One of the things we were always made aware of when coming up with ideas and speaking to clients was the rule, that Facebook would enforce quite strictly, was that running a competition on a page wall was a big no-no.  But this has now changed.

Previously was for the requirement that all promotions could only be administered through 3rd party apps.  From this we saw the likes of Wildfire and Offerpop spring up to offer us simple, off-the-shelf solutions for a fee.  It was great for the developers but no so good for the clubs, brands and federations who wanted to run a competition for their large number of Facebook fans but had little or no budget.

But this has now all changed and here is the official blurb…

Now, promotions may be administered on Page Timelines and in apps on Facebook. For example, businesses can now:

• Collect entries by having users post on the Page or comment/like a Page post
• Collect entries by having users message the Page
• Utilize likes as a voting mechanism

As before, however, businesses cannot administer promotions on personal Timelines.

Accurate tagging is required in promotions – In order to maintain the accuracy of Page content, our Pages Terms now prohibit Pages from tagging or encouraging people to tag themselves in content that they are not actually depicted in. So, for instance:

• It’s OK to ask people to submit names of a new product in exchange for a chance to win a prize
• It’s not OK to ask people tag themselves in pictures of a new product in exchange for a chance to win a prize

We hope these updates will enable more businesses to use Facebook to launch their promotions. For more information regarding the changes to our promotions policies, check out our downloadable Promotion Guidelines, which include FAQs and best practices for running promotions through Facebook.

So if you want to give away a signed shirt, some match tickets and anything else it has suddenly become a lot easier to do.  Some brands have started to pick up on this but as yet it doesn’t appear to be happening on any of the club sites.  Manchester United are still linking back to a stand alone webpage for their competition to win pieces of the Old Trafford turf.  It is a bigger competition that took some planning but could easily be supplemented now with quick wins on the page wall.

If you run Facebook promotions for your club or brand then make sure you bookmark a copy of the updated promotions guidelines.

Facebook now looks like it is opening up it’s platform more in an attempt to keep people interested and brands from going elsewhere.  With growing evidence that the platform is becoming a turn off for teens due to bullying, over sharing and parents seeing their updates then the worries would be that brands will follow.  But this is still very much in the rumour and conjecture stage though highlighted by an interesting Mashable article titled “I’m 13 and none of my friends use Facebook” which gained a lot of recent coverage.  We shall see.

Have a great weekend everyone!