New Update: Boost Social Proof with Reviews & Automation
Introducing RafflePress's new leave-a-review giveaway actions. Boost customer engagement and build trust effortlessly by incentivizing reviews in WordPress.
New Update: Boost Social Proof with Reviews & Automation
Stacey Corrin
Stacey Corrin
John Turner
John Turner
Want to know what the Facebook giveaway rules are?
Running a Facebook contest can help you connect with your audience. But it’s important to follow Facebook’s rules to avoid problems.
In this guide, I’ll explain the main Facebook giveaway rules and common mistakes to avoid. You’ll learn how to run a successful contest while staying within Facebook’s guidelines.
Before I start, let’s clear something up.
In short, yes! Contests are allowed on Facebook.
According to Meta, only Pages, Groups, and Events can run a giveaway, competition, contest, or sweepstakes. However, they ask that you follow their policies when administering promotions.
Meta has several policies for running promotions on Pages, Groups, and Events. I’ve outlined the most important ones below to make them easier for you to understand.
Remember: I’m not a lawyer, so always check with local authorities before running a contest. Competition rules can vary by country.
When you run a contest on Facebook, you need to make sure it follows Facebook’s guidelines on administering contests. This means you must clearly explain:
Remember to say that no purchase is necessary and that buying something won’t help anyone win.
To make these rules easy to find, add them to a separate landing page for your contest. You can then link to this page directly from your Facebook giveaway post.
An even easier solution is to run your Facebook contest with RafflePress, the best WordPress giveaway plugin.
RafflePress comes with a built-in giveaway rules generator. This giveaway rules template allows you to create a detailed set of contest rules and promotion guidelines by entering some essential information.
You can then show the official rules right inside the RafflePress giveaway widget.
In addition to the rules above, Facebook requires that you clearly state that your promotion isn’t affiliated with Meta in any way. This includes clarifying that “the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed, administered by, or associated with Meta.”
There are several ways you can tell participants about this, including:
You can even use all the methods above to ensure your audience is well-informed.
Facebook allows you to run only certain types of contests on the platform. You’re allowed to run:
However, you cannot run contests that require users to pay to enter, for instance, buying a ticket, as this falls under Facebook’s gambling policies.
To quote Facebook:
“Common types of gambling or gaming activities which may require permission [from Meta] include betting, lotteries, raffles, casino, fantasy sports, bingo, poker, skill game tournaments, and sweepstakes.”
Further to the rule above, Facebook prohibits requiring any type of “consideration” to enter your contest. This doesn’t just refer to monetary payments but includes any exchange of value.
This can mean personal information like an email address or phone number can be a ‘consideration.’ Therefore, ensure your contest doesn’t fall under this broader category, which might conflict with Facebook’s policies and certain legal requirements.
Also, it’s important to know the rules and laws about contests where you’re holding yours.
Different places have different rules about what counts as a fair contest, especially when it comes to what participants need to do to enter. So, make sure your contest fits with the laws in your audience’s location.
Facebook provides some flexibility when choosing a winner for your giveaway. Here are a few methods you can use that comply with their guidelines:
Important Note: Always clearly outline your winner selection method in your contest’s terms and conditions for transparency.
Announcing Winners: When selecting your winners, it’s important to announce them publicly. Post on your Facebook page and follow up with a direct message or email to the winners. This ensures transparency and lets all participants know the giveaway was fair.
Additionally, thank all participants and consider offering a small consolation prize or discount to keep them engaged with your brand.
Related: 11 Must-Have Facebook Marketing Tools
Clarifying what actions participants can and cannot take in your Facebook giveaway is essential to ensuring compliance with Facebook’s rules and maintaining the integrity of your contest.
Facebook has specific guidelines for actions that are not allowed in promotions. For example, you cannot require participants to share posts on their timeline, share posts on a friend’s timeline, or tag friends to enter the giveaway.
These actions are considered violations of Facebook’s policies and can lead to your contest being flagged or removed.
Instead, focus on actions that are permitted and align with Facebook’s guidelines.
These can include:
These actions comply with Facebook’s rules and help engage participants in meaningful ways. By offering various allowed actions, you can still drive significant engagement and entries for your giveaway without risking penalties from Facebook.
