Your business has finally decided to take the plunge into the realm of social media and you’re wondering where to go from here. But where do you start in your efforts to engage your fans? Obviously, you want to be as creative and exciting as possible. What if you could offer a prize to increase traffic to your page by getting your fans to create buzz by posting pictures and videos? Great idea, right?
This is the same question many of our clients here at Serendipit have been asking us. We think this could be hugely beneficial for your company if implemented correctly also, but since the most recent changes to the Facebook Promotions Guidelines back in December, we all have to be a little more careful about how we market on the social network.
As Caroline McCarthy pointed out in her CNET article, “Facebook just got a little less free.” An approval process to run your business’ contest or promotion through Facebook must be followed and is a new revenue stream for the advertising department.
What exactly are the changes? Here are some important changes and guidelines to follow before going through with a contest or promotion on Facebook:
- Gain written approval from Facebook before beginning a contest. Before running a contest, you must “apply” by filling out a contact form that requests your advertising budget. In order to run a contest, you must be able to purchase ad space as well.
If you again approval from Facebook:
- Contests must be run on third party applications. Any contests or promotions that require responses, postings or status changes must link to an outside application where fans can post their entry.
- Entry to contest cannot be automatic upon becoming a fan of the page. However, if you make the promotion or contest only viewable to fans of your page, you are able to link to a third party website where fans can enter.
- Access to the promotion must be limited. Users are only able to enter the promotion through the canvas page of an application on Facebook Platform or an application box in a tab on a Fan Page.
Now that guidelines might be a little easier to understand, you can decide if a Facebook contest is right for your business.
