Are you running online giveaways? If so, then you know they bring great engagement to your social media profiles and help you to build your brand and your business. But did you know there are serious laws that govern online giveaways? If you don’t follow them, you could get sued or have your profiles deleted and banned forever. But don’t worry, as a social media sweepstakes attorney I’m here to help.
At The Social Media Law Firm, we help clients of all shapes and sizes run an online giveaways in a manner that complies with the law so you can get all the great engagement without getting sued or your profiles deleted. So, let’s start by discussing the law.
So, you must be thinking to yourself, “Ethan, do these giveaways really have laws that govern them?” The answer is, hell yeah. There are legal rules that govern everything, including social media giveaways, contests, and sweepstakes. There’s two different types of laws that you have to understand. First are called gaming laws. These are state and federal laws that govern online games such as sweepstakes, contests, and lotteries. Meaning if you’re running a giveaway, your giveaway is going to fall into one of these three categories: a sweepstakes, a contest and a lottery. There are laws that govern each of them.
But secondly, each social media site has their own specific rules as to how you can run a giveaway. Facebook’s rules are different from Instagram or Twitter or even YouTube. So if you don’t follow the laws, you could get sued. If you don’t follow the social media site rules for giveaways, you can have your profiles banned. Trust me, as a social media law firm, we get calls all the time saying “my profile is banned can I get it back?” The answer is probably no. So, you want to avoid this in the first place.
In order to help understand how the legal rules apply to your social media giveaway, let’s first talk about the difference between sweepstakes, contest, and lotteries. A sweepstakes is a game of chance, like my post for a chance to win a $30 Starbucks gift card and we’ll pick a random winner. This is a sweepstakes because you’re picking the winner at random and therefore it’s a game of chance.
A contest is different. It’s a game of skill. A contest might be something, like – let’s say on Valentine’s Day, you’re running a giveaway where you want people to upload a photo to your Facebook page using the #ILoveYourBusiness and wearing red. You’re going to pick the most creative photo out of all of them to win a two-night stay at a local resort in Disney World. This a game of skill. Meaning you’re not picking someone at random. You’re picking who you believe is the most creative entry that follows all of your rules. The laws are different for sweepstakes than they are for a contest. So, as a sweepstakes lawyer, I can emphasize enough how important it is to understand what type of giveaway you’re running so you know what type of laws to follow.
Now, there’s also a third type, and that is a lottery. A lottery is kind of like a sweepstakes. It’s a game of chance, but there’s some sort of “consideration” involved. Meaning you have to buy a product or service or sign up for something online, or even liking a post. Only specific states can run lotteries. Therefore, if you accidentally run a lottery, you could be thrown in jail and nobody wants that. So your giveaway can only be a contest or a sweepstakes. It’s therefore really important to figure out what type of giveaway you are running so you know how to comply with the specific laws that govern a sweepstakes or contest.
Now, regardless of whether you’re running a sweepstakes or a contest, your giveaway is going to need a few different things in order to comply with the law. The most important are your giveaway legal rules or what we call as nerdy lawyers, “terms and conditions.” These are absolutely necessary if you’re running an online giveaway. If you don’t have rules or terms and conditions, you are not complying with the law and you’re putting you or your company at risk for getting sued.
Having rules is reasonable and fair. Let’s say you and I were going to play soccer. Before we begin, we want to know what the rules of the game are. It’s 60 minutes long. The person who scores the most goals wins. There’s a halftime in the middle and if you kick me instead of the ball, you’re going to get a yellow card or red card and get kicked out of the game.
As long as you and I both know the rules at the beginning, then it’s fair for us to be able to play the game. The same thing works with running your giveaway. You have to post the rules of the game prior to starting your giveaway so people know how do they win? What’s the eligible criteria for entering into your game? What are the prizes? What’s the prize value? When are you going to announce the winner? How are you going to announce the winner? How are you going to select the winner?
All those things and more need to be included within your rules. This is where it becomes important to know if your game is a sweepstakes or a contest. For example, if you are running a sweepstakes, meaning a game of chance, and you don’t want your sweepstakes to become an illegal lottery, you have to give people what’s called an alternate method of entry or “AMOE.” This means that someone has to be able to enter into your giveaway without giving some form of consideration, meaning without doing the thing you want them to do.
Even if you want someone to like your post in order to enter into the game, that’s considered “consideration” under the law because that like has some value. How much value, I don’t know. It’s hard to tell but it still is something of value. So you have to give people a way to enter your game without giving you that thing of value such as sending you an email, sending you a postcard, submitting an entry on your website, whatever it is. This is required for social media sweepstakes compliance.
But an AMOE is not going to be required for a contest. For a contest, your rules have to include specific things like what are the criteria by which you are going to judge the winner. So going back to my example before about the Valentine’s day contest with uploading the most photo. You might say, “In order to win, you have to [A] post a photograph on our Facebook timeline, [B] on Valentine’s day [C] using the hashtag #ILoveYourBusiness while [D] wearing red, and [E] we’re going to pick the most creative entry as the winner.”
Those first four criteria are pretty objective. You know whether someone does posts a photo on your timeline or uses the hashtag (or not). The last criteria does have some degree of subjectivity, meaning you can choose who you believe is the most creative of all of them. But as you can see, it’s different from picking a photograph at random like in a sweepstakes. That’s why it’s important to know what type of giveaway you’re doing so you can understand what needs to be in your rules or terms and conditions.
Now in addition to having terms and conditions, you also have to post a link to your sweepstakes terms and conditions in your social media post that promotes the giveaway. That’s reasonable. If you’re going to let people play the game, you have to have them know how to find the rules of the game. So the second thing you need to do in addition to having your terms and conditions or your rules, is putting a link in your social media posts that takes people to the specific terms and conditions that govern your game.
Finally, the last thing you’re going to need to know are what are the specific guidelines or rules on each social media site that you run your giveaway so you can run it in a way that complies with the rules so your profile doesn’t get banned. It’s key to know that different sites have different rules. For example, Facebook’s rules are pretty complex. They want to make sure that people don’t post things on their own personal Facebook page in order to participate in the game. They can only post things on your timeline. So Facebook has lots of specific on how to run your giveaway that must be followed.
Instagram and Twitter have a little bit less rules than Facebook. They’re more lenient. They don’t want you to abuse the platform by tagging 100 friends or being spammy in order to enter into the game. So they still have rules that govern it, but they’re a little bit easier than Facebook’s. LinkedIn, for example, does not allow you to run giveaway, so don’t run it on LinkedIn or you can have your profile shutdown.
As you can see, depending upon what type of giveaway you’re doing and what social media platform you’re using, there are different rules that you have to follow. Following the rules is a good thing. At the end of the day, we all want to run awesome giveaways. We want to get new likes, new followers, new engagement, new shares, and hopefully people buying our product or service or creating awareness for whatever it is that we’re doing. What we don’t want to do is run an illegal giveaway because that’s going to throw your butt in jail if it’s a lottery. It’s going to get you sued if you don’t follow the laws. It will get your profiles banned and deleted if you don’t follow the social media site rules.
I hope this blog teaches you how to run an online giveaway that complies with the laws, but you might still have questions. Consulting a sweepstakes attorney can provide valuable guidance on legal compliance and help ensure that your giveaway operates within the bounds of the law. Contact us today for a free consultation.
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