Creating successful social media competitions – part 2

“My Instagram competition was simply deleted from the platform.”

“After posting my Facebook competition, I was instantly blocked from the platform.”

Make sure these statements never to apply to you by reading this post.

In my previous blog post, I explained the benefits of social media competitions and how to create a successful competition. In this second part, I will deal with other success factors, such as compliance with guidelines and the prize draw process.

Guidelines

If you want to run a competition on a social network, you have to comply with the advertising guidelines that can be found on each platform:

• Instagram Promotion Guidelines
• Facebook Terms and Policies
• YouTube’s contest policies and guidelines

Please note that laws and regulations may change, and it’s always wise to seek legal advice to ensure that all legal requirements are met.

Here are some important points:

1. Terms and conditions of use: make sure that you comply with Instagram’s or Facebook’s terms and conditions if you run a competition on these platforms. If you breach these terms, your competition may end up being removed, and you may even be blocked.
2. Clear rules: create clear rules for your competition and communicate them clearly to the participants. You will need to define the type of competition, the participation conditions, the prize, the date for announcing the winner and the selection criteria.
3. Participation conditions: make sure that the participation conditions are legally sound and do not violate any laws or regulations. This includes ensuring that the competition doesn’t violate applicable legislation, such as data protection laws.
4. Transparency: be transparent about the purpose of the competition and the type of data collected. Make sure participants understand what data is being collected and how it is used.
5. Copyright: do not infringe copyright by using content that is not yours. Ensure that all images and content used in the competition are licensed or free from copyright infringement.
6. Advertising claims: make sure that all advertising claims are true and correct and that you don’t make false promises to entice participants.

Draw announcement/live draw

The draw date for the competition must be announced in advance so that participants know how long they have to take part. To interact with participants during the draw, I recommend organizing it via livestream.

That way, questions can be put directly to the participants, who can then answer them as comments.

If need be, you can also publish a separate post afterwards to announce the winner.

Prize draw

There are various ways to select the winner.

Here are just some of the countless platforms available:

• wheelofnames.com
• miniwebtool.com/random-name-picker
• tools.superanton.de/gewinnspiel-ausloser.html

Selecting a winner with Excel and Google’s random generator:

Google’s random generator

➡️ First, create an Excel file, then enter consecutive numbers in the first column and the participant names or account names in the second column. That way, the first and last number of the column can be entered into the random generator.

For all types of competition, I recommend that you don’t use the participants’ real names; instead, you could use their first name, an abbreviation or their account name. This ensures that you don’t infringe any data protection regulations.

You now know what’s allowed and where to find information, but do you still need tips on how to create a social media competition in the first place?

If so, please read the first part of this two-part post.