You will all have found out by now that Facebook is phasing out like-gating for apps on the platform. This means that if you count on like-gating to gain huge amounts of likes during your contests, you will have to work on alternative ways to gain fans. For all new apps like-gating will not be allowed as of the beginning of August (yup, that’s 7 August to be precise) – whereas if your currently running apps use it, you have until November 5, 2014 to find alternatives. So, what happens now?
Also Read: Facebook Is Putting An End To Like-Gating
If you are really committed to a good Facebook presence, likes will not be your most important KPI for success. We should all be aiming for other things instead. Whatever your goals in each activation, you should be looking at different ways to achieve them, and we should all be training our clients to ask for other things instead of just likes. How do likes translate into sales? How many email signups do you get from your activations? How much customer feedback do you get from your fans?
These are all important questions that need addressing! The best way to deal with changes, is to change strategy and concentrate on ROI. As a practice like-gating created many many likes from people who just wanted to participate in a giveaway and were not interested in our brands. They simply un-liked our pages as soon as the competition was over, or didn’t do anything at all – no interaction whatsoever. Is this good ROI? No.
So, replace Like-Gating with Action-Gating! Action-gating is a similar tactic, but instead of offering an incentive for a like, you offer an incentive for an action like a newsletter signup, getting people to give you details about themselves (that you eventually use to offer more relevant marketing).
Data is very important, so what better way to get it than by offering incentives for it? With privacy as a major concern, people are more reluctant to give information away, but if they know that you will treat it with respect – and even better, if they are interested in what you have to offer them – they will happily trust you with it. Building a quality database of good information about your customers with eventually lead to better ROI!
One thing you might be wondering is whether you are still allowed to ask people to like your page. Well, yes you are. You just aren’t allowed to make it a prerequisite for people to view content or take part in your activation. Take a look at our previous article explaining this. You will find in the long run, that those who answer to your call – and like your page – are those who are genuinely interested in your brand. Thus, higher engagement rates should follow. That’s what I would call a win-win situation, wouldn’t you agree?
The change is a great thing because it will make companies and brands concentrate on quality rather than quantity. It will make them less “lazy” in what they “feed” their fans. You may have been shocked to find out about it a few weeks ago, but if you are already putting an emphasis on what really matters, you are at least working in the right direction.
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