What is the Recent Facebook Like Gating Ban: Is it a Pro or a Con?
What do you think about the recent Facebook Like gating ban? Is it a step in the positive direction?
In case you haven’t heard yet, Facebook recently announced a Like gating ban. From November 5th, 2014 onwards you will be unable to force people to ‘Like’ your page in order to take part in a contest, avail an offer or for anything else. The pro and con of this Facebook Like gating ban have been discussed below…
The Con
With the Like gating feature it is so easy to get people to like your page. With a good offer like a coupon code, gated content or a prize to be won and a well planned strategy to promote it you can boost your Facebook page Likes in a short period of time. But with the new Facebook Like gating ban you will be unable to achieve this. The only way to get Likes now will be to share more posts and drive more traffic to the page from your website and other sources.
Getting Facebook Likes will be a slow process soon and it will be harder for you to build a fan base.
The Pro
The biggest problem with Like gating is that you force people to Like your page. This might get you more page Likes, but it won’t get you results as many users will just Like your page and not engage with your content. For example: Many people run contests where they give away irrelevant prizes like ipads, cash, and other expensive stuff in hopes to get more participants. But what they don’t understand is that this will get them useless Likes. People will probably Like the page for the expensive prize, but they won’t interact with their posts or buy their products or services.
But when you organically grow your page Likes, you attract fans who like what you do and want to see your posts. These fans will not just Like your page and forget about you. They will Like, share, comment and maybe even buy from you. Therefore the Facebook Like gating ban might actually help you achieve better results.
The Conclusion
As you can see from the above discussion banning Facebook Like gating might actually be more of a pro than a con. If you would like to run a contest or Like gate anything else ensure you make the most of the time left. In the future you can use these Likes to grow your Facebook fan base organically and build a more loyal following.
Image Credit: dalioPhoto Flickr (1) and Owen W Brown Flickr (2)
