Interesting Article re Facebook Competitions

ScottMcGready

mjm3346 wrote: »

If a company is prepared to break FB policies (not the law) who knows what else they may do but even if it is dodgy the possible downside to an individual is they have wasted maybe 5 seconds liking a page/post while on the upside they could win something worth far more than 5 seconds of their time.

Without looking hard I know 3 companies with billion pound plus turnovers who run "like" competitions, (some sites say about entries not being considered if certain things are disabled in FB privacy settings).

I agree with you regarding if they're willing to break a rule on a website, what else will they be willing to do. Reference your "5 seconds" quote, it's actually a lot more than wasting 5 seconds of your time. Firstly if you are a legitimate business that plays by the rules and pays for ads on Facebook, it can be quite disheartening to see someone break the rules, get away with it, and not get caught for a few months. Meanwhile, they get loads of attention on their page and begin to overtake you on Facebook. This is especially annoying if you're a competitor. By the time Facebook jump in and deal with it - it could be 6 months later and that has indeed impacted your business. Meanwhile the competition entrants have completely forgotten all about the original business.

Also, there's a spam factor to be considered. Sharing something like that is, in my opinion, unwanted spam. Just my opinion mind you.

mjm3346 wrote: »

Accepting they are not meant to ask, the "share" usually has to be public and if it does not show as a share when they look at the "shares" on the actual post they could check that the person chosen has shared by looking at their timeline.

That still doesn't quite work though. You can ask them to share it publicly but there are ways to lock down your profile so that unless you're a friend, or a friend-of-a-friend, you still don't see the public posts of that person. It's semi-complicated to explain but the bottom line is, facebook isn't as transparent as it seems - regardless of your privacy settings.

mjm3346

ScottMcGready wrote: »

I agree with you regarding if they're willing to break a rule on a website, what else will they be willing to do. Reference your "5 seconds" quote, it's actually a lot more than wasting 5 seconds of your time. Firstly if you are a legitimate business that plays by the rules and pays for ads on Facebook, it can be quite disheartening to see someone break the rules, get away with it, and not get caught for a few months. Meanwhile, they get loads of attention on their page and begin to overtake you on Facebook. This is especially annoying if you're a competitor. By the time Facebook jump in and deal with it - it could be 6 months later and that has indeed impacted your business. Meanwhile the competition entrants have completely forgotten all about the original business.

Also, there's a spam factor to be considered. Sharing something like that is, in my opinion, unwanted spam. Just my opinion mind you.



That still doesn't quite work though. You can ask them to share it publicly but there are ways to lock down your profile so that unless you're a friend, or a friend-of-a-friend, you still don't see the public posts of that person. It's semi-complicated to explain but the bottom line is, facebook isn't as transparent as it seems - regardless of your privacy settings.

The 5 seconds is the time spent by the person entering and their effort vs their possible reward.

If a winner is picked who appears not to have shared when it was required it doesn't stop with the company not having checked there are lots of individuals who track these things down especially for any reasonable size prizes.

BlueBella

ScottMcGready wrote: »

You're more than welcome. Happy to help where I can!

While I think competitions like this are totally wrong and would discourage anyone from interacting with them in any way, I like how you're thinking of ways to beat the system! If you want to do this, I'd say just commenting on the post would be enough - again, I cannot see who liked/shared a post on any of my pages - only the comments can be relied on. That said, I have personally seen businesses trawl through "entrants" profiles to see if they're worthy of the prize. Now I'm not saying every business does this, but the ones I've seen specifically go on peoples profiles to see if they're:

1. A full time comper
2. Have loads of friends that will see the share
3. Are likely to interact with future posts

It sounds horrible but it indeed happens quite a lot.

Long story short - my official advice is to stay away completely from competitions like this... however if you absolutely wanted to enter and were looking to cut down on the amount of things you had to do, I'd say just commenting on the status/post/image would be more than plenty.

