The Messenger plan says what happens after someone acts. This says how to earn the action. The old Page ran one formula, money, generic question, comment, repeat tomorrow, which produces entries without building an audience anyone would choose to follow.
The shift, in one page.
It understood three real things: people like easy questions, money creates urgency, and comments are commercially useful. Then it ran them as the only post the Page ever made.
Would anybody still answer this if we removed the £100? If not, it is not strong enough to become a recurring format.
"What's your favourite takeaway" is a survey. "Friday night, you've got £30, where's it going?" is a scene someone can step into. Same subject, different job.
Ask openly in public, then in Messenger: "if you had to put that in one bucket, which is closest?" with buttons. Facebook gets the conversation, Palladium gets clean data.
Cars arriving, staff arguing, prize prep, winner calls, draw-night nerves, outtakes. Meta's originality rules reward exactly what nobody else can film, and Palladium owns all of it.
Five hundred isolated one-word answers are worth less than two hundred that turn into conversations. Meta models comment length and how relevant comments are to the post, so replying in the thread is part of the posting job, not admin afterwards.
Meta's spam policy prohibits offering cash giveaways in exchange for engagement. That is enforcement, not a reach penalty, and it lands squarely on "comment to enter tonight's £100". See Prize or no prize.
A Page where winning is the world the content happens inside, rather than every post being an advert for a chance to win.
The operational logic was sound: "what's your favourite takeaway" cannot be matched by an automation, so turn it into INDIAN, CHINESE or PIZZA. But Meta's engagement-bait guidance names asking people to comment with specific answers, words, numbers, phrases or emojis, as a thing its systems demote. Turning every post into a fixed-answer prompt solves the plumbing and creates a distribution problem.
So use three modes, deliberately.
The default
Use it when people's own answers are the entertainment.
"£20,000 lands in your account tomorrow. What's the first thing you're doing with it?"
The automation fires on any comment. The structure happens privately: "if you had to put that in one bucket, which is closest?" HOME | CAR | HOLIDAY | SAVE. Facebook gets the natural thread, Palladium gets the tag, and the button tap opens the messaging window.
Where the options genuinely are the post
"You've won this tonight. Someone offers you £40,000 for it tomorrow morning. Keep it or sell it?"
KEEP and SELL are not codes, they are the argument. Same with BMW or Audi. Legitimate to run, but it should not be the shape of every post.
Reserve it for real acquisition events
"£100 freebie tonight. Which envelope? GOLD or BLUE."
The keyword has a job here. Keep it to genuine freebie events, and do not let the whole Page look like this.
Two studies worth knowing, both pre-dating the current Reels and recommendation environment, so directional rather than benchmarks: a study of 355 brand posts found questions increased comments while reducing likes, which is why a comment-led Page should not judge itself on reactions. A study of over 100,000 posts from 782 companies associated humour and emotion with stronger engagement, and price or deal content alone with weaker engagement.
| Reason | What it looks like | Worth |
|---|---|---|
| Picking a side | BMW or Audi. Indian or Chinese. Opinion, identity, harmless tribalism | Volume. Low effort, low signal |
| Being right | Guess the price. Which car is under the cover. Correcting someone | Good: it creates a reason to come back for the answer |
| Telling a story | First car. What you spent your first wage on | Rich comments. Forcing a keyword here actively ruins it |
| Fantasising | £50k tomorrow, what changes first. Win the car, get offered cash | The most commercially interesting. People are rehearsing the emotion the product actually sells |
| Reacting | A staff member says something ridiculous. A draw goes wrong. Someone guesses £80k on a £42k car. A winner hangs up thinking it's a scam | No ask needed. This is why original video matters |
| Version | What it is |
|---|---|
| "What's your favourite takeaway?" | A survey |
| "Chinese, Indian or pizza?" | A survey with buttons |
| "Friday night. You've got £30. Where's it going?" | A scene someone can step into |
| "Only one can stay. Chinese, Indian or pizza." | Scarcity and conflict |
So the content meeting does not start with "what question shall we ask today". It starts with "what situation can we put the audience into".
Ready-made ones: you've just won £50,000. You've got the keys to this for the weekend. We're buying one of these three cars tomorrow. Someone offers you £40k for the car you won last night. It's Friday night and somebody hands you £30. You're at the airport at 6am. You can bring one shop back from the 90s.
| Format | Main job | How it is built |
|---|---|---|
| Pick one | Easy volume | "You can have one..." |
| Only one can stay | Debate | Three liked things, remove two |
| One has to go | Debate, nostalgia | Remove one permanently |
| Would you rather | Fantasy, trade-off | Two imperfect alternatives |
| Keep or sell | Buyer relevance | Win the prize, then an immediate cash offer |
| Cash or car | Buyer relevance | Mirrors the product directly |
| What would you do? | Rich conversation | A windfall scenario |
| Guess the price | Game, knowledge | Real prize, three bands |
| Guess what it is | Curiosity | Partial reveal |
| Settle our argument | Personality | A real staff disagreement |
| Choose what we buy | Agency and research | A real upcoming prize decision |
| Remember this? | Nostalgia | Show a recognisable object |
| Finish the sentence | Rich comments | Open completion |
| Winner question | Social proof | Winner's choice becomes the viewer's hypothetical |
| Yesterday you said... | Community | Continue the previous conversation |
Not ranked. They do different jobs, and a week should use several.
