Facebook Competition Terms and Conditions

Are you allowed to do giveaways on Facebook?

Yes, Facebook competitions are very common, however, there are a couple of rules you need to consider when running your next Facebook contest.

How do I run a Facebook contest?

Facebook outlines rules for the conduct of promotions in their Facebook Policies (see 3. Promotions on Pages, Groups, and Events:https://www.facebook.com/policies/pages_groups_events/). We highly recommend reviewing these before proceeding with a Facebook competition for your brand.

What are some of the main Facebook rules for competitions?

Facebook competitions are very common and there are a couple rules you need to consider when running your next Facebook campaign.

Facebook outlines rules for the conduct of promotions in their Facebook Policies (see 3. Promotions on Pages, Groups, and Events: https://www.facebook.com/policies/pages_groups_events/). An overview of the main rules are listed below:

• You are responsible for the competition: You are responsible for creation of the competition terms and conditions & compliance of the competition with any rules/regulations
• What the competition terms and conditions must contain?
  • The competition terms and conditions must contain:
    • A complete release of Facebook by each entrant or participant; and
    • Acknowledgement that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed, administered by or associated with Facebook.
• ENTRY MECHANICS:
  • What you CAN ask an entrant to do?
    • comment on a post (with a photo/emoji/response to a question)
    • ‘like’ a post
  • What you CANNOT ask an entrant to do*?
    • Post to their own personal timeline (e.g. entrant posts a photo to their own Facebook wall)
    • ‘like’ the Promoter’s Facebook page (not permitted under the Facebook Platform Policy (https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2014/08/07/Graph-API-v2.1/), which states: You must not incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. This includes offering rewards)
    • ‘Share’ a post to their own Facebook page
    • ‘Share’ a post to their friend’s Facebook page
    • ‘tag’ a friend in a post for entry (alternatively you can ask an entrant to simply mention a friend in the comments, rather than explicitly asking them to ‘’tag’’ and this would be compliant)

*We note these mechanics are still very common on Facebook. Facebook does not strictly enforce their own rules, and it would be relatively low risk to proceed with any of the entry mechanic options which are not technically allowed by Facebook.

Please be aware the risks of proceeding with any non-allowed mechanic are:

1. complaints from entrants/public for not complying with the Facebook rules (creates additional admin burden to deal with such a complaint and PR issues if complaint published publicly); and
2. Facebook could potentially disable your Facebook page and you may lose all likes.

The risk of the 2nd mentioned risk is extremely low and we have not seen this happen in the past.