Running a giveaway on LinkedIn? Make sure to follow the contest or sweepstakes rules on LinkedIn if you want your giveaway to run smoothly and comply with LinkedIn’s terms of service.
Here are our top tips for running a contest or a sweepstakes on LinkedIn.
Why Launch a LinkedIn Sweeps?
With more than 706 million users in more than 200 countries, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network. LinkedIn might not be the first choice that many brands consider when it comes to running a social media sweepstakes in favor of Facebook and Instagram. However, it’s a good idea to add LinkedIn as a part of your promotion marketing mix to ensure that your promotions receive maximum exposure.
LinkedIn is popular among college graduates and professionals as a business networking tool. In fact, nearly 50 percent of Americans with college degrees use LinkedIn. This makes it an ideal platform for B2B companies and brands whose target audiences are working professionals, recruiters or C-suite executives.
Personal vs Company Pages on LinkedIn
Once you’re ready to launch your LinkedIn contest or sweepstakes, the first decision you will have to make is where to host it. LinkedIn requires you post promotional content on business pages only. As a result, if you want to promote a contest on LinkedIn, you’ll need to make a Company Page first.
Not Sponsored or Endorsed By LinkedIn
As with other social media platforms, LinkedIn’s User Agreement requires that you explicitly state in your posts and LinkedIn promotion Official Rules that the contest or sweepstakes is neither sponsored by nor endorsed by LinkedIn.
Don’t Force Engagement With Your Promotion
There are no separate contest or sweepstakes rules on LinkedIn. However, you still are required to abide by their terms of service which means that you should follow best practices when it comes to how users engage with your promotion.
Don’t ask users to like, follow, or share content as a means of helping your promotion to go viral. Instead, your contest or sweepstakes should be designed so that users will organically do so on their own.
Alcohol Companies and Restricted Content
On LinkedIn, ads for alcohol are restricted and are only available in certain countries. In fact, there are several categories of content that are restricted on LinkedIn that you should review. If your giveaway is for an alcohol brand, contact LinkedIn’s support first to ask for permission before posting it.
While it’s obvious that you won’t be giving away alcohol products, your promotion still might get flagged for being alcohol-related because of your brand. Therefore, the better option is to give LinkedIn the chance to review and approve your promotion first so that it doesn’t get removed after your giveaway has already gone live.
Include a Link to the Contest or Sweepstakes Rules on LinkedIn
Every social media contest or sweepstakes should have Official Rules. Running a contest on LinkedIn is no different. Make sure that every promotional post includes the abbreviated rules for your LinkedIn contest with a link or reference to the full LinkedIn contest official rules. This is the best way to ensure that entrants and visitors understand what they are agreeing to by engaging with your contest.
Need help with sweepstakes or contest management? Call 305–505–5393 or email us with your questions.
