How to Create Giveaway Rules to Avoid Legal Troubles

Running a social media giveaway is only about finding the best prize, right?

No.

While a great prize will attract loads of participants, having no giveaway rules can derail your campaign.

Or at worst, put your brand in trouble.

To prevent any issues, this guide will walk you through elements to include in your giveaway rules and how to create them for your campaign.

Elements to include in your giveaway rules 

1. Name of company hosting giveaway 

For legal purposes, participants should know the company organizing the giveaway.

If you’re hosting the giveaway for a reason, explain this reason to participants.

This provides important information about the origin of the giveaway.

For example, in this Instagram giveaway, ROKA London teamed up with Atelje for a giveaway.

In the caption, ROKA London disclosed that both brands are responsible for the giveaway.

2. Giveaway prize to be won 

The giveaway prize is one of the main reasons someone will participate in a giveaway or not.

Without spelling this out, it’s difficult to attract participants.

In this Evry Jewels giveaway, the brand spelled out all the prizes to be won by the giveaway winner.

While this was only done in the video, it’s also good to list the prizes in your giveaway post caption.

3. Dates the campaign will run 

Every contest campaign has a start and end date.

This should be spelled out so that participants will know when they can enter the giveaway.

Look at this giveaway by ShopBack Australia:

Every participant can see when the campaign will end.

4. Participation restrictions 

Some giveaways are not for everyone.

The common restrictions are often age and location.

If you want to target your ideal customers, you can restrict your giveaway to their location.

For example, Tabio Socks specifies a location for its giveaway.

This way, only people in the US are qualified to participate.

5. Giveaway entry requirements 

What do participants need to do to have a chance of winning your prize?

What can disqualify participants from your giveaway?

By providing this information, participants will know which tasks to perform to get a chance of winning the prize.

Entry requirements can include:

• Liking a post
• Following an account
• Commenting on a post
• Tagging a friend in a comment
• Living in a country

Here’s an example by Sydney Nicole:

6. How and when winners will be chosen 

Winners will be picked depending on the type of promotion you run.

For example, if you run a giveaway, winners will be picked randomly. However, for contests, winners are picked based on their skills in performing a task or the votes received.

Beyond that, let participants know when winners will be selected.

Explaining this puts you on the same page with participants. 

7. How and when winners will be announced 

Announcing your winners creates closure for your contest campaign.

This increases brand trust and will encourage participants to enter future contests.

Some ways to announce winners include:

• A new post
• During a live
• In a story
• Editing the original contest post

Before announcing winners, you have to reach out to them via a message or email.

Also, tell participants the time so that they can find out the winners.

Check out this giveaway by DJI Osmo:

The brand explains when and how the winner will be announced. Considering that the giveaway is closed, you can see the winner at the top of the caption.

8. How the prize will be delivered

Prize delivery depends largely on the prize you’re giving away.

If you’re giving a subscription or a coupon away, you can send it to the winner online.

However, a physical prize will need to be shipped.

You need to indicate if shipping will be free or if the winner will pay for it.

In this giveaway, Bayern Munich tags the giveaway winner and asks for their shipping address.

How to create giveaway rules

Consider each platform’s requirements

While social networks have similar giveaway rules, each platform has unique elements you must pay attention to.

Here are some elements of the giveaway rules for popular social networks:

• Facebook: Facebook’s promotion guidelines state that you can’t ask participants to share content on their personal timelines. You also have to fully release Meta and acknowledge that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed, administered by, or associated with the platform. 
• Instagram: Just like Facebook, Instagram’s promotion guidelines state that participants can’t tag themselves in posts in which they’re not depicted. You also have to fully release Instagram from your giveaway. 
• TikTok: Some of TikTok’s giveaway policy requirements are that your giveaway prize must be valued below $500, sellers can’t list giveaways as products on TikTok Shop, and sellers and creators are prohibited from offering cash or gift cards as giveaway prizes.
• X (Twitter): X promotion guidelines want you to discourage participants from posting the same posts repeatedly to prevent spam. You should also discourage the creation of multiple accounts to have multiple contest entries. 
• YouTube: YouTube’s contest guidelines state that you must have a set of official rules, which will explain how the contest will be conducted. YouTube also discourages manipulating metrics to misrepresent genuine viewer engagement.

 To get more details for each social network, click on the relevant link above.

Create a contest rules page

If you run many contests for your business, a contest rules page provides a base for all your contests.

Even though you still have to state some of the rules in your giveaway post, you can always link to the official contest rules page for reference.

To create an official contest rules page, you may need input from an attorney to avoid potential landmines. Another option is to use templates from a reliable source.

Here’s a giveaway by Coffee-Bike on Facebook:

In the giveaway post, the company links to its promotion guidelines page:

The page contains important information about the company’s promotions that may not fit into the giveaway post.

Add rules to giveaway post captions

Even if you have an official giveaway rules page, you still need to provide rules in your giveaway post captions.

But in this case, you can strip your rules to only what participants need.

For example, some rules to have in your giveaway post caption include:

• Entry requirements
• Duration of giveaway
• How the winner will be picked
• Winner announcement date
• Dissociation from social network

This will often work for most giveaways.

Use a giveaway tool to create the rules

Creating official giveaway rules is now easier with giveaway rules generators from giveaway tools.

With these generators, you can create giveaway rules without having a law degree.

These tools already have a template, and you only need to supply important details about your business and giveaway to create the rules.

One tool you can use for this is SweepWidget.

In the rules generator, you can enter details such as:

• Company name
• Company address
• Age requirement to enter giveaway
• Retail value of prize
• List of prizes
• Time zone

Once you enter the important details about your company and giveaway, SweepWidget will generate the rules page.

Participants can access this page from your giveaway page.

Conclusion

While people rarely think about giveaway rules, they’re an important part of your giveaways.

Running giveaways without clear rules can at best mislead participants or, at worst, put your business in trouble.

Follow these tips to create giveaway rules for your next giveaway.

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