Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook on February 4, 2004, as a platform for putting the college experience online. In a mere 6 ½ years, however, Facebook has grown from a place to post pictures from the weekend’s big party to the most widely-used social networking site in the world. With 500 million active users around the globe, musicians, politicians, businesses (and anybody who’s anybody) have recognized Facebook as the place to be seen.

For businesses, setting up a Page is easy. After that comes the hard part: attracting those highly sought after “Likes” (or “Likers,” if you will). A seemingly easy way to do that is to host a promotion, contest or giveaway on your business’ Page that requires people to “like” your Page in order to be entered to win. Simple enough…right? Wrong.

As with most things Facebook, it’s just not that easy.

It is against the Facebook Promotions Guidelines to require users to become a fan of your Page, comment on a status update or photo upload or make a post on a profile page in order to be entered into a contest.**

“But,” you might be saying, “I see companies doing things like this all the time on Facebook!”

Well, those companies are doing one of three things. Either (1) they have written approval from Facebook, (2) they are flat-out breaking (or ignorant of) the rules, or (3) they are hosting that contest on a 3rd party site.

In a nutshell, the Facebook Promotions Guidelines say this:

You may not administer any promotion through Facebook, except that you may administer a promotion through the Facebook Platform with our prior written approval. Such written approval may be obtained only through an account representative at Facebook.

Without written approval from the Facebook team, running a promotion, contest or giveaway on Facebook is prohibited. What you CAN DO, however, is run your promotion through a 3rd party.

The most popular 3rd party site for creating Facebook promotions, contests or giveaways is called the Wildfire app. My social media partner-in-crime, Sean “Seanie Mic” Ireton, suggests this application in his blog about the 5 most essential Facebook apps for businesses.

The Wildfire app provides you with all the tools you need to run a promotion, contest or giveaway in conjunction with your Facebook Page — and without breaking the rules. It guides you through each step in the process, including naming your campaign, creating a personalized entry form and writing your rules. The amount of creative liberties you get depends on how much you are willing to spend. The most basic campaign is $5 plus $.99 for each day the campaign is open.

Once you’ve created your campaign, you can choose to create a tab on your Facebook Page that holds the campaign. Since it’s actually hosted via the Wildfire app, it’s not breaking any of Facebook’s rules. Again, depending on which price bracket you choose, you can create a banner on your Website, a complete microsite, or simply a tab on your Facebook page. You can also customize your header and other banners.

Want to see an example? Today we launched the iNeed a Soulra contest for our client, Etón Corporation, via the Wildfire App. Head over and check it out — and feel free to enter for your chance to win an Etón Soulra!

Sound like something your company would benefit from? Contact us to get more information on how BLASTmedia can help with your Social Media and traditional PR campaigns.

** Update 2/4: As of December 2010, Facebook has updated their terms of service. Now, companies can require people to “Like” a Page before submitting contact information. However, “liking” a Page cannot automatically enter someone into a contest—more information must be submitted via a third-party application. See the updated terms here.