Just when we were getting used to the rules, things change! As of yesterday, Facebook put a stop to the promotion of giveaways and contests and sweepstakes from blogs like ours. You can see the new rules link here.
What new Facebook Rules Mean for mommy bloggers
What this means for us is that we will no longer be accepting Facebook Friends LIKES for extra entries for our contests and giveaways, and we will no longer be announcing our Contests and Giveaways on Facebook. We’ll take them down as soon as we can for the existing giveaways…
It’s kind of sad though, we’ve really really liked using Facebook in this way. We have the OPTION of learning a new world of Facebook APPS to run giveaways, but that’s a little ways down the line.
How to monitor our blog for new giveaways, since you can’t on Facebook
- You can follow us on Twitter – every giveaway is posted there. Our recommendation: is to use the Firefox Web Browser and download an Add-On called Echofon to see our tweets pop up!
- Once a month we send out a list of all our giveaways to our Google Friends Connect Followers
- Enter your email address on the brown box on this page labeled: Don’t Miss a Thing — Get AOM in your Inbox! and receive every one of our latest posts on our site in a daily listing.
- Grab our RSS feed and put it into your Google Home Page, or Yahoo Home Page-find out more in the link!
- Just assume that we will be bringing you new giveaways large and small ALMOST every day, and check back often:)
Does this mean you won’t be using facebook much anymore?
Absolutely not! Facebook is a great way to share information about local happenings, information, holiday lists, mommy stuff and product reviews, so please stay our friends;) We might separate our reviews from our contest pages in the future- which might be just one of the reasons we switched to a new entry form method earlier this week!
AND PLEASE Still continue to LIKE our contests and giveaways on Facebook! Just because WE can’t promote it, doesn’t mean you can’t share the giveaways that you like best with your friends. Obviously, liking our giveaways in no way will help or hinder your chances of winning a giveaway.
Obviously this kind of hurts us, and 1000s of other mommy blogs, how do you feel about it… Comment below!
Someone else shared a link with me that said we CAN still – but, I’d like to be sure “she” knows what she’s talking about cuz I couldn’t walk away from the new rules with the same assurance.
Anyone got a 800 # to Facebook? lol
Hi Bimbi, I don’t like changes much either. With my contests, you usually never have to be on facebook, twitter, etc to do the first entry into my contests. (Only a couple times we did that upon a vendor’s request.). I am checking into the rules to clarify whether we can still use facebook in the manner that we currently do. So sorry for the frustrations on your end, I will keep your comments in mind to make my contests simple to enter and win. 🙂 Thanks for the comment.
I think it totally SUCKS mom blogs can’t promote giveaways. I wasn’t big on joining facebook, but was missing out on SOOO much. So I joined facebook. NOW I’m supposed to join Twitter or Google? Um, no. I’ll go crawl back under my rock because I’m a mom and I don’t have time to follow Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, LinkdIn, Blogger, etc… Why can’t ONE site let a mom do it all?
Thanks! I am re-looking into this now. I hope you are right. 🙂
I am SO Glad Facebook did this. I think it’s been unfair that a lot of companies require a facebook like as an entry to a contest, often the initial one. I usually avoid those. I also dislike that a lot of blogs asked for your full name on facebook and that takes away anonymity. So I’m glad this went into affect.
That’s not true! You CAN still announce giveaways that are happening on your blog, you just can’t use Facebook as your place to perform your giveaways unless you use an app tab on your page to administer it.
Plus, you can still ask people to ‘like’ your facebook page as an extra entry into giveaways as long as it doesn’t count as an automatic entry….meaning that they have to tell you that they did it and their entry information that you request on your blog (not on your facebook wall.)
Here is a link to a better explanation of the new rules. http://obsessionsottw.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-facebook-promotion-rules.html
I hope this helps.
Companies can hold contests on Facebook if they run the contest through Facebook and pay a fee. Perhaps that is what the company you mentioned did.
Another thing I was wondering…how does this affect companies that require a “Like” to enter a contest or receive a freebie or coupon? There was a company today that I follow that said to post a comment in that thread and they would pick a random winner. Is this new rule for all Facebook users or just bloggers?
Facebook has a habit of fixing things that aren’t broken. How does this affect Networked Blogs?
unfortunate decision, I think! It is a social network site, so anything apppropriate shoud be allowed-freedom of expression, I say! I’d much rather know how to win something cool for free or see a review on a product I might like than know what kind of coffee one of my facebook friends had on the way in to work–sorry buddies!