On 29 August 2013, Facebook introduced new competition rules which allow you to run a competition on your page WITHOUT the use of a third party application!
Facebook is allowing pages to have competitions where users can "like" a page or post or comment in order to win a prize. You are now also allowed to ask your fans questions about new products in order for them to win a prize.
Now, before we start praising the Facebook gods, let's also be frank. I'm sure there are many of you reading this post who did not even realise that Facebook had any rules pertaining to competitions to begin with. You may be sitting there going, "Say what, you're telling me I wasn't allowed to do all of that to begin with?!" and shaking your head in disagreement.
For people like yourself, here's the low down. It was against Facebook's promotion guidelines to have a promotion running with any Facebook features, such as likes, shares and tagging to win. All competitions had to be managed through apps.
These recent developments mean that smaller businesses with limited budgets can now run competitions and benefit from Facebook promotions as well. Those with smaller audiences will also be able to offer prizes to their fans without having to stress about the creation of an app.
However, we cannot rule out the importance of a competition application. These allow marketers to gather information about the people who enter the competitions. The email addresses gained from the app is very helpful in building a database for email marketing.
You can also use competition apps as a fan gate, requesting users to like your page before they are able to enter the competition which helps you grow your fan base.
There are obviously those who will still prefer using apps depending on your specific marketing needs, but now at least you now know that your options are not as limited.
Here's to the Facebook team for making things a little simpler for all of us, especially social media community managers!
