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This week on Social Brand Chat presented by KXIC we discussed a question via Twitter from Levi Boyd: “How do Facebook contests work? One of the things I’m having trouble with is the rules. Facebook is very clear on the page terms.” Great question, Levi! Let’s take a look at how Facebook contest rules work. 

With the holiday (shopping) season upon us, businesses of all shapes and sizes are looking to pull out every trick in the book including Facebook contests to drive year-end traffic. Levi is right in that it is a bit confusing how Facebook handles all of this with their rules AKA – Terms of Service. While the downside is the confusion, the upside is that things got a lot easier this fall as Facebook relaxed many of their contest rules.

You can now run contests on your Facebook timeline without using an official Facebook-approved provider or app. What this means is that you can enter people in quick contests by simply liking or commenting on your posts. You can also have them like one photo over another to vote something up or down. Really, the only thing you can’t do is erroneously tag someone in a photo of a product that they aren’t featured in as Facebook wants to keep those data points pure (plus that’s a little spammy anyway, right?).

Our social media news item took a look at an exciting new feature heading to Foursquare for all users by the end of 2013 — passive check-ins. We also discussed what this means for your business.

Do you have a question about social media you’d like answered? Ask in the comments below, on our Facebook page, or on Twitter using #SocialBrandChat. Check out previous episodes of the Social Brand Chat podcast here.

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Until next week, see you on the Internet!