The Scoop on PromotionsProject Support Team Blog

April 26th, 2010

Navigating Promotions in a Facebook World

We receive a lot of questions from Clients about integrating Facebook into their promotions….so we thought a little Facebook Guidelines 101 might be helpful. Now the good news is that the new guidelines do not prohibit any company (big or small) from using promotions to grow their fan base. But the bad news is you have some rules to follow. So to help you get started, we wanted to highlight what we consider to be the most important components.

To start, the big distinction that Facebook makes in their new policy is between ‘publicizing‘ and ‘administering‘ a promotion on Facebook. ‘Publicizing‘ a promotion means that you advertise, promote or reference a promotion on Facebook, but you do not collect entries or draw/notify winners on Facebook. This DOES NOT REQUIRE Facebook approval…But if you ‘Administer‘ a promotion (which means you do all the above…. publicize it, collect entries and draw/notify winners), this DOES REQUIRE Facebook approval.

So just to be clear…with the new guidelines….if you use Facebook to publicize a promotion, it DOES NOT REQUIRE approval…. But administering a promotion DOES REQUIRE approval. Got it?

In addition, there a few other bits of etiquette you must obey:

• You must use a third party application to administer a promotion on Facebook. In the past, many companies have run promotions by telling entrants to post a comment on their wall, upload a photo to their Facebook album or click the ‘become a fan’ button to enter. Such promotions are no longer allowed and must be run using a third party application.

• Promotions can no longer be publicized/administered on Facebook that are open to citizens of Belgium, Norway, Sweden, India or countries that are embargoed by the US.

• Promotions can no longer be publicized/administered on Facebook that are open to anyone under the age of 18.

• Promotions can no longer be publicized/administered on Facebook that promote: gambling, tobacco, dairy, firearms, prescription drugs, or gasoline. In addition, they many not offer any of the following as prizes: alcohol, tobacco, dairy, firearms or prescription drugs.

• You cannot condition entry upon the purchase of a product, completion of a lengthy task or other form of consideration.