Facebook Timeline Contest | Facebook Contest App

Reward your fans and increase engagement by running Facebook Sweepstakes, Facebook Quizzes, and Facebook Photo Contests directly on your Facebook Timeline.

What is a Facebook contest, and how do I do it?

A Facebook Contest is a way many businesses engage their fan page audiences. It gives your fans and non-fans the incentive to convert by enticing them with a prize.

Your Facebook contest can be as simple or as extensive as you’d like it to be, but we recommend starting with a simple, random draw Facebook Sweepstakes. Once you’re a pro, you can do things like Photo Contests that involve judges and typically last a bit longer.

In order to run a Facebook contest, you have one of two options. You can either run a contest on your Timeline solo or use a third party application which should make things simpler. Either way, you’ll need to decide what type of contest is best fit for you and what your prize will be.

What are Facebook Sweepstakes?

Facebook Sweepstakes (also called Facebook Giveaways) are the least involved option to run a Facebook contest. Usually, with this option, you’ll simply gather contact information for a chance to enter. Although simple, you’ll want to make sure you’re following all Facebook sweepstakes rules.

If you use a Facebook Sweepstakes there will be no pressure for the admin to choose a winner as the winner will be determined by chance.

This is the kind of contest an organization attempts first, so decide if using a Facebook sweepstakes app will make your first attempt run smoothly.

What is a Facebook Giveaway?

A Facebook giveaway is synonymous with a Facebook contest, but is used many times in reference to Facebook Sweepstakes, since a “Facebook giveaway” highlights the prize without much commitment. These efforts are all about getting new Facebook fans.

What is a Facebook Quiz?

A Facebook quiz involves a little more planning and up-front footwork on your end, but is well worth it if your goal is all about engagement. Coming up with Facebook quiz questions can be fun, but make sure your quiz is relevant.

So, if you decide to create a Facebook quiz, make sure your questions are relevant to your brand, industry, or customer lifestyle.

What is a Facebook Photo Contest?

Running a photo contest on Facebook is a cool way to get to know your fans and gather user generated content which really sells! Here are 7 things you need to know to run a successful photo contest on Facebook.

Simplify Facebook Contest Filtering

Manually filtering through your contest likes and comments will take up a lot of unnecessary time. Time wasted is alleviated with our Facebook Contest App.

Avoid Development Costs

Coming up with great content that people will love and share is not easy, but our Facebook Timeline Contest tool can help with brand engagement for free. Instead of incurring development cost for app creation, our free tool is easy to setup whenever you need it.

Reward Your Fans with a Facebook Giveaway

Brand loyalty comes from recognition that your fans are important to you. This is easily done by rewarding your fans with the opportunity to participate in a Facebook giveaway that includes a prize they’re interested in.

Increase Facebook Engagement

Utilizing Facebook timeline contests is a great way to increase Facebook engagement because creating excitement and getting users to visit your Facebook page frequently to check if they have won.

Our Timeline Contest tool allows you to create a simple, straightforward contest (Facebook sweepstakes, Facebook quiz, or Facebook photo contest) that can target the specific engagement you would like for your audience.

Our Facebook Contest App tools makes it simple to setup your next Facebook contest and choose your winner.

How to Set Up Your Facebook Contest:

1. Connect to Facebook
2. Choose your page to get your timeline posts
3. Select your post to get its comments and likes
4. Decide on contest type that fits your needs
5. Choose how users enter your Facebook Contest
6. Pick your winner(s)

You can definitely do a Facebook Timeline Contest without our Facebook Contest App, but filtering through likes and comments manually will take hours of work. Don’t waste your time counting Facebook post likes. You have much better things to do!

Does Facebook allow me to run contests directly on my Timeline?

Yes! Since August 27, 2013, you can run a contest on your Timeline without using a third party application — and without going against Facebook promotion rules.

Define Your Goals

Defining your Facebook contest goals will guide your decision of contest type as they all have different end goals.

• Facebook Photo Contests: receive user generated content
• Facebook Quizzes: increase fan engagement levels
• Facebook Sweepstakes: get new Facebook fans

Give Away a Relevant Prize

Make the prize something that your customers would enjoy. A gift card is always a good go-to prize, but if you’d like to get personal and creative or something more targeted to your ideal customer, choose something that you can mail with a personal letter. Use this opportunity to build a relationship!

Make the Entry Process Simple

Complicating the entry process for your Timeline Contest will lose potential entrants. Keep the process 5 steps or less so that there are no hoops to jump through.

Set a Definitive Timeline

The length of your contest will ideally be short – maybe a week or a month at the most. This will give you a much larger opportunity to keep fans engaged from start to finish!

Choose a Third Party App

Using a third-party Facebook Contest App like ours makes running a contest a hundred times easier and more successful. An (already approved) contest with Agorapulse is free and only takes 5 minutes to set up!

Email Your Participants

Of course you should email (and maybe broadcast) your winner so they can claim their prize, but also consider your participants.