Predictions, rivalry, forced choices, picking sides, "only one can stay". Transfers into car choices and draw anticipation.
Presenters, recurring questions, audience arguments, running jokes, listeners becoming part of the programme. The single most transferable model here.
Recognition, local identity, "who remembers this", "where is this".
Menu arguments and letting the audience decide what comes next.
Comparisons, launches, behind the scenes, product decisions.
Prediction, anticipation, reveal. Borrow the entertainment structure, never the gambling language.
Human stories and proof of what happened. Transfers into winner stories and handovers.
Across all of them the valuable part is the same: a recognisable presenter, a ritual, a voice and a recurring format, rather than the generic question.
Film: the car being collected. The car arriving. Valeting and prep. Someone sitting in it for the first time. Staff arguing about which car is better. Three possible prizes at a dealer. Unboxing. Someone guessing the price badly. The studio before the draw. Presenter nerves. Outtakes. Winner calls. Handovers. What winners did afterwards. Comments being read out. Yesterday's argument revisited. Mystery prize reveals.
| Format | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Short original reel | Staff, prize reveal, guessing, winners, behind the scenes, humour |
| Real photograph | Prize comparison, a simple visual decision |
| Split image | A genuine A or B choice |
| Carousel | Only where swiping adds something: clues, several real prizes, a reveal sequence |
| Plain text | The occasional strong topical thought. Never the default |
| Designed graphic | Quizzes and simple choices, occasionally. Do not let it become the Page's visual identity |
| Live | The event, the anticipation, the draw, the audience |
Can we show this, rather than make a graphic about it?
Palladium should have recurring faces, and the audience should end up knowing them: Skye always picks the car. One of them always takes the cash. Another knows nothing about cars. That one always massively overestimates the price.
Once that exists, "Skye says BMW, Dan says Audi" means something, and the Page becomes entertainment produced inside the business rather than a noticeboard for competitions.
Five hundred isolated one-word comments are not worth two hundred that turn into conversations. Meta's own feed documentation models the number of comments, the average length of comments, and how relevant the comments are to the topic of the post. Threads beat walls.
So for the first part of a post's life, somebody owns the comments.
| They say | You say |
|---|---|
| CASH | Straight in the bank, or are you blowing some of it? |
| Holiday first | Where are we going? |
| Indian | Important follow-up: rice or naan, if you can only keep one? |
| Keep the car, life's too short | Even if you're paying the insurance and the fuel? |
Not mechanically, to everyone. Reply where there is personality, humour, knowledge or disagreement. Then reuse it: "You lot picked CASH yesterday. But the comments started another argument. SAVE IT or SPEND IT?"
The loop is post, comments, content, comments. Done properly the audience starts supplying part of the editorial calendar.
Meta's Community Standards on spam prohibit "offering giveaways (i.e., offering others a chance to win) of cash or cash equivalents in exchange for engagement", with the example "anyone that likes my page will be entered to win $500". The same policy bars requiring engagement to access something.
"Comment to enter tonight's £100" is that mechanic. This is a different and more serious instrument than engagement bait: bait costs reach, spam enforcement costs the account.
So the question is not only how often to run freebies, it is what the entry route looks like. Entry through a message to the Page, through the site, or announced during a Live and entered there, all move the mechanic away from "engage with this post to be entered". Put it to the client before the next freebie.
Beyond the policy, the two post types recruit different people. Without money, someone comments because they want to answer. With money, there is an external reward and the comment says less about them. That does not make freebies bad, it means the two groups should never be counted as one number.
Three engineered comment posts in most weeks, occasionally four where the content genuinely warrants it, with no more than two carrying a freebie, and the rest of the feed being content that can earn comments without asking. That is judgement, not a Meta threshold. Meta publishes no number, and anyone quoting one has made it up. What matters is that the Page does not settle into a single repeated pattern.
They have something preference posts do not: an answer people want to discover. Guess the price. Guess the number. Identify the car. Which is more expensive. True or false. What's under the cover. Which car is faster. Which prize did last week's winner choose. Three clues. A prediction before the reveal.
"No Googling. What do you reckon this costs new? £35k / £45k / £55k." Reveal later, which turns one post into comment, curiosity and a return visit.
