Facebook Promotion Guidelines & Rules Template: A Step-by-Step Guide

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Facebook promotions are a simple but effective strategy to increase engagement, Facebook Likes, subscribers and sales. But the guidelines and rules of Facebook promotions can be a bit hard to understand – especially with Facebook making changes so often.

In today’s article, I’ll walk you through everything you need to create Facebook Promotion Guidelines and Rules:

  • Facebook’s Promotions Guidelines (explained)
  • Best practices for Facebook Promotions guidelines and rules
  • Fill-in-the-blank Facebook Promotions Guidelines template

Please note: The following is just an overview of some of the rules and guidelines for Facebook promotions. This is not legal advice. Please obtain legal guidance from an experienced attorney before publishing your Facebook promotion rules and guidelines.

Let’s get rolling!

Best Practices for Facebook Promotions Rules & Guidelines


Let’s begin with a quick overview of the most common things we get asked about running Facebook Promotions:

Where you can run a Facebook Promotion:

You can host a promotion on your Facebook Page’s Timeline (basically in a Facebook Post) or in a Tab on a Facebook Page (using an app like Wishpond’s Facebook Promotion Apps. You can’t host a promotion on a person’s Profile Timeline.

What Facebook Promotions Need to Have:

  • Your Facebook Promotions Rules & Guidelines (or a link to it on another website)
  • Who is eligible to enter your promotion (based on age, location, etc.)
  • Acknowledgement that the promotion is not sponsored by, run by or associated with Facebook (the company)

Acceptable Entry Methods:

You can ask entrants to do any of the following actions to enter your Facebook Promotion:

  • Like a Facebook Post
  • Comment on a Facebook Post
  • Post on a Facebook Page
  • Message a Facebook Page
  • Submit personal information (like email) in an entry form
  • Submit photo, video or text content
  • Vote in a competition

Unacceptable Entry Methods:
You aren’t allowed to ask entrants to do any of the following actions to enter a Facebook Promotion:

  • Share a Facebook Page
  • Tag themselves (or friends) in a photo that they aren’t in
  • Post on their own Profile Timeline
  • Share on a friend’s Profile Timeline

Facebook Page Like-Gating:


One thing people ask us about often is like-gating: Requiring a person to Like your Facebook Page to enter a Facebook Promotion.

You used to be able to do this using a Facebook Contest App like Wishpond, but Facebook no longer tells us who has Liked a Facebook Page, so we can’t use it as a required entry method for a Facebook promotion.

But there are two new ways to get people to Like your Facebook Page with a Facebook Promotion though:

1. Like a Facebook Page for Bonus Entries:

After a person enters a promotion, you can ask them to Like your Facebook Page (or multiple Pages) to get more chances to win. Facebook’s Promotion Guidelines doesn’t let you do this as the primary promotion entry method, but you can use it to let people get extra chances to win after they enter using an entry form.

Here’s an example of a Like a Facebook Page for Bonus Entries entry method. This appears in a popup that is shown after a person enters using the promotion’s entry form:

facebook promotion guidelines

2. ‘Like-Gate’ Overlay:

The Like-Gate Overlay appears over top of the Promotion page when a person first visits it. The overlay asks people to Like a Facebook Page. But this is only optional as you can’t force people to like your Facebook Page to enter your Promotion anymore.

As you can see in this example, there’s an option on the ‘Like-Gate’ overlay to bypass it by clicking ‘No, thank you’. Clicking this closes the overlay and gives the visitor access to the promotion page.

facebook promotion guidelines

Even though it’s optional, the Like-Gate Overlay still does a great job of getting people to Like your Facebook Page, as it’s the most prominent action to take on the page.

You can run a Facebook promotion with an Optional Like Overlay like this using Wishpond’s Facebook Promotion Apps.

How to Contact Facebook Promotion Winners (legally):


Facebook used to be very strict about how you could contact winners of your Facebook Promotion. Initially they didn’t want you using thing like Facebook posts and messages, as they thought it would lead to spamming, but they’ve since lifted those restrictions.

Here are a few ways you can contact your Facebook promotion winners (legally):

  • Email (recommended)
  • Facebook message
  • Tweet
  • Comment on a Post on your Page’s Timeline
  • Facebook message
  • Facebook Post on your Page’s Timeline.

