July 5, 2020 By Fiona Lucas

Contests on Facebook and Instagram – getting it right

Competitions, contests and giveaways can be a great strategy for creating engagement or promoting something new on Facebook and Instagram. However it’s important to do them right to protect your brand. Edited July 2020.

What constitutes a contest, giveaway or promotion?

Competitions, or giveaways/promotions offer those entering the chance to “win” something of value. It may be a subscription, a gift basket or box, a a voucher or some other prize. The opportunity to win being given to those who participate by either giving up their details, completing an entry form, providing a story, commenting or some other task.

Retro pop art illustration of a happy woman throwing money to illustrate winning a contest — images by depositphotos

Pros of running Contests and Giveaways:

Sparks engagement and excitement to your brand
Built for sharing
Generate organic traffic
Brings your brand to the attention of new audiences
Can produce great virality
Creates user generated content (see our previous article on user generated content )
Awareness of new products or services
Promote opening a new venue

Cons of running Contests and Promotions:

Many come for the prize only and will not engage with the brand
May not be from your ideal customer base
Short term fans only
If not run correctly can actually risk your brand
Can add extra administrative burden
Sometimes genuine fans/customers are disgruntled when a random person wins (clarity of rules is important here)

Although the rules around Facebook and IG competitions have been around as long as the platforms, there are still many business owners putting their page/accounts at risk by not following the guidelines.

Don’t risk losing your Page

Time and time again we hear of people who have lost access to a Facebook page or Instagram account. Generally page owners feel they have done nothing wrong. Interestingly, a close investigation often (not always) finds that competitions and giveaways were being run on the account which were not in accordance with conditions.

Both Facebook Conditions and instagram guidelines do get updated, so it’s really important to make sure you check before publishing to protect your brand.

Below we outline the basics you need to know.

Important conditions for all contents and giveaways

The number one most important condition for all platforms is to make sure that you include a disclaimer. This removes the platform from any association with your contest.

Both Facebook and Instagram require that contests or promotions must include:

A complete release of responsibility for Facebook and/or Instagram toward each entrant or participant; and
Acknowledgement that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed, administered by or associated with Facebook and/or Instagram.

The next most important condition for contests and promotions is to ensure you have clear terms and conditions of entry.

Facebook and Instagram both state that these must include the following:

Official rules of the contest or promotion;
Offer terms and eligibility requirements (ex: age and residency restrictions); and
- - - - Compliance with applicable rules and regulations governing the promotion and all prizes offered.
        (ex: registration and obtaining necessary regulatory approvals).
      - Lotteries (where someone must buy a ticket to win) are not allowed.

General guidelines for contest rules:

Your rules should include the start and end date of the contest or promotion; any age limitations (for example only persons over the age of 18) ; the jurisdiction for which participants qualify (Where they live: for example is the contest local, State, National, Worldwide) and how the contest winner is chosen. Consider, for example will you be doing a random draw, voting by public, judging an entry or other condition? These rules may be posted on a web site but a clear link and statement that entrants agree to the Terms and Conditions must be provided in your post.

It is also important that it is stated that no purchase is required for entry. If an entrant chooses voluntarily to purchase, that a purchase does not increase chances of winning.

When Facebook says “no consideration” it means that nothing of value should change hands. Some countries you may find that giving up an email address or other information is considered a consideration, so make sure you look into laws closely.

You should ensure the details of the prize are clearly described.

It is vital that you also consider any laws for contests and competitions/giveaways in your State or Country. If your contest is open more broadly, then you must ensure that each Countries laws are also covered. For this reason we often recommend either local contests be run and that a contest is not a random draw.

Generally anything drawn at random becomes a “game of chance” and is subject to more legal requirements than a “game of skill”.

A game of skill involves participants having to complete something in order to win, whether it is writing a short essay, completing a puzzle or other task and having entries judged according to a set of criteria. You don’t have to tell entrants why they did not win (no correspondence will be entered into) but you should make sure the rules are clear how the judging process works to ensure it is ethical and fair.

You must also check whether there are other local, state or national laws which impact on the type or value of a prize. Some contests may require being registered.

If entrants are required to produce a creative work (whether image, photograph, illustration or written) that your rules advise them that entering grants you the right to use the intellectual property and use such works in advertising or other promotional purposes.

