Is your Facebook competition illegal?

 This is the Social Media Channel from Anthony Rawlins, managing director of Travolution's social media partner Digital Visitor.

Since it was launched, Facebook has changed a lot of functionality and the rules behind how businesses interact with many of their features.

Fans are now 'Likes', Polls are now Questions, and Competitions are now.... Well they're no longer allowed through Facebook alone.

This can and has caused confusion with many who promote their business, products and services through this channel and recently, Facebook have made it even more difficult for organisations to run a competition.

For any brand large or small trying to engage with new audiences via social media, competitions can be great. They allow you to shout about your products and services in a much less 'salesy' fashion. Competitions can bring fresh new fans, ready to be exposed to your products and services, and they can equally encourage loyalty and build brand equity with your existing customer base.

But before you put your competition into gear, stop and think.

Are you running your Facebook competition legally?

Here's a rundown of the main obstacles you can face when running a competition on Facebook and here is a link to Facebook's official guidelines...

Rule 1: You can not run your competition on Facebook alone

Previously, you could use Facebook in many ways to run competitions. This was a highly cost effective if not FREE way of running a competition however as this channel of promotion has become more and more popular Facebook have changed their rules.

Now you'll need to create your own competitions solution or license a third party application. This will need to be integrated into your Facebook page via an iFrame (i.e. it must be hosted elsewhere) and not on Facebook.

To integrate a third party competition application within your own Facebook page via an iFrame isn't expensive and most people with a bit of IT savvy could do this. However, creating a decent competitions application in-house is difficult, so we don't suggest building one yourself unless you are a large enough organisation that would incur heavy costs using a third party application.

For those of you who aren't interested in creating your own, why not choose from some existing third party applications? There are quite a few available, each offering a similar service at a similar cost. 

Here is a brief overview of three popular applications:

Wildfire offer a variety of contest applications, from simple data capture to user generated content (UGC) contests. Prices range from $32 for a 1 month basic campaign, up to large white label campaigns that must be negotiated with Wildfire on a case by case basis.

OfferPop provide several contest options, from simple sign-ups to photo contests (no video contests yet, though). Their price structure is based around the number of Facebook 'Likes' the Page has at the start of each time period. Pages with 2,500 or less 'Likes' will pay $50 a month, whereas larger businesses with 100,000 'Likes' will pay $2,000. Massive Pages (1 million + Likes) must negotiate directly with OfferPop.

NorthSocial offer a variety of applications to enhance your Facebook Page but their options for competitions are limited to a simple 'signup' sweepstakes application. Their pricing plans are monthly. You can use any of their applications, but you are limited by 'Like' counts. The more 'Likes' a Page has, the higher the monthly charge.

Rule 2: Your users can't enter your competition using Facebook

Well, not exactly. We did find the rules a little hazy on this matter and quite confusing.

One of the Facebook guidelines states that users may only 'like' a page, 'check-in' to a place or connect with your competitions application to enter or register for the competition.

Other Facebook actions such as commenting or 'liking' on a wall post, uploading a photo on a wall and so on - are NOT allowed to be used as part of your users entry or registration process for your competition.

Confusingly, in the Facebook guidelines, the Preceding rule mentioned that 'liking' a page and 'checking-in' to a place CANNOT be used to automatically enter or register for the competition.

This leads me to believe that you can 'like' a page and 'check-in' to a place as PART of the entry or registration process but this can not be the only action the user takes to enter your competition.  There must be another entry requirement such as the entrant providing their email address to you.

So, to allow the visitors to enter your competition, I propose the simplest way is to use a third party application to install a competitions tab on your Facebook Page. You can then specify in your rules that users must 'Like' a Page AND enter their details on your competitions tab.

o the best of my knowledge, this keeps everything above board and gets you that all-important data capture too. Please of course feel free to translate this rule yourselves. Facebook's official guidelines...

 

Rule 3: You can't contact your winners through Facebook.

This is simple enough but it does reduce the exposure that your competition winners receive on Facebook.

You cannot use Facebook messages, Facebook chat or make posts on profiles or pages to notify the winner they have won.

Now presumably this is so businesses don't tell the entrants that they have to visit their Facebook page every day to see who the winner is, however it does take some of the sparkle away from running the competition on Facebook as you can't shout about your winners as effectively.

This rule also means that if your competition entry is via 'liking' a page or 'checking-in' to a place - you will also need to make sure the entrant provides their contacts details so you can let them know if they have won. (This fits in nicely with the above rule).

