Facebook promotional rules changes – 6 reasons to keep using Facebook apps!

A week or two ago Facebook changed the rules on how you can run promotions (competitions) on Facebook making it now possible to run promotions on your page timeline something which you weren’t supposed to do before.

The change basically makes it easier to run short-term, low-key competitions but Facebook apps are still essential for when you really want to get the most from a promotion. Here are some quick reasons why:

1. Using a Facebook app allows you to increase you Page likes (using something called a Fan Gate). Running a competition on your timeline is open to everyone, Fans and non-fans
2. Facebook apps allow you to capture email addresses and other information such as age or town they live in. You can then use this (with their permission) to keep them up to date using email newsletters for example
3. You can make the experience more customised and interactive using voting, slideshows and other integrated options
4. You can incentivise ‘sharing’ something you’re not able or allowed to do on the timeline
5. You can brand your Facebook app to your business to give a better feel to users
6. An app allows you to write and host rules and T&Cs which is a little more fiddly and ugly on a timeline wall post

How should I decide what’s best for my business? Here’s what Facebook says:

In a nutshell, if you want to capture data, likes and run a promotion that asks users to interact more an app will give you a lot of flexibility to achieve this. However if you just want to do a quick promotion, where you’re not expecting a large amount of entries and are ok to pick the winner manually then using a page post might be good.

You need to evaluate your businesses’ goals and decide what’s right for you.

Here’s a useful PDF Facebook have produced with further information: Facebook Promotional guidelines