360DigitalInfluence

Facebook has recently developed guidelines for any promotions being announced or held on the Facebook platform.

With such growth in popularity and participation over the past year or so, more and more brands and companies are joining Facebook to get closer to their employees, customers and peers.

As more Facebook programs have been developed, Facebook now sees a need to establish a few guidelines for brands, agencies and companies to follow moving forward.

Before starting a new Facebook program, be sure to take a look at these new promotion guidelines and talk to a Facebook representative if you have any questions.

Here are 5 things you should know about Facebook’s new promotion guidelines:

1. Promotions will only be considered for review/approval by existing Facebook clients - through either direct or inside sales. (e.g. need to pay for advertising before being considered for Facebook promotions)

2. All promotions (including contests, sweepstakes or competitions) in which Facebook participants are eligible to win must be approved by a Facebook representative (plan for a 7 day approval timeframe).

3. All promotions must be hosted on a third-party site and through an opt-in application developed specifically for the promotion. Promotions using general Facebook features such as photo uploads, wall posts or discussion boards are not acceptable. Winners of these promotions cannot be contacted through Facebook, either.

** For example: a winner cannot be chosen based on their participation in a discussion board or an upload of a photo to a Facebook album - instead, a specific photo sharing application or discussion submission application would need to be developed for this promotion. This application should also include collection of participants contact information, so that the winner(s) can be contacted via email - and not Facebook message. (Facebook is happy to refer you to a number of third-party developers with whom they have worked with in the past to help develop a specific application.)

4. As to be expected, promotions can’t be targeted to anyone under 18 years of age and those under 18 cannot be allowed to participate. Promotion of gambling, alcohol, firearms and tobacco is strictly prohibited. Please note, as of today promotion of prescription drugs, dairy products and gasoline is also prohibited (although is scheduled to be discussed in a Thursday meeting with Facebook’s legal team).

5. Promotions that are hosting completely off of Facebook can be announced on a Facebook page without prior approval from Facebook, however, the term “Facebook” should not be included in the promotion copy, or in any of the promotion’s rules - for that matter. Additionally, all promotions held on Facebook need to include the following disclosure:

“This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook. You understand that you are providing your information to [recipient(s) of information] and not to Facebook. The information you provide will only be used for [disclose any way that you plan to use the user's information].”

Based on these new guidelines - a key takeaway for future Facebook promotions is to plan ahead and allow for a larger promotion budget to include the development of a Facebook applicaiton or a third-party promotion page on a brand Web site.

When developing these promotions, keep in mind that ads driving traffic off of Facebook reach around .1% click-through rate (the industry average), whiles ads that drive Facebook participation usually perform at least 2-3X better. It is my assumption that it will be the same for promotions - with Facebook applications seeing a higher participation rate than sending Facebook users off to a third-party site.