Having clear rules can protect your brand reputation by avoiding confusion or frustration by entrants.

Be aware that neither Facebook nor Instagram will assist you with contests or promotions. Both platforms state: “We will not assist you in the administration of your promotion and cannot advise you on whether consent is required for use of user content or on how to obtain any necessary consent.”

Best Practice Facebook Competitions & Giveaways

The biggest mistake we still see regularly is the tag and share competition.

Facebook explicitly states: “Promotions may be administered on Pages, Groups, Events, or within apps on Facebook. Personal Timelines and friend connections must not be used to administer promotions (example: “share on your Timeline to enter” or “share on your friend’s Timeline to get additional entries”, and “tag your friends in this post to enter” are not permitted).

This is to try and prevent spamming (engagement baiting) onto profiles and deter the use of fake profiles.

You cannot ask for likes on shares on Facebook as a condition of entry, but you can have links that take entrants off the platform and ask for actions there. This is where third party contest software with referral features can be handy. The main reason is that once something is shared you cannot trace it properly, you need entries to be in one location to ensure all is fair and transparent. You can suggest folk follow the page to keep up to date, but it must not be part of the condition of entry.

You also must not request that entrants tag friends in order to enter. Bringing up the level of excitement so that they want to share with their friends is fine. As long as the tag is not requested as part of the conditions of entry it is fine.

Competitions which require interaction and contribution from contestants work really well.

Make sure you have been clear how winners will be notified, and notify them BEFORE you announce on Facebook.

Best Practice Instagram Competitions & Giveaways

When it comes to Instagram, the rules are not quite as strict but along with the general guidelines indicated above, there are a few other things you can do to protect your brand. Again you must use a brand not a personal profile for competitions

Surprisingly for many, as with Facebook you cannot ask people to tag themselves on an image and share it unless they are actually in the image. That doesn’t mean you can’t ask them to tag friends in the comments , but not on the image.

Place a clear link to your terms and conditions in your BIO.

Create a specific hashtag to use with the competition along with your brand hashtag and ask people to use these tags in entries. This is fabulous if you are asking people to share a photo or image on their feed or in stories that they have created, and which you can also use later on (once again , remember to put that in your terms and conditions).

Don’t tag people or products/brands in your image who are not officially part of your competition or giveaway. Make it clear who is hosting the giveaway (for example with a makeup brand if its a collaboration your own brand, their brand and perhaps the founder if you have permission are ok to be tagged).

Keep it clear and simple, especially if there are multiple steps in the competition. Make it as easy as 1, 2 3.

One of the easiest competition is to ask people to like the image, follow your profile and make a comment. You can ask them to tag a friend in the comments, but avoid asking for more than one (if they do tag more thats up to them). A great idea is to have them nominate someone to win a prize. For example, during Covid19 a competition that nominates a front line worker is a nice way to both thank them, acknowledge them, but also helps your brand. Do be careful choosing this kind of strategy as if it is worded badly it can backfire and look as if you are trying to profit from difficult times. Make sure its all about them, not you.

Running contests with third party apps:

You may decide to use a third party platform to administer contests, promotions or giveaway . These third party programs will give you more control over entries, allow you to collect data and choose winners. Examples of these include Woobox, Shortstack and Wishpond (examples for your interest only, we are not affiliated with or endorse any particular product).

The drawbacks are that you have to pay (free products can be very limiting in features, often payments are for annual use. Also design features can be limited (so your contest can look like others and not stand out as much). Then there is a learning curve (some even require some coding knowledge).

You’ve got this

It may seem a little daunting at first, but once you have written out rules and conditions, its easy to tweek them for future contests. Understanding the rules will become more natural to you as you use them.

Before you run any contest, think about what it is you are trying to achieve. Are you after engagement, trying to build fans, wanting to build a list of prospects, introducing a new product or service, or other launch? Setting a goal will help you define your competition.

If you need help setting up or running a competition, then get in touch with us for help. We offer mentoring and creative ideas sessions to help you get your competition up and running. Contact us today!

Disclaimer: this information is provided as a general guide only. It is up to the reader to ensure they investigate and cover all requirements for running contests and competitions for their brand.

Helpful links :

Guide to writing rules from Woobox

Facebook promotions guide

May 3, 2020 By Fiona Lucas

Facebook Pages vs Profile – where are you doing business?

