Update: There is a small storm around an old CNet article which claims that each match advance to be approved by Facebook. Unfortunately it is also an outdated article. Meanwhile, the Promotion Guidelines amended on Facebook and say explicitly that you do not even need to ask for permission to organize a contest. The real reason for our Belgian parties to lose their page is below.

Humo Studio Brussels and there were already a time with that. Instantly both lost tens of thousands of fans because Belgian brands Facebook decided unilaterally to their Facebook pages offline. Although the underlying reason was not immediately clear, soon buzzing rumors of violations of the usage policy.

In the case of Humo it soon became clear that the cause was a Facebook contest. A competition that also without any form of drama called “Sphere it off” had been given. It lost Humo first publication rights to her Facebook page after 48 hours even after the entire page was deleted. Humo said about himself:

Following the great success of the operation Sphere It Now! Is Humo the copyrights on this page lost. Thursday we received a letter from Facebook where they pointed to us that this action is not fully consistent with their rules. Humo got 48 hours time to the game on Facebook to remove …

Humo had clearly violated the rules of Facebook. But what are these rules anyway? And may you have a contest on Facebook to organize?

Actually it is simple: all matches must be at least partly through a 3rd party application running. Facebook wants to make clear to the participants that it was not a single hand in the contest and therefore no way responsible for the outcome of the action. Facebook also helps to not be overpowered by a number of savvy online marketers.

So what should certainly not?

- A game where all the ‘likers “or comments of a post, photo or page automatically entered.
- A contest in which people need to upload photos or tag on your Facebook page.
- A contest in which participation is by a post, photo or page ‘sharing’ or another status update of the participants requirements.
- Winners announced via your wall or questions via a Facebook message to the contact information of the user / winners

Some of these things may, however, if you use a third party application. With such an application to use a proprietary platform which in varying degrees with the Facebook platform can be integrated. The contest will run officially from the external platform. Here to meet, you therefore are the contact details (and the actual participation) are using this third party app to win.

If it is fulfilled, you may already looked out of the Facebook platform to set up your contest. So you may ask participants to do something to liken (one photo, wall post, comment, video, page, …). You may never be a part dependent upon the uploading of content on Facebook itself (wall heading places, comment posting, uploading a photo). In practice, you are always obliged to use a third party application. It can build yourself or you can use one of the available packages on the market. Known, reliable, affordable (and restrictive) in this market, the Wildfire Apps.

In Belgium we are not quite there yet. This holds good even the pretty law on lotteries that can provide some extra peace of mind. A lottery is a game purely by lot which the winner is chosen. At lotteries are also strict rules attached. To avoid them, you add an element. This can be anything such as rate (first 10 participants to win), skill (most whack-the-Hamster wins), creativity (best picture or slogan wins), mind (guess the number of entries), and so on. So do not forget one of these elements add also to the Belgian law to be in order.

Finally, if you have an account manager at Facebook, you (and quite some money on Facebook Ads issues), you can still obtain written permission to act outside the rules.