In the past I’ve talked to some extent about the promotional guidelines for Facebook competitions. However much we talk about it people still seem to flout the rules. There are two specific reasons that people do this:
- They don’t know about the Facebook promotional guidelines
- They know about them but they don’t believe Facebook will take away their page
It can be frustrating for page managers that are compliant with the Facebook competition rules to see so many pages ignoring them and at least once a year a frustrated user will pop up in my LinkedIn group desperately seeking reassurance that Facebook really does take down pages.
Mostly we can only answer anecdotally, I know I’ve been contacted by businesses who have had no warning and have lost their page, some of these didn’t know they were doing anything wrong. Most social media consultants will have a similar story to tell. Sadly in most cases Facebook will not give you the page back even if you appeal.
Earlier in the year I linked to this article about a business owner who had his page taken down twice due to inadvertantly breaking the rules.
Finally I was forwarded this email by Noel Davidson of www.noeldavidson.com. A client of his who had lost a page with 13,000 Likes had received it. In this case it seems that warnings were issued before Facebook took action. Be aware that this is not always the case, in my experience the first thing you know about loosing your page is when you discover it is missing.
In this case the page was not returned to the user and they had to start a fresh.
It is reassuring for those of us who comply with the Facebook competition rules that action is taken, it would be nice to see it happening more often as not only would it set our minds at ease, make the behavior more prohibitive but it would also free our newsfeeds of all those annoying competition posts.
If you are unsure of the guidelines and how you can comply with them take a look at my previous posts on the topic
How To Run Facebook Competitions By The Rules
5 Reasons Why Like & Share Competitions Don’t work
The easiest way to stay compliant is to use an app. I recommend ShortStackApp (affiliate link), it’s free to run a sweep stakes competition and very well priced for premium features.
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The easiest way to avoid it is to get a life and do some work instead of wasting time on Facebook. In my always humble opinion.