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
Do you want to run a like and share contest on Facebook?
Like and share contests encourage fans to like your Facebook post and share it with their friends. This gives them entries into a prize draw. It’s a quick and simple way to grow your page, increase brand awareness, and engage your audience.
However, Facebook has strict rules for like and share contests. It’s important to follow these rules to avoid having your content removed. I’ve learned this the hard way, so I’ll make sure you don’t make the same mistakes.
With that in mind, I’ll show you the steps for running a Facebook contest that respects the rules and helps your business grow.
Before creating your contest, determine why you want to run one. Setting goals helps you measure your results and see if your contest was successful.
So, think about what you want to achieve with a Facebook contest.
For example, your goals could be to:
Your contest goal should match your business’s marketing objectives. This will make running a successful like-and-share contest on Facebook easier.
For inspiration, you can see these Facebook contest ideas.
Now that you know your contest goals, it’s time to choose a prize to encourage your fans to enter. If you don’t offer a desirable prize, people won’t try to participate. This will result in a Facebook giveaway with poor results.
For example, imagine you’re a travel brand offering a $20 Amazon gift card as a prize. It might attract some interest from people wanting a freebie. But when the contest ends, you probably won’t hear from them again.
Related: What Happened to Amazon Giveaways? (+ How to Still Run Them)
On the other hand, if you offer a free vacation or a big discount on their next holiday, you’ll see many entries and engagement.
That’s because you’re offering something your audience wants. It speaks to their needs and desires while being relevant to your brand. A prize like this will ensure the engagement continues long after your contest ends.
For even more contest prize ideas, take a look at this guide.
With your goals and prize in place, focus on the rules for your contest. The rules tell people everything they need to know to enter for a chance to win.
Since you’re running a follow, like, and share contest, the rules should explain how to like your page and share the giveaway.
Remember, Facebook doesn’t allow you to require users to share your contest on their personal or friends’ timelines. Also, asking users to like your page is another gray area, so it’s best to avoid it. We’ll cover your contest entry methods in more detail in the next step.
You check out the main Facebook giveaway rules here.
Other details you should add to your contest rules include:
After planning your goals, choosing a prize, and writing your rules, it’s time to start building your Facebook giveaway or contest.
The easiest way to create a Facebook contest is with contest tool like RafflePress, the best WordPress giveaway plugin.
RafflePress makes it simple to run any type of online contest, including one for Facebook. It has everything you need to meet your giveaway goals, whether it’s growing your Facebook page, increasing website traffic, or expanding your email list.
Here’s a step-by-step guide for running a successful Facebook contest with RafflePress.
First, click here to get started with RafflePress. Then, once you’ve downloaded the plugin, follow these instructions to install and activate a WordPress plugin.
After installing RafflePress, go to your WordPress dashboard. Hover your mouse over the RafflePress icon and click “Add New” to create a new giveaway.
After clicking Add New, you’ll see a page where you can name your contest and choose a giveaway template.
RafflePress offers a selection of pre-made giveaway templates to help you get started quickly. Clicking one will launch a contest with entry methods that align with your contest goals.
For example, if you want more newsletter subscribers, you can choose the “Grow Your Email List” template. This will automatically add the “Join a Newsletter” giveaway action.
For this tutorial, I’ll use the “Grow Your Facebook Page” template. This will automatically add the entry options “Visit us on Facebook” and “Visit Facebook Post / Video” to the widget.
So, hover over the “Grow Your Facebook Page” template and click “Use This Template.”
After selecting your template, you’ll see the RafflePress giveaway builder, where you can enter the details for your prize.
Click the pencil icon under the “Giveaway Prize Details” heading. Enter a heading and description for your prize. Then, click the “Select Image” button to add an image of the prize.
When you are satisfied with your prize details, click the “Done Editing” button.
Next, go to the “Start and End Time” section to choose a start and end date and time. You can also select a specific time zone for your contest.
Click the Save button to preserve your changes.
The next step is to click the “Actions” tab. This will take you to a screen with several actions people can take to enter your contest.
The entry methods are grouped by goals, such as:
You can use multiple actions to offer bonus entries to participants.
To run a like and share contest on Facebook, start with the “Visit us on Facebook” action for 1 contest entry. Then, use the “View Facebook Post / Video” action for a 2nd contest entry. To encourage viral sharing of your contest, use the “Refer a Friend” action for a 3rd contest entry.
If you like, you can add more actions to your contest widget. Simply click the action to add it to the builder automatically.
Here, you can change several settings. These settings include how many entries the action is worth, if it’s mandatory, a field for your Facebook URL, and whether users can perform the action daily.
Once you’ve changed the settings for each action, click the Save button.
Next, design the look of your contest by clicking the “Design” tab. Here, you can choose from two different layout settings and select various fonts and button colors.
If you are creating a standalone landing page for your giveaway, you can select a background color or upload a background image.
When you’re happy with how everything looks, click Save and move on to the next step.
Now, click the “Settings” tab to see options for your Giveaway Rules, General Settings, Email Verification, Success Tracking, and more.
The most important setting is the Giveaway Rules. With RafflePress’s Giveaway Rules Generator, you can easily create your contest rules.