Dear Business owners,

So glad you have understood that you can gain great value and grow your business through Social Media, but did you seek advice before you started? I actually wrote this blog originally back in June 2012 on my old blog Socially Skilled, but I’m reproducing with a few updates which I will note as I still see it happening, businesses operating from a personal Facebook profile instead of a Page.

I can’t believe I’m posting on this topic again – but still I see so many new businesses starting up as a personal profile under a business name, or operating their business from a personal profile. I know it might seem easier, and you feel you don’t want to personally “be” on facebook, but this is against facebook terms and is a poor business decision. (Update: using your personal messenger is also a pretty spammy way to do business).

It kinda makes me want to cry!

Because I am passionate about supporting businesses to grow, I usually drop a friendly private message to give the business a heads up… but I find it so frustrating that so many still do it. On an ethical level I will no longer “friend” a business – it would be hypocritical of me. (Update: I never did “friend” a profile in a brand name). However create a page and if your product or service is something I value, and proides value, then I will LIKE away, and engage!

Remember a LIKE is an endorsement of a product or service – if you are getting value from a page then you should LIKE them to say thanks! Update: We value engagement so much, comments, hearts and shares will always give your business a boost!

(Note that this is a reproduction of the original post from 2012 with updates or amendments noted).

After sending messages to a few pages, I had a couple come back saying they get better engagement with a personal profile – but the principles are all wrong. Let’s just examine a few from both the business perspective and that of someone “friending” the business as opposed to becoming a fan:

Do you really intend to push your business out onto all your friends – many of your friends may not appreciate that you are spruiking to them, and it is very poor social etiquette to do so.
On the other side, if you “friend” a business they are able to spam your friends .. NOT good social etiquette at all
as a business on a profile, you cannot take advantage of all the cool things that the Tabs can do help your business to grow. Update: Pages include messaging, shop, services and insights and more!)
You risk building a huge base of fans only to have it all it all shut down – at some point, especially with facebook now privatised, they are going to do some serious culling – then all your work is lost!
It is almost impossible to implement any kind of reasonable social media marketing strategy when you are operating as a personal profile, and any self respecting and qualified social media consultant should not encourage it. If you want to start list building – then do it through offering something of value and create an opt in offer.
Without a page you cannot take advantage of the analytical tools on offer – so how are you measuring your engagement?
Having an individual profile will limit you to a maximum of 5000 friends, pages can have millions of followers.
Converting to a page later is messy and doesn’t always work as well as you might like. It may not work in the best interests of your brand to later change over where some fans may move and others might still interact with the profile. You miss opportunities for engagement with a much broader audience.
You can link a page to your website and include a buttons to improve engagement, you can’t do this with a profile.
If you later create a personal profile then you are again in breach of facebook terms which clearly state that personal profiles must be in the name of a real identifiable individual (yes not your dog, cat, boat or business) and you may only have one. If you also have a business set up as a profile then you risk having both your profiles shut down.
It actually doesn’t help anyone to do it this way as it causes the statistics to be incorrect – and if you are trying to measure your ROI accurately then we all need to play the game fairly.

I could go on, but the number one thing that you are doing when you set up your business as a personal profile – is not being honest. No one knows who you are – it does not generate trust. If you are being transparent and using your own name, but using the profile for business, you are missing out on many benefits of a page. Be proud of what you have created and let it shine on it’s very own page. If you are not sure what to do, or don’t have a strategy, seek help from an expert so you don’t waste precious time and money, because you never get time back.

Update: I don’t really need to update any of the points, as they are all still really relevant despite me writing them back in 2012!

Fi.

October 6, 2019 By Fiona Lucas

Are you using user generated content?

Humanize your brand with user generated content

The quest for new content is never ending. What is user generated content? It’s allowing your fans, customers, clients, users to tell their story of your brand, or to contribute in other ways to your social media presence. It’s marketing generated by them for you.

image by davicidig depositphotos

User Generated Content (UGC) is becoming a big go to for brands big and small. It’s not a new concept, but it is developing in the ways it can be incorporated into a business strategy.

Becoming creative with your clients, letting them tell the story of your brand, letting them take the lead? Perhaps it’s time too consider.