We recommend email as it’s the most reliable way we’ve found to reach the winner.

Click here to check out more ways to announce promotion winners.

Facebook Page Terms for Promotions (Explained)


Facebook has strict regulations for running any kind of promotion, giveaway or contest on their platform. As of now, Facebook doesn’t allow you to run a promotion on a personal Profile, so you need to do it on a Facebook Page’s Timeline or Tab.

If you want to change a personal Profile to a Facebook Page you can do it here: [https://www.facebook.com/pages/create/migrat]e](https://www.facebook.com/pages/create/migrate). This let’s you to maintain all of your friends as Page Likes and keep your profile and cover photos. But it won’t copy your posts to the new Facebook Page.

Here are Facebook’s Page Promotion Guidelines (Date of Last Revision: December 27, 2016) as quoted directly from their Facebook Page Terms:

facebook promotion guidelines

*What These Guidelines Means and How to Comply with them *

Here’s what these guidelines mean for your Facebook Promotion:

  • You and your promotion entrants can’t sue Facebook or hold them liable if anything goes wrong with your promotion – even if this is caused by issues or changes on the Facebook platform itself. It also means that an entrant can’t hold Facebook accountable if they enter a fraudulently run promotion.
  • Your Facebook promotion rules must be directly accessible from the Promotion page. Generally Facebook promotion rules are quite long, so you’ll want to have a link on the promotion page to them instead of having them on the promotion page.
  • In your Facebook promotion rules, you must specify who is eligible to participate your promotion, based on qualities like age, location, etc.
  • You must follow all promotion and/or lottery regulations in your country/state/province/region. Remember, just because you’re on the internet doesn’t mean you’re outside of your government’s jurisdiction
  • You need to acknowledge, directly on the promotion page, that the promotions is in no way sponsored by or associated with Facebook (meaning Facebook the company). Facebook promotion apps, like Wishpond’s, include this by default on the Facebook promotion template, like this:

    facebook promotion guidelines

  • You must run your promotion on a Facebook Page Tab or timeline (in a post). It can’t be hosted on a personal Profile
  • You can’t use the following actions as entry methods in your promotion:
    • Share on the entrant’s own Profile timeline
    • Share on a friend’s Profile timeline
    • Have the entrant tag themself (or a friend) in a photo that they’re not in
  • Facebook won’t help you with your promotion. Even if they make a change that breaks your promotion they won’t help you.

There are also a few Facebook Page Guidelines (outside of the Promotions section) that pertain to running Facebook promotions. Here’s a breakdown of the one’s you need to comply with:

Collection of Data:

facebook promotion guidelines

What this means and how to comply:

If you ask people to enter their personal information, such as their name and email, or any content like images or videos, you have to make it clear that you are collecting it, and not Facebook. To comply with this guidelines, you just need to use your own branding, name and imagery on the promotion page, and not say that Facebook is in any way a part of it.

Unless you’re trying to scam people by pretending you’re Facebook, then this isn’t something to worry about.

Also, if you ask people to submit any personal information or content you must obtain their permission to re-use it publicly in the future. This applies if, for example, you want to publish a Facebook Page cover photo with pictures of people who entered your promotion.

The best way to get their permission is to add an opt-in checkbox in your promotion’s entry form, that allows entrants to choose to give you this permission.

Tagging:

facebook promotion guidelines

Tagging Explained:

Basically, this means you can’t ask entrants to tag themselves or their friends in one of your Facebook photos (that they aren’t in) as an entry method for the promotion. This restriction is meant to stop unsavoury folks spamming people’s Newsfeed’s with photo of their products by getting their friends to tag themselves in it.

Facebook Promotion Guidelines Template


Here’s a simple fill-in-the-blank Facebook Promotion guidelines template to help you create your own. Please keep in mind that it’s just a guide and you need to have an actual attorney create any Facebook promotions guidelines to be safe.

We looked at a number of past Facebook Promotions run by both large and small companies to create a simple Facebook Promotion Guidelines template for you. This template doesn’t cover any regional governmental laws.

Facebook Promotion Guidelines Template:

Wrapping it Up


If you have any questions about Facebook promotion guidelines, don’t hesitate to reach out in the comment section below!

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