In its most recent update to promotion guidelines, Facebook made a subtle change to the way sharing can and should be used as part of a social promotion. In the past, you could not require users to share your promotion, but you could incentivize sharing by giving better odds to those who shared. Th

If you visit Facebook’s page terms, you will notice some additional text, “Personal Timelines 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’ is not permitted).” These guidelines do not prohibit companies from encouraging sharing, but it’s important to note that you cannot make sharing a requirement or reward fans for sharing.

If you visit Facebook’s page terms, you will notice some additional text, “Personal Timelines 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’ is not permitted).” These guidelines do not prohibit companies from encouraging sharing, but it’s important to note that you cannot make sharing a requirement or reward fans for sharing.

To make this easier for those who use GroSocial, we updated our Promo widget to reflect the new policy, and also made some design changes to make it cleaner and more modern. The widget still encourages fan sharing, but removes any allusion to requirement or incentives.

If you’re curious about how this affects photo or video contests, it doesn't. For these types of contests, the person with the most votes wins. You can mention sharing as a way for entrants to encourage their friends to vote, but it’s purely in the entrant’s control whether or not they share using Facebook, or encourage their friends to vote through a different method.

Overall, this change won’t diminishing Facebook promotions in any significant way. Those who are genuinely excited about a company, prize or products often share a promotion out of sheer excitement, and don’t need an incentive.

I’m excited for the update to the Promo widget, and we’ll keep you posted as Facebook continues to evolve.

10/24/2013 by Matt Broderick | GroSocial by Infusionsoft