Facebook contests for colleges have been key in the social media marketing toolbox.
Colleges have been using them to help boost the number of leads and likes on your college’s page, reach more users, and gather information about fans.
On the other hand, students love Facebook contests that allow them to win cool stuff.
Many of our clients have been aware of Facebook contests.
Some did not like the idea of using the required third-party application.,while others were confused by the rules and may have trespassed without knowing it.
The new guidelines make things more straightforward for these social media contests in education.
What has changed?
What was not allowed and is now possible
- Making contests directly through Page Timelines: it used to be necessary to use 3rd-party applications. To open contests to smaller businesses that cannot afford 3rd-party services, Facebook now allows every business page to run contests directly from their timeline.
- Using Facebook features in your contests: Before the changes, Facebook had a policy that forbade using Facebook features in contests. Thus, it was forbidden to require that one like a page to vote for a contest. It is now possible, for a fee, to collect entries by having users post on the page or comment/like a page post or to collect entries by having users message the page.
What is no longer/still not allowed
- Inaccurate photo tagging: As an administrator of your institution’s Facebook page, you can no longer ask people to tag themselves in pictures if they aren’t in them. Facebook’s point is to ensure that all the tagged photos include people there.
- It is still forbidden to ask people to participate in a contest by liking, sharing, or posting something on their timeline. Facebook explained that they chose by a will to preserve the authentic content on their Homepage and did not want them to create fake content to run a chance to win a contest.
- It is also forbidden to ask participants to share the timeline contests.
What does it change for your college?
Not much. The tagging changes will not affect your college’s Facebook tagging campaigns. Indeed, if you ask students to tag themselves in pictures, you will use Facebook’s features.
Creating a promotion through your timeline will be faster, easier, and less expensive. These promotions will also ensure you appear in your participants’ newsfeeds, fostering engagement. But don’t think we are done with applications just yet.
Since there is no obligation to be a fan to like a post or comment, running a contest without an application will keep you from gathering more detailed data about new fans.
If you choose to use Page Promotions, you will no longer boost your lead generation nor gather accurate statistics about the contest’s success. Applications are still the best solution for collecting data and pushing the number of fans.
They are also essential to help you design and brand promotions on pages. For higher education institutions with a large fan base, third-party apps can help make promotions and contests more personalized.
Finally, according to Facebook specialist Jon Loomer, the coincidental announcement of Facebook’s new contest guidelines and warning against a new newsfeed algorithm that would punish low-quality content may indicate that Page Contest will soon be considered low-quality content.
We may need to wait and see the real impact of these new contest rules in the coming weeks.
Please share your thoughts on these changes with us. Do you think this will impact your college’s use of promotions on Facebook?
FAQ To Consider
What is the Facebook competition policy?
Using Facebook features in your contests: Before the changes, Facebook had a policy that forbade using Facebook features in contests. Thus, it was forbidden to require that one like a page to vote for a contest. It is now possible, for a fee, to collect entries by having users post on the page or comment/like a page post or to collect entries by having users message the page.
