new easier facebook promotion rules

WOWZA!  Something huge has happened at Facebook that will change the way any marketer uses their Page.  After years of not allowing Page owners to hold promotional competitions on their timelines, they’ve broken down and will now allow actions such as likes, posts, and shares to be used to award users, count as votes and many more ideas that will emerge out of this change.

You can keep using those expensive to build Apps (formerly Tabs) for your contest if you want.  But you don’t have to!  Don’t give up on Apps though as they are still the more attractive place for a complex, truly branded contest where you can more easily capture data about your fans.  Apps can help you avoid manually capturing the results too – but don’t worry, third parties are already lining up to create tools for that…see one from Woobox at the bottom of this article.

The move to free brands reflects a drop off in Page use by larger companies since the introduction of EdgeRank – the thing that makes your post show in the newsfeed of just 16% of your fans (Facebook confirmed this average % to Hong Kong Web Analytics recently).  No doubt there will be renewed action on Pages with the reduced cost of promoting there.

The Facebook statement:

We’ve updated our Pages Terms in order to make it easier for businesses of all sizes to create and administer promotions on Facebook. Here’s what Page administrators need to know:

We’ve removed the requirement that promotions on Facebook only be administered through apps

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.

You still need to create official rules and completely release Facebook from liability / sponsorship.

More Reading //
Mumbrella: Facebook promotion rules are a game changer for brands
The Next Web: Facebook eases up on brand Page promotions by removing third-party app requirement
Woobox: Free Tool to Pick Winners and Export Likes & Comments on Facebook Posts