How To Run A Successful Competition On Facebook

As long as you follow Facebook’s promotion guidelines (which I have detailed below), your company can benefit from a well run Facebook campaign. A good Facebook competition or contest can get you likes and fans, as well as the contact details of new customers.
The Rules and Regulations.

For Facebook’s promotion guidelines in full, click here. I’m going to give you the key points below anyway:

• You are responsible for the lawful operation of any competition you run, so you need to make sure it complies to laws and that you make the rules and regulations very clear.

• You also need to say that Facebook is in no way responsible for the promotion, and that any information entrants provide goes to you and not Facebook.

• Competitions must be run on a separate Facebook Page App.

• People can only enter the competition after liking a page, checking in somewhere or connecting to your app. They can’t make themselves eligible for entry by liking a comment or page post, for example.

• However, registration cannot be dependent on liking a page or checking in, there has to be another registration step on the Page App.

• Likewise, Facebook features cannot be used to vote, or to notify the winners of a competition.

Okay, now that’s out of the way, let’s get into how to run the competition.

Choosing an App Template

You can create an app from scratch if you want, giving you more control over how your app looks. This option, however, will take time and effort, and you really need to know about app creation if you want to do it.

Alternatively, there are app creation sites like ShortStack and Offerpop which provide companies with templates with whichthey can build Facebook competition apps. Whatever app template you choose, you must make it mobile compatible.

You also need to keep in mind what sort of Facebook competition you are going to run: photo, video, essay or sweepstake. Whichever one you choose will effect the layout and look of your page. For example, if you’re running a photo contest, you’ll want to feature photos on the app page.

Creating the App

As I said earlier, you need to make sure that all of Facebook’s disclaimers are apparent on your app page. You also need to make sure that the competition dates are obvious, a description of the competition, as well as an eye-catching title, a box to enter personal details, an ‘enter’ button to click, a link to the rules and a tick box to indicate they have been read.

Apart from that, there are a few key elements that can help your competition become a success.

1. Share buttons – encourage people to share the competition on social media, all publicity is good publicity.
2. Put a promise on the page that you won’t spam them.
3. Put an eye-catching photo or video on the page to introduce the competition.

Make sure that the competition is easy to enter and the rules and regulations are easy to understand.

Picking a Prize

This part shouldn’t be too hard. Pick a prize that will be an incentive to people looking to enter. Choose one that is relevant to your company and the sort of competition you are running. Choose a prize that reflects the level of effort entrants need to put in.

If the competition involves your products (for example, if you’re a retailer asking entrants to post photos of them wearing your clothes) then you could always make your products the prize.

Promote the Competition

Promote the competition in any way you can: post it across all your social media sites with links to the competition app. Put a link on your website with all the competition’s details.

If you have the money, you could even promote your competition using a Facebook ad. News feed ads are the best bet, especially considering Facebook’s new look.

Use what you’ve Learnt

A good Facebook competition will get you great feedback from your customers, as well as information about them e.g. their email address and phone number. You can contact entrants with more promotions or follow up with information about the original competition.

If you run a photo or video competition, you’ll also have a lot of great content to share on your social media sites.

Of course, make sure that you let all the winners know (not on Facebook though). You could even commend some of the better entries that didn’t win.

Have you ever run a Facebook competition? How did it go?

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Will Sigsworth

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