Did you know Facebook recently loosened the reins on their contest guidelines? Here’s what’s happening.

• Prior to the change, Facebook required contests and promotions be run through a third party application. Now, businesses are free to run them right on their Facebook timeline. Timeline contests can be as quick and simple as posting text or a photo and asking people to comment and/or like it.
• Big news, right? Well, turns out most businesses were already doing this, whether knowingly or unknowingly. Still, the benefits of running these low-cost and easy-to-create contests are now legally available to everyone, and that’s big. The contests are also good for engagement and mobile compatibility.
• You can use Timeline contests to do a number of things, like drive “like” and comment entries and collect valuable data. Consult these best practices when planning yours.
• Though there are a number of benefits to running Timeline contests, there’s still a place for using third party apps. Among many reasons, use third party apps to gather email addresses, incentivize sharing and appear more professional.