Someone willing to estimate the price of a BMW is giving a more relevant signal than someone naming their favourite cereal. Do not claim quiz commenters are better buyers until the data says so. Test it.
There is no reliable published figure for where Facebook truncates an organic caption, so write for the first two visible lines rather than an invented character count.
| Type | Opening two lines |
|---|---|
| Conversation | Friday night. £30 for a takeaway. / Where's it going? |
| Fantasy | £50,000 hits your account tomorrow. / What's changing first? |
| Staff | We genuinely need to decide this today. / Black wheels or silver? |
| Quiz | No Googling. / What do you reckon this costs? |
| Winner | Sarah took the cash. / Would you have done the same? |
| Freebie | £100 freebie tonight. / We've got two envelopes. GOLD or BLUE? |
The money no longer goes first automatically. Lead with it when the prize is the hook; lead with the situation when the content is.
The promotional conditions still go in the caption. See the plan's Part seven for what CAP requires in the post itself.
No credible evidence supports an emoji uplift. The 🚨🔥👇💸 look goes. Use emoji where it says something or fits the voice, never as structure, and never as the keyword. The Page should read like humans wrote it, not a 2020 social template.
19:05 is not wrong and not sacred. Nothing in the research establishes a time for this audience, so treat it as a test: morning 07:30 to 08:30 for quick material, lunch 12:00 to 13:30 for low-friction conversation, early evening 17:30 to 18:30 for prize and behind-the-scenes, evening 19:00 to 20:00 for the main post where Page data supports it.
On draw nights, organise around the event rather than a generic best-time article: anticipation two hours out, a nearly-live nudge at thirty minutes, the Live itself, the winner reaction after, and the best clip the next day.
Give it a running order: opening, tonight's prizes, show the physical prize, an audience question, read comments, the draw, the winner, the reaction, tease the next prize, another audience question, close.
Fill the dead moments with the mechanic: "If you win this tonight: keep or cash?" or "Three big ones tonight, which draw are you here for?" Read interesting comments aloud, name regulars, and cut the best moments into clips afterwards. One Live should produce several pieces of content the Page owns.
Meta's own guidance: stream at least 20 to 30 minutes, schedule it in advance, promote it beforehand in separate posts, reintroduce yourself as people arrive, welcome commenters by name, pin a comment to seed the thread, and close with one clear ask. The comment trigger has to exist before you go live, because it cannot pick up comments made before it was switched on.
| Day | Content | Job | Freebie |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | Money or prize hypothetical | Buyer relevance and comments | No |
| Tuesday | Original staff or behind-the-scenes reel | Personality and reach | No |
| Wednesday | Quiz or guess | Game and return visits | No |
| Thursday | Main freebie | Acquisition | Yes |
| Friday | Broad conversation, nostalgia or food | Community | No |
| Saturday | Winner, prize or car content | Proof and desire | Optional second |
| Sunday | Live draw and anticipation | Event, community, conversion | Competition-led |
Swap the days to match the real draw schedule. The shape matters, the calendar does not.
| Week | Theme | Content | Goal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Choices | Cash or car, BMW or Audi, home or holiday, a food argument, a real staff choice | Establish simple participation |
| 2 | Games | Guess the price, mystery car, true or false, three clues, a prediction before the Live | Establish return behaviour |
| 3 | People | Staff arguments, car collection, a winner call, an outtake, behind the scenes | Make Palladium itself interesting |
| 4 | Community | "Yesterday you said", audience chooses the next prize, funniest comments read out, winner follow-up, an open money question | Show people their participation changes what happens |
Then repeat the structure, never the exact posts.
Work from topic × mechanic × format, and the morning question stops being "what shall we post today".
Cars × keep or sell × reel. Food × one has to go × photo. Money × what would you do × presenter. Nostalgia × recognition × photograph. Prize × guess the price × reel. Winner × hypothetical × video. Staff × settle our argument × reel.
