Because It So Common To See This Entry Requirement
No. Facebook does not allow you to require someone to share a contest or giveaway post to their personal timeline in order to enter. It’s against Facebook’s own rules, and pages, groups, or events that violate it can be taken down.
It happens because it feels like it should work. We’ve been taught since we could walk or talk that sharing is a good thing, and social media runs on it. Word-of-mouth is what spreads a post, and sharing is how people tell others what they love, endorse, and trust. So asking someone to share your giveaway or contest post feels like a natural way to get more entries and more reach, and plenty of businesses do it without realizing they’re breaking a rule, or without having been caught yet. But it’s against the rules either way, and requiring a share to enter is also fundamentally flawed. To understand why, you need to understand how Facebook actually works.
“Personal Timelines and friend connections must not be used to administer promotions (ex: “share on your Timeline to enter” or “share on your friend’s Timeline to get additional entries”, and “tag your friends in this post to enter” are not permitted).”
Facebook Guidelines, Terms and Policies
Facebook was built for people, and each person controls their own personal settings. Some people allow other people and businesses to see quite a bit of information, and others keep more private. Whether a fan page administrator can even see who shared something from their page is controlled by that person, not by you.
Example: How This Goes Terribly Wrong ALL THE TIME
Say you’re running a Facebook contest and giving away a gift card, and you ask people to share your post to enter. Fans flock to the giveaway and start sharing. Most people aren’t aware of their personal settings, so they share your post to their timeline and consider themselves entered.
Unfortunately, for many of your fans, winning is impossible. Say your post shows it was shared 50 times by the end of the week. Click on those shares, and you’ll likely find only 22 names you can actually see to pick a winner from. The rest of the people who shared your post aren’t visible to you, and they can’t win no matter how badly they wanted to.
Read Facebook’s Pages, Groups and Events policies, and review contest rules often since they change. Ask us if you have questions about setting up a Facebook contest that gives every fan an equal shot at winning.
