3 Reasons your Facebook marketing campaigns might not be affected by the new promotion policies

Last week, Facebook released a new set of policies for brands and small businesses having a fan page for conducting promotions/sweepstakes using the Facebook platform.

In a nutshell, the policies imply that any brands that want to use the platform for conducting contests and sweepstakes will:

- Have to get a written permission from Facebook.

- Need to have a minimum budget of $10,000 to promote the contest on the Facebook platform. (This is the minimum amount that has to be spent on Facebook ads, apart from the money that brands would be spending in using or creating third party applications to run such contests and sweepstakes).

- Can only conduct contests and sweepstakes through third party applications.

Essentially, by implementing these policies, Facebook is discouraging the small businesses from conducting any such contests through the platform. A more detailed analysis of the implications of these new policies can be found on the blogs of Nick O’Neal, Justin Smith, Kristen Parrish , CNETand Mari Smith.

Considering the huge long tail of Fan pages that Facebook clearly chose to ignore, the question arises if as a small business or non profit, promotions are the only way to engage your fans?

Here are the three reasons that might not be the case:

1. Promotions can get participation, but not engagement.

Usually, promotions and sweepstakes are a good way to generate buzz for new products or services . But what is the real value of such fans? What if the fans simply hide your news feeds or leave your fan page altogether after participating in the contest? What if they choose not to share your feeds in their network. Unless the promotion itself is so engaging that the fans are compelled to share the news feeds, it might not serve the desired goal.

2. Promotions might get new fans, but they might not be valuable.

Think of it as having 50,000 followers on Twitter, only 1% of which click on your tweets. Wouldn’t it make more sense to identify those 1% users, engage them better and empower them to spread the word about your brand? So even if you get a huge number of fans either by advertising or by promotions, are they really valuable for your brand? Are they really acting as a word of mouth ambassador for your product or service? In a nutshell, is your brand getting access to these fans’ networks - either on Facebook or on other social neotworks like Twitter, Digg etc.

3. Contests require time, money and optimization to get the best dividends.

Starting a contest is the easier part, but promoting it on Facebook, identifying the influencers who might spread the contest most effectively and optimizing the entire process is something most of the small businesses and non profits simply can not afford.

At Diditz, we have been working hard on creating features which can add value to the Fan pages and the community they bring together as a whole. We are thrilled by all the feedback from you, and are incorporating changes, big and small. We would be releasing the first version of the fan page tab for Diditz very soon. In the meantime, if you want to try the beta version, feel free to fill in the form available here. We will be glad to have you on board!

What has your experience been with contests? Is your fan page’s marketing strategy affected a lot by these new policy changes?

Thank You,

The Diditz Team

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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