Facebook has made another change to how you can market on Facebook.
Is this good news or not?
A couple of years ago, they decided to forbid running promotions directly on the page and made the use of a third party app mandatory. This restriction is now gone. You can now run a promotion without using a third party app.
There are still rules though, and not everything can be done. Nonetheless, this can be a good option in some instances, or a very poor one in others.
Let’s review the pros and cons of this new possibility.
#1. The good part
So what you can do when running a promotion on your timeline and why can it be a good option?
The new terms of service and the accompanying FAQ they have put together are pretty clear about what you can do:
- You don’t HAVE to use a third party app anymore to run a promotion on your page (you still can, but it is not mandatory)
- If you run your promotion directly on your page, entries to the promotion can be made by either posting on the page, liking or commenting a page post, or messaging the page.
If you have a small audience and want to offer a prize, it’s now super simple:
- Post to your page that people may just “post” or “message” the page or “like” or “comment” a post of the page
- Tell them you’ll pick a winner among the ones who have done so
Super fast, super easy and free!
You can even pay for ads and get the concerned post displayed to more people than your usual organic reach (between 5 and 50% of your fans). The ad part is probably the main motivation for Facebook to change its rules by the way, but that’s a different story.
A good example would be the following:
- You have a small business and a couple thousand fans and you are launching a new product
- You want your fans and the world to know about it
- At the same time you want to engage with the announcement
- Create a post announcing the launch
- include a nice picture and ask your fans to find a name for the new product using the comments on the post
- Pick the name you like among the comments and you have a winner.
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