Chances are if you are reading this then you are either running a contest on Facebook or thinking about running one. Sweepstakes, contests and giveaways are all great ways to attract fans to your brand providing that you are doing the appropriate promotion that caters to the audience you are looking to cultivate. Now that Facebook requires you to run your contests through the use of a 3rd party application there are a couple of items that you need to take into consideration. The first item is selecting the technology or application that you will use to run this contest and the second one is the manner in which contest entries are handled.
These days’ countless companies and individuals are developing applications and technology platforms for usage within Facebook. Some platforms and applications offer extremely robust tools for you to easily create a contest and deliver to your fans. You will have to choose the right technology offering that suits the contest you are looking to run. Some applications have the ability to allow fans to upload pictures and even videos so that others can vote and select a winner while other applications are much more simplistic only offering the most basic means of contest entry. Whatever the contest may be you need to take one specific factor into consideration: to have your contests require permissions to be authorized or not.
Depending on the technology provider you may not even have this option.
The biggest problem you will see is the drop off when a fan sees that you are asking to “authorize permissions” in order to enter, they will simply back out and choose not to enter the contest at all if they feel their data is being shared. Authorizing permissions is the screen that tells you they data that they will have access to and asks you to “Allow” or “Deny” this access. If an application is pulling user data through usage of that application then they must disclose the data that they have access to and give you an option to “Allow” or “Deny” this access.
Ever get an email out of the blue and wonder how that particular brand added you to their newsletter since you never signed up for it? There is a good chance that you engaged with that brand on Facebook and authorized permissions through some sort of application that they presented you with. If you clicked “allow” they may now have your details.
In an age where privacy is a priority, people are paying closer attention to what and whom they are allowing access to online. Many users are becoming more educated on prying eyes and denying these types of 3rd party requests. Your contest entry and engagement will suffer from this as many feel that giving you access to that level of data is unnecessary.
By making sure you select a technology provider that does not require fans to authorize permissions to enter your contest you will get a much higher entry rate into your contests. If you want to collect data from your fans then ask them for it, don’t use a clever app to pull in data from those unsuspecting. Nobody likes receiving things such as newsletters they didn’t ask for. Don’t be a data snake.
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