Promotions and contests for your Followers, and to help encourage more Followers, is a popular way to market and advertise through your business Facebook Timeline pages. Promotions can be anything from offering coupons for discounts off your products or services or anything else you think your Followers would take advantage of. Contests can be for small gifts such as a $5 gift card or for larger gifts. They can be in the form of drawings or image or video contests. As long as you abide by Facebook policy for promotions and contests, the sky is the limit in regard to what you can do to run these events through your business Facebook Timeline page.

Facebook expects you to abide by all laws governing business promotions and contests. They also insist that you administer promotions and contests within Apps on a canvas page or an app on a page tab. These are not allowed to be run through the Cover Photo on your business Facebook Timeline page. Facebook also requires that each participant sign a release form that acknowledges that Facebook has nothing to do with the promotions or contests and accepts no liabilities from them under any circumstances.

Your Facebook Timeline promotions and contests also need to include fine print that states that Facebook is not a sponsor, does not endorse, administer or have any association with the promotion or contest you are running. This fine print should also state that the participant’s disclosure of information is received by your business and it is not shared with Facebook.

Your Facebook promotion or contest cannot utilize any Facebook features, or ask participants to use any Facebook features. What this means is that you cannot tell people “Like this page for a chance to win” or have them Like or Share contest information in order to get “votes”. You can however have participants vote on your own website after registering through a Facebook app registration form.

Finally, you cannot use Facebook to notify winners. You can announce the winners on your Facebook Timeline page after you have emailed, phoned or otherwise contacted the winners to let them know they won. Also, do not use any Facebook images, logos, or other Facebook owned content within the promotion or contest. Reviewing the guidelines before you create the promotion or contest will help you learn more. You can find them at www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php.

Once you are familiar with what Facebook requires, you can easily create promotions or contests that will be in compliance with Facebook and help explode your business Facebook Timeline page with activity revolving around the contest or promotion. Using your Facebook Timeline page to announce and allow participants to register, and then using your own business website to help administer and blog about the contest will create some valuable cross posting opportunities. For example, if your contest includes having participants create images or videos using your products or services, they could email them to your business to be uploaded to your business website, then people can vote on them at your website. You can post links to the images and updates about the contest on Facebook to keep Facebook Followers engaged in the contest. This will benefit both your business website and your business Facebook Timeline page.

As you gain Followers, get used to succeeding with Facebook ads, and learn to post content to keep your Followers engaged, you will start to find out why more than 82% of marketers rely on Facebook for such a high percentage of their marketing and advertising success. Hosting Facebook promotions and contests, creating discussion groups and other engaging activities will build a strong and loyal community that will be sure to purchase your products and services over your competitors. This will be because you took the time and effort to build brand loyalty through your business Facebook Timeline Page.

Cheers!

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