Facebook competitions - now even easier to run

With Facebook relaxing their competition Terms & Conditions, it's never been easier to run a competition on Facebook. Here's why you might want to do this:

• start a conversation
• create a buzz
• capture customer data
• increase your Likes
• promote a new product or service
• build reputation
• seek customer input into product development

The list is almost endless.

The most popular type of competition asks entrants to Like as the way to enter. Facebook T&Cs allow you to do this. The T&Cs are not onerous but avoid using a share this link on a timeline method of entry - it's one of the few prohibitions in the T&Cs. It means that you don't need to use a third part application such as Offerpop or custom design to produce your application any more. Having said that, the latter does produce some amazingly good competitions.  Here are some good recent examples with creativity at the fore.

Red Spotted Hanky Facebook travel voucher promotion

Berghaus Facebook photo competition

Innocent Smoothie Facebook knitting promotion

Dorset Cereals Facebook spot the difference promotion


Here are the latest FacebookT&Cs in full

Bye bye Wildfire, hello offerpop?

Those wonderful people at Wildfire provide powerful, easy-to-use social media marketing tools for pages, messages, ads, promotions, monitoring, analytics and more. Lots of marketers though only use one element of their service - the promotions app. It's so popular because it allows you easily and cost effectively to run customers competitions on Facebook.

It has worked really well for this marketer being easy to set-up, offers easy communication with entrants and good analytics. Just as importantly, it means that you are not breaking Facebook's Terms and Conditions. Lots of businesses ignore these when they run a competition on Facebook. It's not worth the risk. Who would want their page taken down without notice?

That all changes on 30 June 2013 when they will cease to offer this stand alone product. Instead, customers will have to subscribe to the full range. Not all customers will want this so it's time to look at the alternatives.

Strutta like Wildfire offers a package of products with no stand alone promotions tool. Their Small Business Plus option allows you to run Facebook competitions - price $199 per month. You can try before you buy with a free 14 day trail

More flexible in it's offer and pricing is offerpop where you can opt for an annual subscription paying monthly - this ranges from free to $675 per month depending on your number of fans or followers. Interestingly, there is a no commit option where you can pay per competition. This costs between nothing ad $425 for a campaign of up to 14 days. There is also a 14 day trial.

Wishpond has a cost effective range of products which start at $19 per month. I recommend the $44 package which allows you to customise the generic competition templates. Free trial also available.