According to research by Stackla in the “Bridging the Gap” 2019 Data report

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Consumers find UGC 9.8x more impactful than influencer content when making purchasing decisions…” quote=”Consumers find UGC 9.8x more impactful than influencer content when making purchasing decision, yet 49% of marketers are planning to increase their investment in influencer marketing in 2019″ theme=”style3″]

So consumers seem to prefer to connect with Peers and “regular” people over influencers. That’s pretty big.

It also is a call to influencers to choose to promote products that match their brand and that they actually like and use. Nothing is worse for a brand than an endorsement made purely because of the monetary transaction that took place. Seek out micro and macro influencers, people in your own community and local area who can become brand ambassadors for you and share content with you. Best of all engage your customers in your marketing.

Use contests and promotions

Another fabulous way to bring engagement and fun to your social media pages is to run a contest or promotion which requires entrants to post their entries. Whether a creative image, or a paragraph, all of the above not only creates engagement, but it’s done for you. Nothing beats the excitment of interaction with a little competition. Be sure to follow the appropriate rules when running promotions however.

Celebrate their wins

Asking your audience to share their wins and achievements, whether business or personally is another way to generate content for your brand.

It’s such a feel good thing, just writing this makes us smile! Every business is only as good as its customers, so celebrate them, respect them and get to know them

Make Sure you have permission

Having permission is everything. Whether you are talking to a client, an influencer or strangers with a competition, it is vital to ensure they have given permission for content to be used. For a competition this would be written in the terms and conditions. For a client or influencer, make sure you have a signed agreement in place which outlines how you may use any content provided.

Of course if they are posting it directly themselves, then permission has been granted by the very act. We would still recommend having terms and conditions somewhere on your blog or on Facebook as a note or in the about of your page that content posted may be used. One thing to be wary of, is that you need to be sure the person sharing the content, owns the content.

There have been issues where folk have entered a photographic competition for example, with an image that was not theirs to share. Make sure you have a line in terms and conditions that says entrants are agreeing that they have copyright and are giving you rights to their intellectual property.

Would you be game to ask a stranger to judge your product?

It might sound risky, but if you are confident in your product, getting the reaction of someone seeing/using that product for the first time is worth a million words. That first look of surprise and delight is pretty hard to fake! You can ask people at events, tradeshows, marketplaces and on the street and video their reactions, or ask them to film an “unboxing” of a product. (see above, make sure you have permission to use the content, have them sign a disclaimer before you give them the product).

Whatever you do, be authentic – mean it!

Please don’t ask questions or run competitions just for the attention. You will build much greater trust and rapport if what. you do genuinely comes from an interest in your clients/customers and prospects.

May 16, 2018 By Fiona Lucas

Support the small businesses you love online

Facebook news feed and small business support

How can we support local business, especially in a busy online environment? You probably have seen all kinds of stories about Facebook making changes in the way the news feed operates. Most of these stories have been written for business owners and marketers to help them make sense of the changes. What about for you, the Facebook user? How do these changes affect you?

The changes are aimed at being positive. Facebook want to provide you, with more of what you love, and less spammy posts.

Part of the way they will be doing is this is by asking you, to let them know which Pages you love, what types of content you like and which sources you trust for information.

[ctt title=”‘At a time when there is a lot of confusion around news and information sources, it is really important that we can trust the information that is in our news feeds.'” tweet=”‘At a time when there is a lot of confusion around news and information sources, it is really important that we can trust the information that is in our news feeds.'” coverup=”5jFW8″]

For many small businesses and local businesses, changes could mean that they appear less and less in our feeds and even more so they will need to pay a lot more in advertising to try and stay visible. It also means they need to work harder to provide you with the information you want to see.

How to be more visible

As a small business owner myself, I want to provide the best value and service I can to my clients and followers.

[ctt title=”‘I believe that small businesses are the lifeblood of local economies, and we can only grow by ensuring we meet the needs of you, the reader, the consumer, the customer and client. – Fiona Lucas\'” tweet=”‘I believe that small businesses are the lifeblood of local economies, and we can only grow by ensuring we meet the needs of you, the reader, the consumer, the customer and client. – Fiona Lucas'” coverup=”Uip5a”]

Conversely we can only do that if we get your support in helping us to shape our content and by sharing the message.

