Earlier this month we focused on Facebook promotions. This week, we’ll review requirements of other key platforms used for promotions.

Instagram

Instagram’s guidelines are far less prescriptive than Facebook.

You can condition entry on following your page, uploading an image (with a promotional hashtag), commenting on an image/ promotional post, or sharing (‘regramming’) a post.

Twitter

You can condition entry on following your account, liking a tweet, retweeting or uploading a photo etc. Twitter’s contest guidelines are relatively straightforward.

Briefly, discourage creation of multiple accounts to enter multiple times, and discourage repeat retweeting. For example, don’t say ‘whoever retweets the most will win’.

Also ensure entries include an @reply so that you can find them, and that a promotional hashtag – if using one – is relevant to the promotion.

YouTube

YouTube's key requirements are you do not encourage entrants to infringe third party rights or engage in unlawful activity, and don’t ask entrants to assign all rights in their entry.

Also, don’t manipulate metrics to falsely reflect user engagement.

Snapchat

Don’t encourage illegal or illicit behaviour, or breaches of Snapchat’s policies, and don’t use spammy mechanics, such as sending Snaps to friends.

General bits

Promotions must comply with relevant contest/promotions guidelines, terms of use and platform policies, and your T&Cs must include prescribed wording. Set out in contest guidelines for each platform.

Promotions must comply with applicable gaming and privacy laws, and you must not make misleading representations about your promotion.

Moderating games of skill is a must (make sure your T&Cs allow you to do this). Full T&Cs must also be provided (eg on your website).

Get advice if you’re unsure. The consequences of getting it wrong can be costly.  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Kelly is the founder of KHQ Approved, a fixed fee commercial contract review service. Peace of mind from an experienced team for a reasonable price.