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3 CEOs share their best alternative to using a Facebook like-gate

Facebook recently announced they were banning the use of like-gating on Facebook Pages starting November 5, 2014.

This was a shock for a lot of businesses that have a Facebook Page because it meant they needed to make changes to their Facebook marketing strategy and find new ways to get people to like their Facebook Page.

While this affected businesses that manage a Facebook Page, how did it affect companies that specialize in tools to help you create Facebook landing pages?

I put together a list of alternatives to using a like-gate to attract new likes on your Facebook Page.

But I wanted to hear from the companies that create Facebook landing page tools to find out what changes they would make to help attract new likes or fans to their Facebook Pages.

To help you understand their approach to like-gating on Facebook, I gathered three of the top companies and asked them what they would do differently now that you won’t be allowed to use like-gating on Facebook landing pages.

Moving away from like-gating

While the announcement that like-gating was dead may come as a bit of a shock to businesses, this didn’t come as a surprise to many of the landing page companies.

Many of them were already moving beyond just offering tools to create Facebook landing pages.

For example, Shortstack recently launched a new campaign builder to help you go beyond just creating landing pages on Facebook.

They now allow you to build campaigns to use anywhere that can help you grow your fanbase.

Why like-gating isn’t a big deal

Earlier this year, Facebook launched a redesign of Facebook Pages.

When this initially launched, Facebook landing pages were initially removed from the new redesign and re-added later.

This was a clear indicator that Facebook might be making further changes to landing pages.

Couple that with the fact that Facebook has been making subtle changes such as removing the ability to set a default landing page over the past few years and you can clearly see that like-gating was bound to go away sooner or later.

So what are the CEO’s who create social media tools to help you create Facebook landing pages, contests, and promotions doing instead of using a like-gate? Let’s find out.

3 CEO’s share their best Facebook like-gate advice

Continue reading 3 CEOs share their best alternative to using a Facebook like-gate

Facebook bans like-gating – Try these 5 Facebook like-gate alternatives instead

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.

Facebook bans like-gating. Try these 5 alternatives instead!

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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

25 Social media tools to help grow your brand

Do you find it challenging to know which social media tools to add to your social media toolbox?

There are literally thousands of tools to choose from.

How do you decide which social media tools you need to help with your social media efforts?

Today I’m going to cover 25 social media tools you need to be using to help you grow your brand.

Aren’t all social media tools the same?

When using social media to grow your business, you can’t just focus on knowing how to use the networks.

That’s important; however, if that is all you focus on, you will spend a lot of time just learning the mechanics and not really know if you are making an impact when you post content.

This is where it is important to have a few social media tools available to help you quickly figure out this information.

To help you out, this list of 25 social media tools is broken down into the following categories.

1. Social listening tools

Social media tools to help your business learn about conversations happening about your brand, your competitors, and keywords.

2. Social conversation tools

Tools to help you locate and respond to customer inquiries and comments.

3. Social marketing tools

Tools to help you create campaigns and contests for your business.

4. Social analytics tools

Tools to help your business measure and analyze the performance of your social media marketing efforts.

5. Social influencer tools

Tools to help identify social media influencers.

Now that you know how the social media tools are broken down, let’s take a look at 25 of the best social media tools.

25 Social Media tools

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How to add a menu to your Facebook Page – Video

Do you run a restaurant? Would you like to learn how to add a menu to your Facebook Page to display your restaurant’s menu to customers?

Currently, there are a number of landing page tools such as Shortstack, or Tabsite that you can use to add a menu to your Facebook Page.

If you don’t want to use another tool, Facebook now let’s restaurants and cafes include a menu on their Facebook Page without using any extra tools.

Adding a menu to a Facebook Page — Example of a menu on a Facebook Page.

To add a menu to your restaurant’s Facebook Page, follow these instructions.

How to add a menu to your facebook page

Continue reading How to add a menu to your Facebook Page – Video

How to display Instagram photos on your Facebook Page using Shortstack

According to Digital Trends, Instagram grew its users by 23% in 2013 compared to a 3% decrease in Facebook user growth.

With Instagram’s significant growth, you can take advantage of this to grow your Instagram account.

To do this, you can create a Facebook landing page tab to display your Instagram content on your Facebook Page.

Why create a Facebook landing page tab to display Instagram photos?

By having a Facebook landing page tab to display your Instagram photos, this gives you an opportunity to leverage your Facebook fans and to share your Instagram photos and videos with them.

This can also be a valuable opportunity to:

Grow your Instagram followers
Promote hashtags

Example of Instagram photos on a Facebook Page

Here is an example of the Facebook landing page tab you are going to create using Shortstack.

