How to Run a Successful Facebook Contest

Running a Facebook contest is a great way to up your engagement but there are some rules to follow.

If you’re searching for a way to stand out from the crowd, you’ve got a number of options. One of those is running a Facebook contest—giving away a product or service for your fans on Facebook who participate in some sort of contest you set up. That said, Facebook contests have been around for a while and that means there has been plenty of time to learn the do’s and don’ts of how to conduct a quality Facebook contest.

Do:

Check the rules and any regulations. Different countries and municipalities may actually have laws regarding contests like this and so it’s best to err on the side of caution. You will also want to consult Facebook’s own policies to be sure that you have a good understanding of what is and isn’t acceptable.

Make it clear that you, rather than Facebook, are offering the contest. It should be clear to readers that your contest is neither sponsored, endorsed, nor administered by Facebook itself, rather you are just using it as a platform to host your own contest.

Don’t:

Encourage tagging other people as a means of entry. People may start to get a bit upset if all of their friends are needlessly tagging them in a Facebook contest, so while it may seem like a great idea to simply get more eyes on your post, it’s actually prohibited by Facebook’s own rules.
Run a contest on your own timeline. Contests should only be done through Business Pages, so before getting started, make sure you’re posting your contest in the right place.

Ideas for Running Your First Contest

The easiest contests to put on are simple “like to win,” “comment to win,” or a combination of both. Share a photo or a link to your site and let everyone know what the rules are. This alone will garner plenty of fan participation. Some other fun ideas are photo caption contests, where users caption a photo for you and you choose the best one, or trivia contests, where users win a prize for knowing some fact, likely about your company or products.

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