You don’t have to give away anything big, but show your appreciation by sending something small, maybe a piece of content they may enjoy. This can help turn your fans into customers!

Facebook Contest Ideas

Below are Facebook contest ideas by the type of campaigns in our Timeline Contest Manager.

Facebook Sweepstakes:

• Like to win
• Fill in the blank
• Give us a caption to this photo
• Tell us a story of an experience you’ve had with (company name)
• What would you like to see next from (company name)?

Facebook Quizzes:

• Product knowledge
• What’s next at (company name)
• Industry knowledge

Facebook Photo Contest:

• Share a photo at (company name)
• Share a photo with (company product)
• Show us how you use (company product)
• Show us your favorite feature of (company product)

It’s hard to keep up with Facebook’s promotion guidelines. And because you can now run a promotion directly on your page, there are several factors to consider before doing this.

What You Can and Can’t Do With Your Facebook Contest

You can collect entries by:

• Having users post on your Page or comment/like a Page post
• Having users message your Page
• Having users comment/like a Page post
• Utilizing likes as a voting mechanism

You can’t collect entries by:

• Asking users to tag themselves in a photo they are not in
• Asking users to share a post
• Asking users to post something on their timelines or friends’ timeline

Additional Facebook Contest Guidelines

You are responsible for:

• The official rules
• Terms and eligibility requirements
• Compliance with applicable rules and regulations governing the promotion and prizes offered

Facebook Contests must include:

• A release of Facebook by each entrant or participant
• Acknowledgement that the promotion is not sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook

Beware of Cheaters

Beware of fake Facebook profiles used to enter multiple times or to participate in vote exchange schemes to increase their ranking. Making sure your contest attracts genuine participants should be a concern.

Because this can be difficult to track, it’s important to pay attention to your participants’ profiles and keep track of responses from day one.

Consider Your Audience Size

A bigger Facebook contest audience will amplify the issues that a Timeline contest may raise, meaning the more cautious you should be.

If you have 100 participants, unclear rules and picking a winner who is not a legitimate participant may go unnoticed and not create any serious concerns. But, running a timeline contest like that involving 10,000 participants, you may face hundreds of unhappy fans.

To learn more about what you can or can’t do, we urge you to read this article.

“You don’t really need an App to run a Timeline Contest – you can just put up a photo, ask for comments, and pick a winner. But if you are picking a random winner, using an App can make this easier… Agorapulse has a free Timeline Contest Manager in addition to their great Facebook stats they offer.”
– Andrea Vahl, Social Media Speaker and Consultant

“When Timeline contests started getting popular, app providers launched tools to manage the contests & make it easier to select a winner. Some of these apps are free. And most do a great job addressing the challenges of running Timeline contests. But none are as easy to use as the new Timeline contest tools from our friends at Agorapulse!”
– Scott Ayers, Co-author of Facebook All-In-One for Dummies and writer at Post Planner (Read the Full Facebook Timeline Contest Review)

“Keep in mind that counting “likes” on a post or manually checking the comments for a right answer or a nice photo is not fun… And without an application to help you with that, you’ll have to do it yourself! Agorapulse helps you run sweepstakes, quizzes and photo contests without checking likes and comments manually.”
– Writer at Cincinnati Marketing Solutions

“Facebook Timeline Contest is a free tool from Agorapulse to run contests on your Facebook Timeline. Reward your fans and increase engagement by running sweepstakes, quizzes, and photo contests. Randomly pick winners from fans who have liked or commented on a post. Run a quiz and pick from correct answers. Ask fans to comment with photos, then pick winners from the most liked comments.”
– Sig Ueland, Contributor for Practice eCommerce

“Agorapulse is a the Swiss Army knife of Facebook community managers and marketers. With features like Quizzes, photo contests, sweepstakes, instant win, coupon contests, personality tests and petition apps. In short it is a complete CRM solution for Facebook marketing.”
– Salman Aslam, Writer for Omnicore Agency

“It’s pretty easy and straightforward to setup and deploy a contest. There’s no CSS editing or extensive text formatting.”
– Mike Gingerich, Author, Business Owner, Social Marketer and Consultant

“Management platforms, such as Agorapulse… make the contest process as easy as possible by providing capabilities like analytics and tracking. They also help you comply to Facebook’s Terms of Services.”
– Nikita Patel, Writer for Adespresso

“I love using the Agorapulse Facebook Timeline Contest for two main reasons. First, it lets you run all the basic Facebook contests (such as Sweepstakes, Quiz and Photo contest) on your timeline. Second, it will not only save a lot of time but also won’t cost you a dime. It’s one of the best free Facebook content tool available I have come across recently.”
– Sourav Saha, Web Consultant, Webaholic

“It’s been a lifesaver using the Timeline Contest tool. Not only does it cut me time and save energy, the best thing is—it’s 100% free and accessible to everyone. Picking winners and managing contests have never been easier. Timeline Contest is a must use tool for every social media manager.”
– Zoran Bosancic, Entrepreneur