You can even use a 3rd party giveaway app like RafflePress to run a Facebook contest. The giveaway actions comply with Facebook’s rules and policies by not requiring users to carry out Facebook tasks.
For instance, with RafflePress, you can ask users to enter by:
The choice of liking your page or post is left entirely in the user’s hands.
Given Facebook’s complexity, mistakes are easy to make. If you’re in this situation, it’s a good idea to fix it before running your competition.
According to the Facebook contest rules, promotions, and contests can only be run from a Facebook Page, App, or Event. You can’t run a contest from your personal profile, nor can you run one directly within a Facebook Group.
You can go here to create a Facebook Business page.
User-generated content (UGC) is an excellent way to generate interest in your contest and raise brand awareness. However, when collecting UGC, you need to ensure you have permission from the owners to use it.
Facebook’s data collection policy stipulates you should “obtain user consent for your use of the content.” In other words, make sure you get permission to use it first.
Alongside getting consent for using user-generated content (UGC), consider publicity rights. This means contestants must grant permission for you to use their content in future marketing activities as well as the current contest.
This is important because it respects people’s personal rights over their images and stories. A simple way to do this is by including a clause in your contest terms where entrants agree you can use their content for promotional purposes.
For instance, you could write:
“All entries and any copyright subsisting in the entries become and remain the property of the promoter, who may publish or cause to be published any of the entries received.”
With RafflePress, you can easily add a consent checkbox to your giveaway. Enable the GDPR consent checkbox setting and paste your terms and conditions.
As a result, when anyone clicks “agree” when entering your contest, they grant you their permission.
This step helps ensure you protect everyone’s rights. Then, you can use these entries to showcase your contest’s success and engage your audience in the future.
The last of these Facebook giveaway rules is that Facebook will not administer your contest or assist. In addition, any Page running a promotion on Facebook does so at its own risk.
If you break any Facebook giveaway rules or any local laws for running contests, you cannot hold Facebook liable.
For example, in RafflePress, there are bonus giveaway actions that ask users to ‘like your page’ and ‘share on Facebook. ‘ Since these actions go against Facebook’s policies, I recommend using them at your own risk.
If you use them, RafflePress and Facebook are not responsible. The choice is yours.
While Facebook, Instagram, and Facebook Groups are all under the Meta umbrella, they have unique rules and best practices when it comes to running giveaways:
Facebook Pages are best suited for hosting formal giveaways that reach large audiences. Because Pages are subject to comprehensive rules and disclosure requirements, it’s crucial to structure your promotions carefully.
Focus on actions that encourage meaningful engagement without violating Facebook’s strict policies. For example, you can encourage participants to visit web pages, follow your brand’s other social media accounts, or sign up for your email newsletter.
Avoid directly requiring users to like your Page, share the giveaway on their personal timelines, or tag their friends, as these actions are explicitly prohibited.
Facebook Groups are excellent for fostering community engagement and hosting smaller, targeted giveaways. However, keep in mind that you cannot directly run a giveaway within the Group interface itself. Facebook designed groups for community interaction, not formal promotions.
Instead, use your Group to generate buzz and excitement for your giveaway. Link to a dedicated giveaway page hosted on your website, where you can collect entries and clearly display the rules.
Instagram excels in visually engaging giveaways and influencer marketing campaigns. The platform tends to be more lenient about giveaway mechanics, though it’s still crucial to prioritize transparency.
While still subject to Meta’s overall guidelines, Instagram is generally more flexible with “like to enter” and “tag a friend” mechanics. However, you must always clearly state the giveaway rules and include a disclaimer that Instagram is not affiliated with the promotion.
Given Instagram’s visual nature, giveaways involving high-quality photos and videos tend to perform best. Leverage comment-based entry methods, as they align well with the platform’s design and user behavior.
After looking at the rules for running a giveaway on Facebook above, you might have a few questions. I’ll do my best to answer your most pressing Facebook competition rules questions below.
As stated in the Facebook giveaway rules, you shouldn’t encourage people to tag friends to enter your contest.
An excellent alternative to tagging is to use RafflePress’s refer-a-friend giveaway action. It asks users to share your contest on the social network of their choice, including:
This is a great way to spread the word about your giveaway contest because it awards users with bonus entries. As a result, the more people share your contest, the more people will enter by sharing it.
