Facebook Promotional Guidelines: Are you breaking the rules?

In our business, if you care about your clients — really care about them– you don’t lead them down a primrose path. You don’t tell them it will be OK to do something even if “everyone else” is doing it. You don’t encourage them to break rules or laws; you don’t ask them to look the other way while you do so on their behalf. Facebook has very specific guidelines about promotions and contests. They are explicit. They do not want the liability of being in the middle of a contest, promotion or other rewards system. If you’re confused about what Facebook promotions are, read this page thoroughly: https://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php

Let me quote:

iv.    You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion’s registration or entry mechanism. For example, the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant.

Over and over again we see violations of this guideline.

What does Facebook say?

We reserve the right to reject or remove Pages for any reason. These terms are subject to change at any time.

That’s right. They can reject or remove Pages at any time, for any reason. Do you really want to be the consultant whose client pages are taken down due to an infraction?