Organizing contests on Facebook - is a great way to increase brand awareness and encourage users and your followers to be more active.

When organizing contests, we should keep in mind that a contest that violates Facebook's rules or is conducted in an illegal manner can do us more harm than good.

How to avoid this? What should you keep in mind when running a contest on FB?

The competition should have the following provisions

Contest rules are a requirement not only of the website but also of the law. Creating a list of contest rules should not be considered an unpleasant necessity - the provisions contained in it protect us from various kinds of violations and unjustified expectations on the part of people participating in the game.

List of provisions related to the competition should include information about who is organizing the contest (it should also be clearly stated that it is not Facebook!) and who is funding the prize. It is very important to indicate the start and end dates of the contest, describe the contest task and define the conditions necessary for participation (e.g., being 18 years old, having a Facebook account).

Attention! Very important rule regarding the legality of the tenders, is included in Facebook's regulations and yet is often ignored organizers, is that participation in the contest depends on liking the organizer's profile, sharing a post about the contest, or tagging friends. An example is a post that reads as follows: "To participate in the contest, like our fan page, share the contest post and/or tag a person who wants to participate in the contest." is an example of violation of all the rules of organizing contests in FB. In such a situation, you should consider the possibility of deleting the contest post and even blocking your profile by the site administrators!

The tender regulations should also contain the following information date of announcement of the results of the competition, the form of receiving the prize, the value of the prizes and the method of their delivery, the rules for filing complaints, and the regulations on the administration of personal data for the competition.

Competition task

According to Facebook's rules, a contest task cannot consist only of liking, sharing or tagging, and we must consider this type of activity on your profile as a contest task.

There are two factors to consider: first - the complexity of the task. Unfortunately, our experience shows that the harder the user has to work to answer, the less material will appear under the post about the contest. Therefore, if we want to attract as many users as possible, the task should rather be based on simple actions, such as posting a comment, a photo, etc..

The second factors to consider are attractiveness of prizes. The complexity of the contest task should be proportional to the prize we offer. It should also be remembered that the quality of the prize encourages participation not only by our customers and potential customers, but also by so-called "contestants," i.e. people who like to participate in various games with prizes and who are not necessarily interested in our brand or products.

Awards at the competition - what do you need to know?

It is imperative that our tender regulations include criteria for awarding prizes, there should also be a provision on the way they are awarded. In the case of many contests where we may find information that "winners will be determined" and if we do not meet several conditions for the contest in this form, we We will be dealing not only with Facebook's rules, but also with the law.

Sanctions for non-compliance with Facebook rules

If the portal administrators notice the above violations in our contest, we may take into account deletion of a contest publication, reduction of the reach of publications published on the fan page and even temporary or permanent blocking of the company's Facebook page.

Summarizing the resultsThe need to formalize a contest protects not only its participants but also the organizers. Failure to comply with the applicable rules on the social networking site or legal regulations may result in a deterioration of our ratings instead of an improvement.