However, if we compers don't keep sharing comps then at least if they check our profiles, then we will not look like compers but more like 'normal' facebook fans! (compers always have lots and lots and lots of shares in their profiles!)

ScottMcGready

mjm3346 wrote: »

The 5 seconds is the time spent by the person entering and their effort vs their possible reward.

If a winner is picked who appears not to have shared when it was required it doesn't stop with the company not having checked there are lots of individuals who track these things down especially for any reasonable size prizes.

I got what you meant about the 5 seconds for the individual entering. My point was more on the impact of your facebook friends being bombarded with, what I regard as, spam.

BlueBella wrote: »

However, if we compers don't keep sharing comps then at least if they check our profiles, then we will not look like compers but more like 'normal' facebook fans! (compers always have lots and lots and lots of shares in their profiles!)

Yeah, I've seen businesses specifically discount compers based on the fact that they (and I'm quoting here) "have no interest in the brand/product and only want the *insert prize here*".


Reference someone saying that it's only a facebook rule, and not the law they're breaking - actually they are breaking the law. The UK's CAP Code specifically states entrants need to be made aware of any caveats with entry, or if they're being discounted automatically for some reason. If a facebook page can't see everyone that entered (thereby automatically excluding a number of entrants) I believe this violates that rule.

Keep the questions coming folks - happy to discuss, and debate after all, disagreement is healthy for debates .

mjm3346

ScottMcGready wrote: »

I got what you meant about the 5 seconds for the individual entering. My point was more on the impact of your facebook friends being bombarded with, what I regard as, spam.


Yeah, I've seen businesses specifically discount compers based on the fact that they (and I'm quoting here) "have no interest in the brand/product and only want the *insert prize here*".


Reference someone saying that it's only a facebook rule, and not the law they're breaking - actually they are breaking the law. The UK's CAP Code specifically states entrants need to be made aware of any caveats with entry, or if they're being discounted automatically for some reason. If a facebook page can't see everyone that entered (thereby automatically excluding a number of entrants) I believe this violates that rule.

Keep the questions coming folks - happy to discuss, and debate after all, disagreement is healthy for debates .

I think the CAP codes are guidance/rules not law, you can break the CAP code rules without necessarily breaking the law.
In the case of competitions it's nearly always just "don't do it again" for rule breakers never seen a prosecution for breaking CAP codes even in the rare cases something has been referred to trading standards.

I don't do many L&S but my FB is almost solely for competitions/interactions with firms etc so spam doesn't really enter into it and there are various apps that require friends to be invited for extra entries/turns which would probably be more annoying than posts just appearing in a timeline to a non-comper.

glittercutcrease

ScottMcGready wrote: »

If you want to do this, I'd say just commenting on the post would be enough - again, I cannot see who liked/shared a post on any of my pages - only the comments can be relied on.

Long story short - my official advice is to stay away completely from competitions like this... however if you absolutely wanted to enter and were looking to cut down on the amount of things you had to do, I'd say just commenting on the status/post/image would be more than plenty.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but it shows you who's liked and shared on the post? I use it to check I'm not sharing twice

There was uproar recently on a Warren James (?) comp because the woman they'd picked shared the Facebook post after the closing date and other entrants spotted it, so I'd be inclined to still share if it requests to.

ScottMcGready

mjm3346 wrote: »

I think the CAP codes are guidance/rules not law, you can break the CAP code rules without necessarily breaking the law.
In the case of competitions it's nearly always just "don't do it again" for rule breakers never seen a prosecution for breaking CAP codes even in the rare cases something has been referred to trading standards.

I don't do many L&S but my FB is almost solely for competitions/interactions with firms etc so spam doesn't really enter into it and there are various apps that require friends to be invited for extra entries/turns which would probably be more annoying than posts just appearing in a timeline to a non-comper.

Still, I think it's a particularly sucky way to run a competition knowing that not all entrants have an equal chance.

