Facebook Actions
Let people enter with Facebook, and reward them for liking, visiting, joining, checking in or submitting photos.
Share on Facebook is no longer available because of Facebook's API policy changes. Use Viral Share to reward entrants for referring friends instead.
More help getting the most from your Facebook contest:
- 40+ Facebook Contest Tips + Tricks Using Gleam
- The Ultimate Guide to Running a Facebook Contest
- Facebook Photo Image Size Guide
When entrants log in or complete a Facebook action that needs it, they authorise the Gleam Competitions Facebook app:
Reward entrants who check in, or have checked in before, at your location on Facebook. It's perfect for local businesses and a nice way to thank loyal customers.
Add your Facebook Page URL and a Check-in Description telling entrants what to do.
We can't check this automatically, because we don't have access to entrants' Facebook posts.
Facebook Entry gives entrants an entry for logging in with Facebook. Choose whether they complete straight away, or get the option to like your page afterwards.
Entrants like or follow your Facebook page. Paste its URL.
Entrants have to visit your page before they can complete the action. They sign in with Facebook too, so you can check later whether they followed you.
Entrants join your Facebook group. Paste the group's URL.
Entrants have to visit the group before they can complete the action, and they sign in with Facebook so you can check later whether they joined.
Run a photo contest by letting entrants submit a photo from their Facebook feed or albums.
Give it a title (like Show Off Your Summer Style) and some instructions.
Make it clear the photo has to be on Facebook already before entrants can pick it.
Only show entrants photos with your hashtags. Choose whether a photo needs all of them or any one. If an entrant has just one matching photo, the action completes on its own.
On the Business Plan you can also import photos automatically:
- Posts to Page: photos posted publicly to any Facebook Page
- Post Comments: photos posted publicly in the comments of any Facebook post or photo
Entrants sign in with Facebook if they haven't already, then pick from their last 21 photos.
Point entrants to a Facebook post or video. Engaging with it is up to them. The post has to be public.
Facebook Visit sends entrants to your Facebook page. If they like what they see, they can like the page too, but that's always optional.
Paste your page URL, choose whether to offer the like option, and pick what happens After Visiting (complete straight away, add a delay, or ask a question about your page).
One of the most requested action types is asking users to share something on their personal timeline, however Facebook's policies do not permit you to directly give entries for this. This means that you can't give an entry for sharing a link, but you can give entries to users when they successfully refer a user via a shared link.
You can get users to share your competition on Facebook using our Viral Share action type. This will give users entries when they refer friends who successfully enter the competition.
Please note, users will not see an increase in entries until they successfully refer someone that enters. Regardless of how many time they share your link.
There's quite a few options to setup this particular action. First give it a title, how you define the title can greatly impact whether or not people will share it.
The second option allows you to lock the Viral Share until the user completes a certain number of other actions first. For example you may not allow users to share until they first like you on Facebook or join your email list.
You can choose to show the share option with any mandatory action types you have created. However the share itself won't count towards a mandatory action (but will still allow users to do it).
The default share text is used for everything except Facebook sharing, the text you see here is pulled from the description on your prize. This allows you to have separate text for both X & Facebook.
This is what the users will see, they are free to take the link generated & share it wherever they want. You also have control over which sharing buttons are present by default.
If a user shares to Facebook this is the popup they will see, there's a few important areas to cover here.
By default we use the prize image as the og:image that gets shared on Facebook. If you want this image to show you must have a feature image that is at least 287px high.
If you want the image to work perfectly when someone Virally Shares on Facebook then use 1080px x 567px.
Business users have the ability to add a Custom Share image to the campaign. This means you can make your Feature Image whatever size you wish (or use the Carousel).
The recommended Facebook Image Size for the custom share image is 1200px x 630px.
We currently pull the description for the Facebook share from your Prize. However if you set the Default Share Text during the setup of the action that will be used for everything except Facebook.
We've created an example competition that you can play with, it contains all of the actions that we've covered in this guide.
There will be certain scenarios when we're unable to find the PageID for a particular page due to their settings. In this instance you will be required to enter the PageID manually.
On Facebook The PageID is located here: Edit Page → Edit Settings → Page Info → Facebook Page ID
Having certain country or strict age restrictions on a page can make it appear blank when users try to like it within the widget.
See Next Article
Gleam Subscriber Action
Grow a Gleam mailing list from your campaigns and tell entrants every time you launch a new one.