Click “Generate Rules” to fill in the details for your contest rules. Then, simply click “Generate Rules” to add your contest requirements to the giveaway builder.
You can check out our documentation for details on all the RafflePress settings.
Remember to click Save when you’ve adjusted your settings.
Now it’s time to publish your contest. RafflePress makes this easy by offering three different ways to publish your giveaway:
The landing page option is the easiest and most effective way to publish your giveaway. It creates a standalone page on your website just for your contest. Because there are no distractions on the page, there’s nothing to prevent participants from entering right away.
So, go ahead and choose the “Giveaway Landing Page” option.
From there, click the ‘Click here’ link to navigate to the Page Permalink, settings as shown below:
Then, enter a short slug. For example, if we were to run a contest on RafflePress and chose the slug “facebook-contest,” our landing page would have the URL: rafflepress.com/facebook-contest.
Afterward, you can click the “View” button to see what your giveaway landing page looks like.
With your landing page set up, you need to post your contest on Facebook. This step is super easy. Simply create a new Facebook post and paste the URL for your giveaway landing page, along with instructions for people to click the link to enter.
Make sure to include an enticing description and image in your Facebook post to grab people’s attention. It’s also a good idea to include a summary of your Facebook promotion guidelines and a disclosure that the contest isn’t sponsored by or affiliated with Facebook.
This post from Brain Health Magazine is an excellent example of how to share all contest details in a way that generates excitement.
After launching your contest, you can’t just sit and wait for people to enter. You need to start promoting your giveaway from day one to spread the word and increase participation.
One of the easiest ways to promote your contest is to share it on social media channels like Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. Ask people to tag a friend in the comments. You can also include relevant giveaway hashtags to boost your posts’ visibility.
Other ways you can promote your contest include:
Running Facebook Ads for your contest can increase engagement. Paid advertisements offer an effective way to reach a wider, more targeted audience beyond your typical followers.
Here’s how you can go about it:
You can also check out these proven contest promotion ideas for more inspiration.
When your contest is over, you’ll need to choose a winner. This is usually difficult with normal like and share Facebook contests because you’d have to look up each entry manually.
This isn’t a problem when using RafflePress. Since everyone entered your contest through the giveaway widget, each participant is stored in the contest management dashboard, making them easy to find.
Picking a winner is even easier. Simply use the built-in random winner picker to randomly select the winner of your contest.
First, go to RafflePress » Giveaways and click the Needs Winners link.
From there, you’ll see a list of everyone who entered and how many entries they each have. To choose a winner randomly, click the “Pick Winner” button, enter your settings, and then click “Choose Winners Now.”
The winner is highlighted instantly at the top of the list of participants. Then, simply click to email them with the good news.
When your Facebook contest is over, it’s a good idea to announce the winner to everyone who participated. Then, thank everyone for entering and invite them to join your next giveaway.
You can follow up with participants by creating an announcement post on social media and tagging the winner. Alternatively, you can email participants to express your thanks and offer them a discount code or coupon.
Taking this step after your giveaway helps you strengthen your relationship with your new audience, which is an excellent way to turn them into paying customers.
There’s 1 more thing you should do before claiming that your contest was a success. And that is to look at the data and analyze your results.
The easiest way to get the data you need for your giveaway is to use MonsterInsights, the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.
MonsterInsights makes it easy to see how many people visited your contest page, where they came from, and what they did on your website. You can view all the data inside your WordPress dashboard, so you won’t have to leave your site to get the information you need.
By looking at the data in MonsterInsights, you can see which promotion strategies drove the most traffic to your giveaway landing page and where it came from. You can then use that information to improve and make your next contest even more successful.
We hope this article helped you learn how to do a like and share contest on Facebook.
With RafflePress, creating a contest is a breeze, and you won’t have to worry about not complying with the Facebook promotion guidelines. Instead, you have a successful like-and-share contest that drives many likes, engagement, and traffic to grow your business.
You might also find the following giveaway guides helpful:
Thanks for reading, and if you liked this article, don’t forget to follow us on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook for more great tips to grow your business.
Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. We only recommend products that we believe will add value to our readers.
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How do I run a giveaway, but choose the winner live and randomly generated for everyone to see? as our business model requires full transparency with our customers – we run a raffle site where user’s are assigned randomly generated ticket numbers.
Hi Zak,
If you’d like to randomly draw a winner for everyone to see, you can record your screen when you run RafflePress’s random winner picker. The winner is chosen randomly from all entries in a transparent and fair way. You can learn more about how it works here.
I have used the rafflepress plugin but it keeps loading when I add the giveaway on the page…can anyone let me know the exact issue?
Thanks for your comment. It would be best if you send a support ticket to us here, that way we can pin down exactly what’s going wrong.
So this isn’t really a “Like and Share” contest is it? More of a “visit us/view post” contest, otherwise we run the risk of getting our page banned? Is this correct?
Hi Conner. Yes, that’s correct. We include the like and share actions in RafflePress so you can decide for yourself if it’s worth the risk.
is it free or paid?
Hi Rafael. RafflePress has both a free and paid version. You can find the free version here.