How have you been generating Likes on your Facebook Page? In the past, Like-gating has been a favourite strategy, but a few months ago, Facebook announced that Page administrator have until November 5, 2014 (that's tomorrow!) to eliminate it. We wanted to let you know what these changes mean and what you have to do to adhere to Facebook's new policy.
Like-gating is the act of incentivizing people to use social plugins or to Like your Facebook Page. You might offer a reward or prize for Liking your business page or gating apps and content based on whether or not a person has Liked your Page. Facebook has stated that they have decided to do do this "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."
Running the risk of continuing to feature Like-gated campaigns after tomorrow isn't an option. The new policy is coupled with technical changes to Facebooks API that removes the ability to Like-gate at all.
In the past, if you wanted to run a Like-gated campaign on Facebook, you had to run it through a third-party app. Facebook's API allowed you to install a Page tab with that app that allowed it to determine whether a Facebook used had Liked your page — meaning you could hide the campaign content from users until they hit that Like button. But tomorrow, Facebook is removing the capability. No more being able to tell whether someone has Liked your Page or not.
The API changes only affect existing Like-gated campaigns (that are currently active), so if you don't have any running at the moment, you don't have to do a thing.
If you do have active Like-gated campaigns running, then you need to remove them today. It's not that your page will break if you don't take down these social media campaigns, but the copy on your campaigns (ex. "Like our page for this free offer!") will not make sense to your audience. The new API will still show content that you had designated through third-party apps, whether they have Liked your Page or not.
It seems like this policy change and the elimination of the API is meant ot discourage brands from finding other ways to see who has Liked their Page. So here's the big question: Do you really need to Like-gate? And the honest answers is a resounding "No." You don't have a Facebook Page to have thousands of Likes, you have it to encourage and increase the engagement of your real fans — ultimately you will turn those super fans into customers and they will tell their friends.
You may now see fewer Likes on your Facebook Page now, but isn't it better to have people Liking your Page you truly like your brand?