November 9th, 2009 by Kyle
Your strategy is geared up for your business’ next promotional event and you’re ready to start inviting your friends and fans to participate and RSVP. Pump the brakes a bit! This week, Facebook made a major change to their promotions guidelines. If your promotion consists of an offering, sweepstakes, contest or competition you must check with an account representative at Facebook by filling out a contact form before continuing with your promotion advertising on FB.
This could be considered to be a smart business move by Facebook given the liability issues attached to a botched promotion or a potential scam on users. As you know, policy is important. Being responsible for the actions of millions of users and companies is time consuming and resource-intensive – Facebook would rather spend time innovating and developing, not policing its users.
But this isn’t about Facebook, this is about YOU, the one with the ideas! Although this may seem like one extra step slowing your social media goal, don’t let it deter you from achieving results! Just like the rest of your social media plan, it is important to listen, think then act upon these important changes.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Are posting contests and promotions on my Facebook page valuable to my clients/customers/users in the first place?
- Is it worth my time to take that extra step for my promotion?
- How is this going to effect my long term goal?
- Are there other tools that I can use to distribute my promotions?
If you STILL have concerns about these changes there are other alternatives to distribute your campaigns:
- Twitter
- LinkedIn
- Eventbrite
- Ning
- Your website
- Your Blog
If you need to, invite fans of your FB page to participate on these other platforms as well.
Athletes don’t quit playing sports because their league has changed a couple of rules every season (or sometimes during the season) – they adapt by training smarter and harder. Do the same for your business!
