Contests and giveaways are big business on social media. Customers love them for the free stuff for seemingly little effort, and brands take advantage of the clear CTA’s to boost marketing efforts. But if you have a business page, you’re aware how Page-based promotions can often be a pain, usually requiring third-party apps like North Social and pages of official rules.
Recently, Facebook made it easier for businesses to manage contests and promotions from their Facebook page, eliminating the need to go through these third-party apps and making it less of a hassle to collect entries through posts.
Now brand pages can host contests and sweepstakes directly on Page Timelines as well as in apps. Probably most exciting, businesses are now permitted to use Comments, Likes, even Message entries as voting mechanisms. Although, the two things they may not do are encourage users to tag themselves in content they are not actually in, which Facebook says will “maintain the accuracy of Page content.” Users also cannot Share posts on their personal timeline or those of their friends.
Before, the social network’s terms prohibited brands from using any of the website’s inherent push activities as entry into a contest or promotion (i.e. ‘Like or Share this post to be in the running…’ type of actions). To follow site’s terms of service, businesses instead had to rely on apps to collect entries, which can be cumbersome, and to do it well, a time-suck. Not to mention users really don’t prefer entering personal information into foreign text fields.
Businesses are still responsible for the “lawful operation of [the] promotion,” which includes official rules, offer terms and eligibility requirements, compliance with applicable rules and regulations. Promotions must also include a complete release of Facebook by each entrant or participant, and acknowledgement that the promotion isn’t endorsed by Facebook.
Phew. There is still a slight runaround, but the biggest takeaway here is that you can now give CTA’s on Facebook that are inherent to the actual platform – a change that should have been made long ago. Now, here’s to hoping this doesn’t mean constant annoying content encouraging lame “Like this, or Like that” posts.
What do you think of the changes? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: Facebook
