How to Run a Facebook Contest

Running a Facebook contest is one of the most effective ways to engage your audience, grow your following, and generate leads. When executed correctly, contests can introduce your brand to new audiences, encourage meaningful interaction, and create assets you can reuse long after the campaign ends.

However, Facebook’s native contest tools come with limitations around entry tracking, permitted actions, and data collection. This is why many brands choose to run their contests through a third-party platform like Gleam while still using Facebook as the primary promotion channel.

This guide walks you through how to run a successful Facebook contest using Gleam, from choosing the right contest format to promoting it effectively and following up after the campaign ends.

1. Choosing the Right Contest Format
2. Selecting the Right Contest Actions
3. Picking the Right Prize
4. Setting Up and Launching Your Contest
5. Announcing the Winner and Following Up
6. Contest Ideas & Best Practices

When running a Facebook contest, the format you choose will directly impact participation quality, compliance, and how much value you get from the campaign.

There are two main ways to run a Facebook contest:

• A contest app like Gleam, which automates entries, ensures compliance, and allows more flexible entry requirements
• A direct Facebook contest, which is cheaper to set up but comes with more platform restrictions

Understanding the differences between these options will help you choose the right approach based on your goals.

Using a contest app gives you significantly more control over how your giveaway works.

With Gleam, you can collect user data, track entries automatically, and ensure winners are selected fairly and transparently. Hosting the contest on your website or a dedicated landing page also helps your promotion feel more professional while driving traffic to properties you own.

This approach allows you to include entry actions across multiple platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, rather than being limited to Facebook engagement alone.

A contest app also helps you stay compliant with Facebook’s promotion rules while providing structured reporting and a smoother experience for both entrants and organisers.

You can also run a giveaway directly on Facebook by asking users to engage with a post. This approach is quick to launch, but it comes with strict limitations.

Facebook discourages making likes, comments, or reactions mandatory for entry, and you cannot require participants to share posts, tag friends, or post on their own timelines.

Since Facebook does not provide built-in entry tracking or winner selection tools, contests run entirely on the platform can become difficult to manage as participation increases.

For this reason, many brands choose to host the contest with Gleam while using Facebook posts to promote it and drive engagement.

The actions you choose should align with your contest goals, whether that’s increasing engagement, collecting leads, or driving traffic to your website.

Facebook restricts incentivised actions, but Gleam provides compliant options that allow you to guide users toward valuable behaviours without breaking platform rules.

Choosing actions strategically can turn a simple giveaway into a broader growth campaign that continues delivering value after the contest ends.

Your prize plays a major role in determining who enters your contest and how valuable those entrants are.

Prizes closely related to your brand tend to attract participants who are genuinely interested in what you offer, while overly generic prizes often attract low-quality entrants.

Partnering with other brands or influencers can help you offer more compelling prizes while expanding your reach.

Once your contest is planned, effective setup and promotion are critical to its success.

Creating your campaign in Gleam allows you to define entry actions, customise branding, and set clear start and end dates. Embedding the widget on a landing page you control helps centralise entries and drive traffic to your site.

Promotion should be ongoing throughout the campaign, not limited to a single announcement post.

How you handle the end of your contest affects trust, future participation, and brand perception.

Using Gleam’s winner selection tools ensures the draw is fair and transparent. Announcing winners publicly while contacting them privately helps avoid issues with Facebook’s message filtering.

Following up with non-winners gives you an opportunity to maintain engagement beyond the contest itself.

Facebook contests can take many forms, from simple comment-to-win giveaways to more creative photo or video competitions.

User-generated content contests are especially effective, as they encourage creativity while giving you marketing assets you can reuse across social channels and your website.