Using a third party application, this should provide the functionality to contact your winners through it's own data capture system. If you are building your own competitions application - I know its obvious but make sure you do provide some kind of appropriate data capture to be able to contact winners yourselves.

To win back some exposure through the winners of your competition, in any communication with the winner it's always advisable to remind them to come back to your Facebook page and share their experiences so they can do a little shouting for you - they should, after all, be very happy.

Rule 4: Get a disclaimer, and make sure your competition is legal.

It's important to have the legal aspects covered off when running a competition on Facebook. Trust me, Facebook have themselves covered so make sure your organisation is too.

Facebook allows you to run your competition on their site through an application, however they require that you indemnify them from any legal issues and that you take responsibility for all legal aspects of the promotion. You'll also need to specify that users are sending their data to you and not Facebook and basically that Facebook has nothing to do your competition.

As well as your own legally upstanding rules and regulations for the competition - you will need a disclaimer.

An example of the content of such a disclaimer is below, however your third party application provider should supply these to you. If you are creating your own, please seek independent legal advice for accurate, up-to-date information and it is important to keep up to date with the rules on Facebook itself as these do change regularly:

This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook. You understand that you are providing your information to (Company name) and not to Facebook. This information will only be used to send subscribers updates from the (Company Name).

Clearly this is a skeleton to a wider piece of legal copy but it's a start.

Is there an alternative?

There's always an alternative. In this article so far we have looked at how you can run competitions ON-CHANNEL i.e. on social media channels and namely, the most popular social media channel - Facebook.

However one way of avoiding these kinds of rules and regulations is by running competitions ONSITE i.e. on your own website and communicating this through Facebook and other social media channels using plugins such as Facebook Connect.

Using an ONSITE social media solution such as those offered by www.digitalvisitor.com, www.offexploring.com and www.freshnetworks.com, you can communicate the competition through your social media channels but direct the entrants back to your own website. Using Facebook Connect (which most decent onsite social media solutions have), you can take advantage of the viral nature of Facebook to increase this exposure. 

Running your competition on your own website can be good for a number of reasons but here are a few to begin with:

1) Lower cost

The investment into an onsite competitions application can be a one-off spend whereas using a Facebook application, each and every competition can have a cost.

2) It's easier to re-use the content

If you are running a competition to gather videos or photos, it's easier to re-use this content on the pages of your website or in other marketing materials. Using Facebook, content needs to be downloaded and the quality will suffer, plus you are duplicating effort in doing this.

3) Traffic

You are driving new traffic to your own website and could capture more personal data from every entree - potentially an easier ROI to sell to your board than Facebook 'Likes'.

4) Brand awareness and loyalty

Maintaining traffic on your own website drives your all-important brand awareness.

There are more benefits to running a competition on your own site however, there is one main drawback.

The fundamental reason many people run competitions on Facebook is the opportunity to interact with a huge audience and the viral nature of content on Facebook i.e. your competition entry appearing on your friends wall, which then encourages them to enter and so on....

Using a Facebook competition application, the viral effect is a slightly easier process than using an onsite social media solution. Why? Because the entrant is already on Facebook, therefore for their entry to be communicated across Facebook is slightly easier than if they had to login in to Facebook via Facebook Connect on your own website.

This can translate into a wider viral spread of your competition when using a Facebook competition application rather than your own onsite competition solution.

Conclusions and take homes
 
 - There are rules and regulations that need to be adhered to when running a Facebook competition and these have changed considerably over the last few years. Make sure you are up-to-date with these changes and this article will probably be outdated in 6 months time, (written June 2011), as the rules change again so please do keep your eyes peeled.

 - It is in breach of Facebook rules to run your competition on Facebook alone - therefore you must use a dedicated application and invariably you will need to pay for this.

 - If you are paying to run the competition it may be worth using this spend on your own website and exploring an onsite competitions solution with social media plugins for a clearer ROI.

 - With a good prize, and good application your Facebook competition can be successful. But, if you're a small brand who can't afford this type of expense, you may need to reconsider whether a Facebook competition is right for you.

 - Onsite competitions are a clearer way of demonstrating a ROI as each entrant could provide you with more personal data and they would have visited your website. You can take advantage of some of the viral capabilities of Facebook with an onsite solution, however these are slicker when using a Facebook application and running the competition within Facebook itself.

 - Whichever way you choose to run your competition, this needs to be supported by your own marketing. Communication through Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, your email database, blogs and competition websites,  your own website and more, to give the greatest  chance of success.

 - Finally - Competitions are one of the very best ways of capturing new audiences. Why not trial both types of competition, Onsite and On-channel - to see which gives you the best results and a better ROI?