| # | Post | Visual and answer |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | £50k tomorrow. What changes first? | Presenter or cash, open |
| 2 | £50k: home, car or holiday? | Real visual, HOME / CAR / HOLIDAY |
| 3 | Cash or this car? | The actual car and the cash |
| 4 | Keep or sell? | Prize car |
| 14 | Keep the car, or take less in cash? | A real dilemma |
| 18 | £10k tomorrow: save or spend? | Staff video |
| 19 | First thing you'd buy with £10k? | Open |
| 20 | Mortgage, holiday or car? | Money fantasy |
| # | Post | Visual and answer |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | BMW or Audi? | Two actual cars |
| 6 | SUV or sports car? | Split real imagery |
| 7 | Black or blue? | Same car, both colours if available |
| 8 | Manual or automatic? | Inside the car |
| 9 | Guess the price | Real car, three bands |
| 10 | Guess what we paid | Collection footage |
| 11 | Which should we buy next? | Three-car walkaround |
| 12 | Which badge is under the cover? | Partial reveal |
| 13 | Which would you drive home? | Two real prizes |
| 15 | What's your dream car? | Open |
| 16 | What was your first car? | Open nostalgia |
| 17 | Best car you've owned? | Open story |
| # | Post | Visual and answer |
|---|---|---|
| 21 | Chinese, Indian or pizza? | Food |
| 22 | Only one can stay: roast, fry-up or fish and chips | Food |
| 23 | Pub roast or home roast? | Real food photos |
| 24 | Tea or coffee? | Staff cups |
| 25 | Ketchup: fridge or cupboard? | Office argument |
| 26 | Airport at 6am: pint or coffee? | Travel |
| 27 | Costa, Starbucks or independent? | Lifestyle |
| 28 | Beach or city break? | Travel |
| 29 | UK weekend or abroad? | Travel |
| 30 | New York or the Maldives? | Fantasy |
| 31 | Window or aisle? | Travel |
| 32 | Better flight or better hotel? | Trade-off |
| # | Post | Visual and answer |
|---|---|---|
| 33 | 80s, 90s or 00s? | Music and nostalgia |
| 34 | Bring one back: Woolworths, Blockbuster or Toys R Us | Nostalgia |
| 35 | Show an old object: who remembers this? | Open |
| 36 | First concert? | Open |
| 37 | Best Saturday-night telly era? | Nostalgia |
| 38 | Finish it: "You know you're over 40 when..." | Open, humour |
| 39 | What did £1 buy when you were a kid? | Open, story |
| 40 | School dinner you still remember? | Open, story |
| # | Post | Visual and answer |
|---|---|---|
| 41 | Staff member guesses the car's value | Reel, game |
| 42 | Two staff argue over the next prize | Reel, personality |
| 43 | Car arrives: change the wheels or leave them? | A real decision |
| 44 | Three cars at the dealer, the audience chooses | Agency |
| 45 | Winner call, then "what would you have done?" | Social proof |
| 46 | Staff £100 challenge | Entertainment |
| 47 | Mystery prize: three clues | Curiosity |
| 48 | Covered car reveal | Multi-post game |
| 49 | Read out yesterday's funniest comments | Community reel |
| 50 | Yesterday's winner becomes today's question | Continuity |
| Layer | What to watch |
|---|---|
| Reach | Reach, non-follower reach, unique commenters, comments per 1,000 reached |
| Conversation | Replies to top-level comments, thread depth, multi-person conversations, comment length, Page replies that get a reply back |
| Community | Repeat commenters, people who engage with both prize and non-prize content, people returning for quiz answers, familiar faces in the Lives, the non-prize engagement trend |
| Commercial | Messenger interaction, preference captured, site visit, competition viewed, account created, first purchase, revenue, repeat purchase, revenue per 1,000 commenters, commenter-to-customer rate at 30, 60 and 90 days |
The question the Page should eventually be able to answer: which kind of Facebook commenter becomes a customer? Note that the bottom layer only becomes measurable once purchase data flows back into ManyChat, which the plan treats as a prerequisite.
A 700-comment car post that produces 40 future customers beats a 5,000-comment freebie that produces 10.
| # | Test |
|---|---|
| 1 | Two options against three |
| 2 | Open public answer against fixed public choice |
| 3 | Fixed public choice against open public plus structured Messenger buttons |
| 4 | Question first against £100 first |
| 5 | The same question with and without the £100 |
| 6 | Real photograph against original reel |
| 7 | Staff-led against designed graphic |
| 8 | Quiz against preference |
| 9 | Money fantasy against generic lifestyle |
| 10 | Car or prize subject against food or lifestyle |
| 11 | Nostalgia against something current |
| 12 | One-line caption against a scenario setup |
| 13 | Page actively working the comments against light participation |
| 14 | Morning against lunch against evening |
| 15 | Direct commercial Messenger follow-up against conversational preference follow-up |
Run each on comparable days and times, more than once, and judge on unique commenters, conversation, repeat participation and eventual customer behaviour. Compare against Palladium's own previous performance, never against invented industry benchmarks.
No requiring shares. No tagging friends. No seven near-identical prompts a week. No manufactured arguments, and no deliberate mistakes planted to farm corrections. No downloading someone else's viral clip with a Palladium logo on it.
And do not treat "comment to enter is allowed under the promotion rules" as meaning Facebook will distribute the post happily. Promotion legality and feed distribution are two separate tests, and the spam policy in Part nine is a third.
Make the post worth answering before you make the comment useful to us.
And underneath it: if removing the £100 makes the post completely uninteresting, find a better post.