Displaying Instagram content on your Facebook Page using Shortstack

To display your Instagram photos and videos on your Facebook Page with the help of Shortstack, watch this video tutorial.

Continue reading How to display Instagram photos on your Facebook Page using Shortstack

How to bring back Facebook questions to Facebook Pages

Are you looking for more ways to interact and engage with your fans?

Previously, you could use the Facebook questions feature to ask questions and run polls on your Facebook Page.

This allowed page owners to set which answers fans could select from.

When Facebook removed the questions feature, Facebook Pages lost a valuable tool to engage with their fans.

Pages had to resort to posting a status update and let fans add their own answers through Facebook comments.

This meant you could end up with a variety of different answers. to your question.

If you were looking for a specific one, this would skew your results.

Today we are going to teach you how to add back the ability to ask questions and run polls on your Facebook Page with the help of Shortstack.

Why create a Facebook landing page tab to display polls and questions?

According to Social Bakers, polls and questions can help increase engagement.

They can also add variety to your Facebook Page. This way you are not just posting text updates or photos.

Example of a Facebook Page with a poll widget

Let’s get started teaching you how to add questions and polls to your Facebook Page using Shortstack.

Running Facebook polls and questions on a Facebook Page using Shortstack

To run Facebook polls and questions on your Facebook Page, watch this video tutorial. Continue reading How to bring back Facebook questions to Facebook Pages

How to use Shortstack to display YouTube or Vimeo videos on your Facebook Page

Does your business create a lot of YouTube or Vimeo videos?

Instead of letting them sit on your video channels, you can create a Facebook landing page video wall to display them.

Why create a Facebook landing page tab to display videos?

By having a Facebook landing page tab to display your YouTube or Vimeo videos, you have one place to direct fans.

This way they can see all of your videos in one place.

What is great about the method we are going to teach you is that you can choose to display all of your videos, choose specific playlists, and more.

This way you can customize the experience for fans based on what is important on your video channels.

Example of videos from YouTube embedded on a Facebook Page

YouTube videos on a Facebook landing page tab — Example of videos on a Facebook Page using Shortstack.

Let’s get started teaching you how to display your videos from YouTube or Vimeo on your Facebook Page using Shortstack.

Display YouTube videos on your Facebook Page using Shortstack

To display your YouTube videos on your Facebook Page with the help of Shortstack, watch this video tutorial.

Continue reading How to use Shortstack to display YouTube or Vimeo videos on your Facebook Page

How to display Pinterest on your Facebook Page using ShortStack

Does your business include Pinterest as part of your social media strategy?

If your business also maintains a Facebook Page, you can integrate your Pinterest account with your Facebook Page.

This allows you to share your Pinterest boards with your Facebook Page fans and build influence on Pinterest.

Today you are going to learn how to display your Pinterest boards on your Facebook Page.

Example of Pinterest boards embedded on a Facebook Page

Example of Pinterest on a Facebook Page using Shortstack.

Let’s get started teaching you how to display your Pinterest boards on your Facebook Page using Shortstack.

Display Pinterest on your Facebook Page using Shortstack

To display your Pinterest boards on your Facebook Page with the help of Shortstack, watch this complete video tutorial.

Continue reading How to display Pinterest on your Facebook Page using ShortStack

Building a Twitter Facebook landing page tab using Shortstack

Last week we showed you how to add a Google Calendar to your Facebook Page. Now we’re going to show you how you can use Shortstack to add a Twitter feed to your Facebook Page.

Here is an example of a Facebook landing page tab we built using Shortstack to display our tweets.

Example of a Twitter feed embedded on a Facebook Page

Example of a Twitter feed on a Facebook Page — Example of a Twitter feed added to a Facebook landing page tab using Shortstack.

Let’s get started teaching you how to display your Twitter stream on your Facebook Page.

Display Twitter on your Facebook Page using Shortstack

Continue reading Building a Twitter Facebook landing page tab using Shortstack

How to embed Google Calendar on your Facebook Page with Shortstack

Last week we talked about 10 reasons to use Shortstack. Today we’re going to show you how you can use Shortstack to add a Google Calendar to your Facebook Page. Here is an example of the Facebook landing page tab we will build using Shortstack.

Example of a Google Calendar embedded on a Facebook Page

Google Calendar on a Facebook Page — Example of a Google Calendar added to a Facebook landing page tab using Shortstack.

To embed a Google Calendar in your Facebook Page, follow the instructions listed below.

How to embed a Google Calendar in your Facebook Page

Continue reading How to embed Google Calendar on your Facebook Page with Shortstack