With regard to my spam comment, I have a few friends that enter these competitions every once in a while if the prize is enticing enough. That propagates the original post to my timeline without my consent and by using an underhanded marketing effort to do so - that I feel is wrong (based on the fact I run a few businesses and I always operate above board). Again, might be an unpopular opinion but you can possibly understand from my point of view that it's not exactly fair.

glittercutcrease wrote: »

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but it shows you who's liked and shared on the post? I use it to check I'm not sharing twice

There was uproar recently on a Warren James (?) comp because the woman they'd picked shared the Facebook post after the closing date and other entrants spotted it, so I'd be inclined to still share if it requests to.

When you click on the "467 people have liked/shared this" button, you never see the full number. You'll always see yourself (even if you have high privacy) and you might see other people based on various factors that facebook controls. For example - you might see others in your local town, that are members of the same groups, your friends of friends of friends, etc. Pages only see a cut down version of this.

I added a screenshot of the Scams Scotland page to show people what little I can see as a page admin/owner on the original post but unfortunately I'm not allowed to post links. If someone with a higher rep would like to link to the comment to show what I mean, that would be excellent!

In the image above, it shows ~50 people have shared the post, but only 4 appear when I click the more details. Two of which are other pages that like Scams Scotland, and the other two are people I'm friends with on Facebook personally (hence why I can see their shares). There's no other information appearing for me anywhere on the page (as an admin or as a regular facebook user).

Hope this helps!

glittercutcrease

Food for thought thank you, Scott! I reluctantly enter Facebook comps due to the effort required compared to Twitter and always wonder if I'm wasting my time, especially when not commenting.

diddlydoop

I think the big problem here is that Facebook do not actually police their own rules.Many firms big and small do break Facebook competition rules because although asking people to like is not breaking the rules asking to share or tag is but if they are not being policed then they will keep on doing it. I personally do not bother entering Facebook competitions unless they are run through an app but that is just my own personal choice. I would say to anyone else if you want to enter then do as it takes seconds and if you don't mind filling your wall up with comps then go for it but just forget about them once you have entered. Whether the promoter picks winners for whatever reason could easily apply to non Facebook comps, who are we to know that a Female magazine for instance that runs a web based comp will only pick only females or females of a certain age or a baby site may only pick people of a certain age. We don't know what goes off and can only hope any comp we enter is run fairly. The best thing to do is enter what you want and forget about it.

ScottMcGready

glittercutcrease wrote: »

Food for thought thank you, Scott! I reluctantly enter Facebook comps due to the effort required compared to Twitter and always wonder if I'm wasting my time, especially when not commenting.

You're welcome! I'm not here to stop you having fun, I just believe that everyone should be fully aware of what pages can or can't see.

diddlydoop wrote: »

I think the big problem here is that Facebook do not actually police their own rules.Many firms big and small do break Facebook competition rules because although asking people to like is not breaking the rules asking to share or tag is but if they are not being policed then they will keep on doing it. I personally do not bother entering Facebook competitions unless they are run through an app but that is just my own personal choice. I would say to anyone else if you want to enter then do as it takes seconds and if you don't mind filling your wall up with comps then go for it but just forget about them once you have entered. Whether the promoter picks winners for whatever reason could easily apply to non Facebook comps, who are we to know that a Female magazine for instance that runs a web based comp will only pick only females or females of a certain age or a baby site may only pick people of a certain age. We don't know what goes off and can only hope any comp we enter is run fairly. The best thing to do is enter what you want and forget about it.

You're absolutely correct - Facebook can't police their own rules because it's very difficult to do so. Anyone who's reported posts for containing racial slurs can attest to that as sometimes it depends on the regional context (for example - I'm Scottish and it'd take someone being from Scotland, or used to Scots to understand why a post is racial or abusive. To someone in the States, it could easily look like gobbledegook). Like I've said above, it's really up to yourselves if you wish to enter knowing the full facts - but it shouldn't be up to a third party like myself explaining that businesses can't see every like / share / comment. It should be the businesses themselves (or indeed, doing things properly via a Facebook App).