A friend of mine owns a business called Social Elf . I recently went to her for advice on running Facebook giveaways.  I have heard her talk about, on several occasions, saving people from having their business pages suspended or deleted for not adhering to the rules of Facebook competitions, by messaging them when she spots a no-no in their Facebook competitions. These rules may come as a surprise to you and you certainly have gotten lucky if you didn’t stick to the Facebook terms and conditions for running giveaway competitions.

Rule #1 Clear terms and conditions…

Make sure you have detailed terms and conditions for the giveaway hosted on your website. A landing page with the rules on will suffice. The most important terms are: your giveaway is no way affiliated with Facebook, there’s no purchase necessary for the competition, make sure you have the start and end date of your competition, let people know purchases will not increase their chance of winning, tell people how the winner will be chosen and clearly describe your prizes. Another important thing to include is that you have permission to use people’s content. If your competition requires that entries must submit photos or other intellectual property your terms should state that by entering the competition they give you the right to use what they have submitted.

Rule #2 Know which type of actions are allowed…

Before starting to know what actions are allowed by Facebook. How many times have you seen a giveaway that says to win you must give the page a like, guess what!!? That is NOT allowed. Another thing that is not allowed is making people share the post to win. So, what can you do? You can have people like the post and comment; that’s it!

Rule #3 Know which type of contests are not allowed…

There are certain types of contests that aren’t allowed on facebook at all. You must understand what the difference is before running your competition.  Sweepstakes and drawings are allowed this type of competition is where someone just needs to enter to win and winners are chosen at random. Facebook Contests where the entries are judged and the person running the competition or someone acting on their behalf choose a winner are also allowed. However, lotteries, are not allowed at all. If they have to buy a ticket in order to win it is not allowed!

Rule #4 You can’t ask for anything of value in exchange for a chance to win…

You can in no way exchange something of value in order to win…guess what? A person’s personal details such as their name, address or even age is legally considered something of value and you cannot ask entries to supply you with that in order to win.

Rule #5 You can not run competitions from a personal page…

You must have a business page set up for your business to run competitions. You can not run a competition from your own personal account. It isn’t hard to set up a business page and doing so can save you a lot of trouble.

Rule #6 Sometimes the rules change…

Facebook is always altering their terms and conditions for running a competition so check for the latest guidelines before doing any competition. Or you can always ask the expert! People that do Social Media for a living are sure to know all the latest rules!

Sticking to the rules when running a Facebook competition requires some extra time and consideration. However, by ensuring you are following all of Facebook’s competition rules, you can run that amazing competition that will help give your business exposure on one of the largest Marketing platforms EVER!