promotions each day on Facebook and I'd say that approximately 90% of them don't follow the rules - as it is, Facebook aren't actually doing anything about it right now. I think they have bigger things to worry about! BUT I think in the future they will definitely start to clamp down on promotions that aren't run within an 'App'. In terms of bloggers running promotions, the easiest thing to do it to host it on your blog or via email but promote it using Facebook by regularly linking to it on your wall or even posting your favourite entries on the wall yourself. There are ways to get round the rules: you could enter people into your draw by asking them to comment on the blog, but give them extra entries for liking your FB page or posting a photo/comment on the wall. You could promote a photo comp on your blog but create an album of the entries on FB and ask entrants to tag their entries to create a viral effect with the photo appearing on their walls and newsfeed. DEFINITELY don't run a voting competition though, they're a magnet for cheats! I'll be blogging with more suggestions soon! :)
Metropolitan Mum
Thursday 2nd of June 2011
Oh. Thanks for this! I have used 'like this post on FB and you're counted in' before. Will not do it anymore then.
Linda
Thursday 2nd of June 2011
Thanks very much for this Jax, this is a very useful and informative post and one that I will be returning to, to make sure I am doing things right.
Daena Meyer
Saturday 8th of October 2011
When we had a contest on our Facebook page, we also wanted to invite users from Google+ and Twitter, we were using a special contest application for fan pages - http://toptabapp.com/?r=4
mummy@bodfortea
Tuesday 7th of June 2011
Great post. Had no idea this had happened so glad to know about it. Things change so quickly online it's great to have extra eyes and ears out there!
Di Coke
Monday 6th of June 2011
Thanks for bringing this to peoples attention Jax. I see many new promotions each day on Facebook and I'd say that approximately 90% of them don't follow the rules - as it is, Facebook aren't actually doing anything about it right now. I think they have bigger things to worry about! BUT I think in the future they will definitely start to clamp down on promotions that aren't run within an 'App'. In terms of bloggers running promotions, the easiest thing to do it to host it on your blog or via email but promote it using Facebook by regularly linking to it on your wall or even posting your favourite entries on the wall yourself. There are ways to get round the rules: you could enter people into your draw by asking them to comment on the blog, but give them extra entries for liking your FB page or posting a photo/comment on the wall. You could promote a photo comp on your blog but create an album of the entries on FB and ask entrants to tag their entries to create a viral effect with the photo appearing on their walls and newsfeed. DEFINITELY don't run a voting competition though, they're a magnet for cheats! I'll be blogging with more suggestions soon! :)
Metropolitan Mum
Thursday 2nd of June 2011
Oh. Thanks for this! I have used 'like this post on FB and you're counted in' before. Will not do it anymore then.
Linda
Thursday 2nd of June 2011
Thanks very much for this Jax, this is a very useful and informative post and one that I will be returning to, to make sure I am doing things right.