There are still Like and Share competitions popping up now and again despite most of them breaking Facebook rules and being totally unfair to those who enter.
Competitions can work but they need to be done correctly, within the rules, and most importantly be done fairly. Sadly most are not.
In my view, any business running a pure Like and Share Competition is running an unfair competition!
Why are they unfair?
- It is against Facebook rules to make somebody Like or Share your post/page
- Facebook Page Admins cannot see everyone who shares a post or likes a page for privacy reasons
So, any competition that asks people to Like and Share in order to enter is (perhaps unwittingly) offering an unfair competition to get more likes.
Why are they a bad idea?
- Likes barely matter anyway
- Facebook is penalising posts asking for likes and shares (18th Dec 2017 – Engagement Bait)
Likes barely matter anyway
The chase for likes is a vain mission. Crossing the line of 100, 1,000 or 10,000 likes is pretty pointless apart from people tasked with achieving naive internal targets. Likes does not equal Reach. Sure it helps but most people who like your page will stop seeing your post and this is about to get much worse with the upcoming changes. Even if more likes gives you some temporary boost in Reach, Reach does not necessarily equal business generated.
When I work with businesses, I have very little interest in how many likes or followers they have. What I want to know is how much business is being generated and which platform it is coming from.
Facebook is penalising posts asking for likes and shares
Quite simply, people don’t like engagement bait – Like and Share etc and so Facebook is ranking sites who do this lower in the newsfeed. See this quote from Henry Silverman, Facebook Operations Integrity Specialist.
“People have told us that they dislike spammy posts on Facebook that goad them into interacting with likes, shares, comments, and other actions….. This tactic, known as “engagement bait,” seeks to take advantage of our News Feed algorithm by boosting engagement in order to get greater reach. So, starting this week, we will begin demoting individual posts from people and Pages that use engagement bait.”
Facebook competitions can work if done correctly
I am not saying that you cannot and should not run competitions through Facebook. I am just saying that they should be within the rules, not be disingenuous and should have a better purpose than simply inflating page likes.
Look at this competition we managed for Brecon Beacons Cottages. We used a third party competition system that ran on Facebook AND on other social media platforms. It added over 3,500 email subscribers. With email subscribers being up to 40 times more likely to convert than people coming direct from social media, you can see how the benefits are much more useful than increasing your likes.
Facebook is changing, businesses need to start looking at a much more comprehensive and dynamic approach to Digital Marketing.
photo credit: briandjan607 Janella catching another lake trout via photopin (license)