Facebook want to see that you really enjoy content and it will measure this by whether you merely “like” a post or whether you comment or engage with it directly.

coffee up with support local business geelong local business — Image: Adobe stock

Further to this Facebook are trying to decide which businesses provide relevant and trustworthy news, and to find this out, Facebook may ask you in a survey if you trust particular content.

So…

[ctt title=”how can you support the small businesses, particularly local businesses you love and trust, and help them to give you more of what you want?” tweet=”how can you support the small businesses, particularly local businesses you love and trust, and help them to give you more of what you want?” coverup=”3v21U”]

Here are 7 things you can do right now:

1. Make sure you mark your favourite pages as “see first” in your news feed. You can do this on a computer or laptop by going to the page, click the button that says “following” and then click on “in your news feed”. Select “see first” and save. On your mobile device, in the facebook app, click on the “hamburger’ triple line symbol for more, scroll down to settings, choose news fed preferences and set up.

2. Turn on notifications for your favourite brands and businesses so you know when they have given you more great value and information. 3. When you see a post you really like, make a comment, ask a question or share your opinion. 4. Share content you love with people who share your interests and ask them to comment or give their opinion on the content. 5. Ask them questions and let them know what information you would like them to provide. Businesses want to give you value and earn your trust and respect. 6. Show them the love and tell the world by leaving a review or testimonial. 7. If you are asked a survey question about a business, please do respond to the questions to provide your support.

Mark Zuckerberg said “ I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions”

7 things to support small business online

Why not share this video to help the small businesses you love, and tag them in your post!

If you want to read Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement on the changes, you can read it here on his personal page

The FB News room announcement on Trusted sources was made on 19 January and can be read here along with information on changes to the algorithm for business here

I’m making sure that I keep in my feed my clients, my favourite local businesses and the people who inspire me and keep me informed.

Let us know your thoughts!

We would love to know what you think about Facebook currently, whether you are a Facebook user personally, for business or both. Have you noticed changes already? Will you make an effort to engage more with content or does it seem to be more of a chore?

Many people we spoke to this week said that they are busy, they like to read or watch content and they give it their approval by a like or share. Others said they just like everything to be nice 🙂 What is your view?

June 13, 2016 By Fiona Lucas

Facebook Moments & Sync – Don’t panic

Facebook Moments

Lots of news and reports about Facebook removing the Sync photos album and “forcing” people to use the new Facebook Moments app. Sync was introduced in 2012 as a place to store photos if you didn’t want to share them immediately. Facebook have been promoting Moments since December and have been letting members know if they had any images in the sync file to download them. The date to transfer by is 7 July.

Congratulations to all the publications who immediately created fear and misinformation around this.

Let us say to you now DONT PANIC.

You may not have any photos in the Sync file. These are only photos which were AUTO SYNCED, not those you upload yourself.

If you do, you can choose to use the moments app and save them there, or you can simply go to the photos in the sync album and download them individually.

If you have an album called “Synced” or “Synced from Phone” then it affects you. Facebook will have been giving you messages about this for some time.

The lovely Mari Smith posted some great tips on her facebook page as we were putting this together. You can find her full post here. Mari provided the following information and link for help to download your files. She writes “if you don’t want to use the Moments app, but want to save your synced photos, you can download the photos now on desktop. See this help section: “How do I download or delete my synced photos on Facebook?”

To be honest we had more issues when Dropbox removed the Carousel app – we lost some images in a hidden file because we were were just to slow to move!

What is Moments anyway?

Facebook Moments is an app that lets you share specific photos with friends. It’s quite a handy tool if you are at an event togther and want to easily share images with a friend or colleague. It also allows you to sort images via that friend or colleague, by the facial recognition technology. This is disruptive technology that helps us get organised. You can create an album of images and Facebook will also recommend based on recent images. For example I went to a friend’s show recently and Moments popped all the photos I took – I could review them and take some out then I can choose who to send them too.

You can also ask friends to send photos of you, which can be great if you are at an event and not able to take pictures. Just ask them to send them afterwards.

One thing though.. be careful not to send to the wrong person – I couldn’t see a cancel button!

[By the way if you are in Europe you probably won’t see the app as there are issues around the use of facial recognition there}. On one hand we see that – could be seen as invasion of privacy, but on another it has proven to be a valuable tool in solving crimes .

So that’s our take on it. No need to panic. Learn more about Moments here.

We would love your comments.