Facebook claims that you can’t incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. Therefore, running a contest asking people to like your page to enter is also against the rules.
Instead, you can ask them to visit your page. If they like what they see, anyone who visits will like your page.
Even though there are several things you can’t require users to do to enter your contest, all is not lost! Here are plenty of things users can do to enter for a chance to win your contest:
The best part is that you can enable all of the above giveaway actions with RafflePress. You can offer participants multiple ways to enter right from your WordPress website.
If you’re a WordPress website owner, the easiest way to run a Facebook contest is with RafflePress.
Its WordPress giveaway plugin has everything you need to make your contest viral. With many premade giveaway templates and an easy drag-and-drop builder, you can spin up contests in just a few minutes.
Publishing your giveaway is easy; use our WordPress giveaway block to embed our contest widget in any post or page. Or, you can create a standalone giveaway landing page to remove distractions and boost entries.
Here’s an example I spun up quickly on my test website:
In addition, you can use the built-in winner picker to generate winners randomly and see which actions drove the most entries with our Giveaway Entry Report.
Follow this step-by-step guide to learn how to run a Facebook Contest.
I hope this guide helped you learn more about Facebook rules for giveaways and contests.
You might also find the following guides helpful in running your giveaway campaign:
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Please can I ask my audience as a contest rule to make an order of a book for example, and leave a review?
Hi Joy. Providing you don’t make it mandatory for people to buy your book and leave a review, it should be okay. However, if users MUST buy your book to enter the giveaway, it depends on your local rules and regulations. We suggest checking with your local authority to learn what is and isn’t allowed.
Can I create a promotional ad on facebook that asks applicants to visit my facebook page AND comment on a post?
Otherwise, how would you track who actually visited the site?
Hi Jessica. Providing you don’t make it mandatory to leave a comment, we think you should be okay doing that. You can always check with Facebook support beforehand to see if they allow that.
If you want to track who visited your website, we recommend using analytics tracking. That should give you a more accurate idea of who clicks your giveaway and visits your site. Here’s a beginner’s guide to installing google analytics.
This is from the facebook meta website about commenting for competitions:
“For example, businesses can now:
Collect entries by having users post on the Page or comment/like a Page post”
So yes they you can ask them to comment on the page or a post.
Can I boost or run a dark ad for a contest?
Hi Jean. It’s best to check with Facebook’s guidelines or contact them directly to confirm this.
Hello, I have a question:
Is there any way to post about the contest publicly, but also publish the contest files privately? In essence, what I mean is a person wants to enter and visits my page. The person clicks to enter the contest and they get the “sorry, this page is only available to people who ‘like’ this page.”
I know that’s an extremely technical way of going about it, but it does seem like that’s a legitimate optimistic attempt.
Hi Ken, that’s a great question.
While RafflePress doesn’t have this functionality, you can probably do something similar with a content locking plugin. Here is a roundup of the best content locking plugins for WordPress.
So if a 501(c)(3) nonprofit is allowed, under its own state rules, to have a raffle, can it be mentioned on Facebook, with those interested directed to the nonprofit’s website for details? (I see groups doing this, just odn’t know if it’s “legal” with Facebook or not?)
Hi Judith. This is something you’d have to check in with Facebook about. Since we’re not legal experts, we’d hate to give you any misleading information.
Am I able to say “Follow us on TikTok” or do I have to instead put “Visit our TikTok page”?
I’d check with the Facebook and TikTok terms of service to be 100% sure Michael.
Can we have people who spend $25 at our shop be entered to win a contest? The prize is worth $75. Every $25 spent is an entry to win.
Hi Jennifer. RafflePress doesn’t offer this specific functionality. This guide on no purchase necessary giveaways may offer more insight for you.
Can I give away a monetary/cash prize running a facebook sweepstakes? Are there any known limitations to this?
Under their terms it says the following, which is not completely clear. Is money considered a physical good”?
“You are not permitted to give away physical goods in connection with any promotion. You can offer virtual gifts, for example, to celebrate special occasions, such as reaching a follower milestone.”
Thanks!
Hi Tim, I believe these specific guidelines relate to earning money with your content. Please see these guidelines under ‘Promotions’ for general advice on running contests.