A marketing tactic called like-gating, something that many brands have been doing on Facebook to persuade people to like their pages, is about to become history.
Like-gating on Facebook is – rather, was – when a brand would require a fan to like its page in order to see a particular piece of content or receive a special offer there.
In an August 7 post on its Developers blog, Facebook put an end to this common practice. According to the post…
“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.”
While this change to Facebook’s Platform Policy (which apparently become effective November 5, 2014) should be well received by consumers, it certainly won’t make it any easier for brands to rack up new page likes. In addition to consistently publishing quality content that their fans will not only like, but share with their own networks, more brands than ever will likely need to consider advertising on Facebook.
To read more about Facebook’s Platform Policy, click here.
