Have you consider Facebook recommendations box alternatives?
While the Facebook recommendations box can be a valuable tool for businesses, it’s not perfect. It’s also not always available.
In fact, it was down for a little over a few weeks in late June. This meant that businesses who were using it on their Facebook Page had to find an alternative.
What was odd was that while it didn’t work on laptops, businesses could access the Facebook recommendations box on mobile devices and direct customers to leave a recommendation there. While this was a work-around, it meant complicating the experience for fans and customers and making it more difficult to collect feedback from them.
To me, this is an unsatisfactory solution and when a tool that businesses rely on daily to collect feedback from customers doesn’t work, it’s not something that I recommend keeping around.
Fortunately, the Facebook recommendations box did come back, but what happens when Facebook removes this feature or takes more than a few weeks to fix this valuable business tool?
As I have mentioned on numerous occasions, don’t put all of your marketing eggs in the Facebook basket and trust that they will be around forever. Just look at MySpace. Nothing lasts forever.
Based on the spottiness of Facebook, there are a number of alternatives that you can use to collect feedback from customers and fans. We’ve highlighted a few of our favorites Facebook recommendations box alternatives that you can implement to collect feedback from fans and customers.
3 Facebook Recommendations Box alternatives
1. Google Forms
If you’re looking for a great free alternative to the Facebook Recommendations Box, I strongly recommend using Google Forms.
Pros:
- Create many different types of forms for collecting feedback and recommendations
- Download and backup your data
- Use on Facebook Pages, Twitter, Google+, and other popular social networks
- Cost: free
Cons:
- Must use the “pin to top” feature to ensure that your form is always at the top of your Timeline.
- Requires constantly sharing a URL
While there are a few cons to using Google Forms, they’re items that you can easily get around by using some of the features on your Facebook Page such as the “pin to top” feature. You also have the added security that it’s a Google product, which is usually very reliable.
2. Survey Monkey
To use Survey Monkey with your Facebook Page, you’ll need to create a Facebook landing page or use the “pin to top” feature to provide a link to your survey.
While this is a little added work on your part, it’s not a deal-breaker.
Pros:
- Create different types of surveys for use on your website or blog, Facebook, or other social networks
- Mobile-friendly
- Cost: free and paid solutions
Cons:
- Free version is limited in functionality
- Must use “pin to top” feature to ensure that your form is always displayed at the top of your Timeline.
- Requires sharing a URL to your survey or feedback form
3. ShortStack
One of my favorite tools is ShortStack. I use it on all of my Facebook landing page tabs (see here).
The great thing about this tool is that it’s multi-purpose so you can use it to create different types of Facebook landing pages for collecting email subscribers, displaying your YouTube videos, and more. Additionally, you can also use it to collect feedback from fans and customers.
Pros:
- Create an unlimited number of landing pages and forms for collecting feedback, recommendations, email newsletter subscribers, and more
- Mobile-friendly
- Cost: free and paid
Cons:
- Free solution is limited in functionality. Paid solutions offer more features, analytics
- Requires some working knowledge of HTML/CSS to create a solution that matches your brand
- Must use “pin to top” feature to ensure that your form is always at the top of your Timeline
- Requires sharing a URL to get users to your landing page
Honorable mention:
4. Gravity Forms
One other Facebook recommendations box alternatives to collect feedback from fans and customers is to use Gravity Forms.
Gravity Forms powers Christiankonline and offers a great contact form along with lots of useful add-ons such as email newsletter integration and surveys.
Pros:
- Create lots of different types of forms – contact forms, surveys, email newsletter integration
- Integrates easily with your WordPress blog
- Mobile-friendly
Cons:
- Requires sharing a URL with fans to collect feedback
- Must use “pin to top” feature to ensure that your form is always at the top of your Timeline
- Cost: $199
Personally, I use all of these products in some capacity. The great thing is that because I’m familiar with each one, I don’t have to rely on Facebook should the recommendations box go down again – or they eventually remove this feature.
To me, while the Facebook recommendations box shows up directly at the top of my Facebook Page, I don’t mind having to promote the URL from time-to-time for these Facebook recommendations box alternatives. It helps me let fans know how to submit their feedback. When a link is posted, it also shows in the news feed. This helps guarantee that users who aren’t visiting your Facebook Page will at least see your update.
This helps save time and because it shows in the news feed, it helps keep fans aware that you have a Facebook presence.
Question: what other Facebook recommendations box alternatives are you using? You can let me know by leaving a comment here.