Is Facebook Trying to Block Promotions?

This week we’ve seen that people are most interested in connecting with businesses on Facebook if it means they can find out about promotions and giveaways. But now, it seems Facebook is going to make this kind of activity much more difficult.

Facebook’s newly-updated promotions guidelines require some translation from the legalese, but here’s what real estate agents planning their next promotion on Facebook need to know:

• Promotions can no longer be run within a status update - you’ll need to set them up in a Facebook app.
• You need to make it clear that Facebook does not endorse your promotion, and that the information people provide to enter is going to you rather than Facebook.
• You can no longer use Facebook functionality as part of the promotion. “For example, you must not condition registration or entry upon the user liking a Wall post, or commenting or uploading a photo on a Wall,” Facebook says, adding that “liking” a post is also out.
• You can’t notify people that they have won a competition via Facebook.

As you’ve probably realised by now, what all these rules add up to is that Facebook really doesn’t want businesses to use it to run promotions - full stop. Of course, you could try to abide by all of the rules above to continue running competitions on Facebook, but it would hardly be worth the trouble.

All that said, there is at least one way you could promote a competition or giveaway on your Facebook page without breaching the new guidelines. Even though you can’t run a promotion within a status update, you could still use your status update to alert people that they can enter the promotion on your website or blog, where you have control over what you promote and how.

rocktime.co.uk argues that these new promotion guidelines do make sense. “It takes all the competition queries, complaints etc away from [Facebook] and passes these back to the brand,” the site explains. Whether you can see the logic in this latest move or not, our advice would be to keep using Facebook as a way to advertise any promotions that you run on your own website, as prizes and giveaways are going to remain one of the main reasons people connect with brands via social networks.

Related posts:

1. What Else Should You be Posting on Facebook?
2. Using your Facebook Status Creatively
3. How to Create A Facebook Friend List
4. How to Create a Facebook Event
5. Five Ways to Up Facebook Engagement
6. How to Update Facebook Remotely
7. Agent Strategies: Reaching the Community via Facebook
8. Make the Most of Facebook Fans
9. Facebook Deals and Popular Places
10. New Facebook App from vFlyer