Have you heard the news? As of November 5, 2014, Facebook like-gates are dead. If you blinked, you probably missed it because it was buried at the bottom of their latest list of changes to their API and SDKs. The statement went something like this:
You must not incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. This includes offering rewards, or gating apps or app content based on whether or not a person has liked a Page. It remains acceptable to incentivize people to login to your app, checkin at a place or enter a promotion on your app’s Page. To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike.
Because the changes made to like-gates affects your Facebook marketing, I put together a list of Facebook like-gate alternatives to help you continue to grow your Facebook Page likes without like-gates.
What is like-gating or fan-gating?
If you use tools like Shortstack, Tabsite, or Heyo or other landing page alternatives to show different types of content to fans and non-fans on your Facebook Page, you were using a feature known as a like-gate (or a fan-gate).
Examples of like-gating
Some examples of like-gates include:
- Liking a Facebook Page to enter a contest
- Providing coupons or promo codes once someone likes your Facebook Page
- Liking a Facebook Page in order to watch a video
- Liking a Facebook Page to download a PDF or eBook
If you currently use like-gates on your Facebook Page, they will continue to work until November 5. After that date, if you still have them on your Facebook Page, people will be able to access the content without liking your page. No new landing pages will be allowed to use the like-gate feature.
Why Facebook banned like-gating
So why did Facebook ban like-gating? They explained their reasoning further down the article.
To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike.
When you think about it, like-gating on Facebook Pages has been slowly dying. They were popular back in 2010, but we have gotten a lot smarter as marketers. When Facebook launched a Facebook Page redesign earlier this year, landing page tabs were also removed and then re-added at the last minute. For me, this signaled that Facebook was putting less of an emphasis on landing pages.
Why like-gates don’t matter
While like-gates helped grow your Facebook Page likes, they really didn’t matter. This was because a lot of Facebook Pages were not growing them the right way. Previously, when you used a like-gate to have someone like your Facebook Page to enter a contest, a lot of times you were not bringing in the right types of fans on your page. In most cases, people liked your page just so they could enter a contest or win a prize. They were not interested in the content your page was going to share. By eliminating these gimmicks, this should help improve your Facebook experience in the following ways:
- Users will see more of the content they want to see in their news feed
- Advertisers can use Facebook Ads to improve their targeting
- Businesses can improve the focus of their Facebook Pages
Now that you know about changes to like-gates and how they will affect your Facebook marketing tactics, I wanted to share a list of Facebook like-gate alternatives to help you bring in more quality Facebook Page likes.
5 Facebook like-gate alternatives
Continue reading Facebook bans like-gating – Try these 5 Facebook like-gate alternatives instead
