Facebook for Business - marketing during a pandemic

Over the last couple of months, there has been an increase in the number of Facebook competitions and raffles taking place. I get it, businesses want to find ways and means of keeping their business interesting, increase engagement and stay in front of customers/potential customers. 

A few things of interest to note so that it doesn’t all go to waste: 

1. Technically, raffles are classed as gambling and actually illegal. Bear that one in mind.

Here's an interesting article from back in 2017 about raffle scams. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41124992.

Most businesses running these on Facebook obviously aren't trying to scam anyone, they're trying to raise a bit of money when they'd lost their earnings for two months, but it's a risky game to play as you could end up losing your business page.

2. As part of any competition, you cannot ask (a) for someone to SHARE your post or (b) to specifically ask them to TAG INDIVIDUALS. You can ask people to comment below, it just can’t be to tag people. 

These are facebook’s guidelines and actually, not necessarily relevant to increasing engagement or the potential for people to see the post. Someone commenting the word YES on a post has just as much chance of the post appearing on their friend's timelines etc. 

Now across different platforms, there are different rules, so it is worth considering that when you're posting any form of competition, like for example specific disclaimers that must be included etc.

Always do a bit of background. What you don't want happening is to see your competition or another business flaunting the rules, follow in their footsteps and then have your page reported. The internet is full of people who are willing to throw others to the wolves and Facebook has a lot of them. Just because another business did it without following the guidelines and didn't have any repercussions doesn't mean it's okay. Is it worth potentially losing your business page for?

3. You’re creating a “fake” community. Having lots of page likes is nice, but it’s not true or authentic. It’s not a community of people who were interested in your product or content, are unlikely to engage when you aren’t offering free stuff and therefore won’t engage in the future. 

Social media algorithms tailor an individuals feed based on what they’re interested in and what they engage in. Remember when we started seeing people on Instagram saying “no one sees my post, go and like my last 10”... yup, they got you.

But what defines the two?

The interested in aspect is a bit of a guess on their part. They've seen what you like, so it will show you content from other pages or pages that you follow that it deems similar content.

The engage with aspect is really how you can influence what you see. Simply put, generally when your best friend posts something you are likely to see it. Why? Because you're liking and commenting on their posts. But, Joe, who you went to school with and haven't seen in 10 years, posts something and you don't see it. Get the picture? It doesn't mean that the hundreds of friends you've accumulated over the years never post, but you're just not being shown that content.

The same goes for your business page. If people are liking and engaging with your content they are more likely to see your posts relatively soon after you've posted them.

Just having someone like your page on Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram doesn’t actually mean they’ll ever see your content, it’s your job with good content to keep them interested and coming back. 

Having loads of page likes is great (for your ego, probably) but in actual fact, what is going to happen is that your posts will perform well for a while but eventually, your analytics are going to be pretty bad. You’ve got all of these people who have the potential to see your posts, but don’t because they weren’t actually interested or your not producing good content to keep them engaged and that creates a huge deficit between:

• the number of people who COULD see your post
• the number of people who ACTUALLY see your post
• the number of people who ENGAGE with your content 

Competitions are a great way to give your business a little boost but if you’re not keeping people engaged and interested then it’s an effort for nothing. Don’t just drop an online competition and expect the world to come to you and be your biggest fan. You need to consider your future content, how are you going to keep people interested? It could be amazing visuals, video content, education or as simple as asking questions. There are hundreds of ways. 

Now you’ve done that Facebook contest it’s time to start being creative and keeping those people interested! ????