Late in August Facebook introduced some big changes to its promotion guidelines allowing businesses and brands to run contests for promotional purposes from their Timelines without any third party applications. While many users find Facebook changes a little daunting, us marketers couldn’t be happier about this particular change. We are always looking for ways to engage with the audience and bring new crowd to our business pages and now with the new contest rules on Facebook we can do so without using third party apps like Shortstack, Tabsite etc.

This simply means that now we can run contests by asking our fans to like or comment on status updates, photos or any other kinds of posts as well as post photos on our timeline. Now we know how important it is for businesses to come up with good contest ideas, so we have decided to help you out with that by sharing 5 most effective Facebook contest ideas with you:

1. Caption contests:

Caption contests are a great way to get your audience to engage with you on Facebook. And personally I am a huge fan of photo caption contests! Not only do these contests drive a ton of participation, they are a lot of fun too! With photo caption contests you can either pick a winner on your own or announce that the caption with most likes will win.

2. Like a post:

It only takes one click for a user to like a certain post which is why asking your fans to like a post in order to win something is one of the most effective contest ideas. You can use photos, videos, status updates or links and ask your fans to like that post to win a certain something.

Due to being so easy contests like these usually do really well on Facebook.

3. Comment on a Post:

Again, simple yet a very effective way of attracting fans to your page. Ask them to comment on a certain post to win something. And you don’t just have to ask them to leave a random comment, you can actually ask them a question and get informative replies and offer something in return to the winning answer.

You can use this tactic do surveys as well to see what most people think about your product or your service. You can also ask them to comment and let you know what features they think you should add to your product. Just be creative and give them something that they would want to be a part of.

4. Photo Contest:

Now who doesn’t love a good photo contest? Photo contests have been a huge hit on Facebook for a long time and they can be a lot of fun. You can ask your fans to submit photos via Facebook message and pick a winner on your own or you can ask them to post their photos to your page and have your fans decide which photo is the winner by picking the one that gets most likes. Sure these contests don’t get as much entries as the above 3 but they are still quite effective.

5. Ask a Question:

This is another easy yet effective contest idea. Simply ask your fans a question and get them to submit their answers. Pick the winner or winners who submit the right answers on your own. You can also ask multiple choice questions and get your fans to select the correct answer.

So, those are our top favorite, tried and tested Facebook contest ideas that businesses can run simply on their timelines. Now I know that picking contest winners on Facebook can be an exhausting endeavour, especially if you have a lot of active users on your page. But there are tools that can make this task easier. WOOBOX is one of such tools, it is free and lets Facebook page admins easily select winners from timeline posts. Give it a go!

And don’t forget to share the results of your Facebook contest with us in the comment section. Happy Marketing!