Like-Gating content on your brand page is a simple way to increase your number of likes. If someone wants to play a game you’ve designed, or enter a competition, they have to like your brand before they are able to proceed. This theoretically increases your reach, as most users will publish this information to their news feed, further enhancing your audience. But let’s consider the practicality and value of this process for a second.

In a previous article I stated that within social media, two factors remain paramount; content and engagement. These two factors are inherently linked and are the metrics you should really be measuring your social media success on. If you fill your page with exciting, shareable content, engagement will inevitably follow.

Likewise, if your brand page is just one long sales pitch, there are very few users who would take it upon themselves to share said content or actively engage with your brand. Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer hit the nail on the head when she said “You have a voice. Your customers are listening and your customers are talking, so engage with them.”

‘Forcing’ someone to like your brand is akin to dragging someone by the scruff of the neck into your front room, and sitting them in front of a TV so that they can watch your TV advert. Sure, they’re watching the advert, but do they actually want to? Of course they don’t, and as soon as the opportunity arises they will switch the TV off. In Facebook terms, that means un-liking your brand. Most tech-savvy Facebook users will also remove any evidence of their previous liking of your brand from their homepage and news feed, so what have you actually gained?

From a metrics perspective, Likes are incredibly old fashioned and difficult to measure. When a user likes your brand, the page auto-refreshes and your number of likes goes up by 1. What happens though, when a user un-likes your brand? Not much. If you delve deep into your analytics tools you can see how many users have un-liked your page on any given day, but that’s about it. There is no notification process in place to make you aware of the loss of a follower, and for all intents and purposes that user still has access to your brand page, even though they no longer Like your page. So the Gate opens to let you in, and then forgets to close behind you.

Facebook’s internal analytics tools for Developers are a testament to their own despise of Like-Gates. The one and only metric available is a simple ‘number of likes’. You can however use the various tools at your disposal to found out much more interesting information; such as the number of people that are currently talking about your brand, and also the number of people that are sharing your content. Remember, Facebook “helps you connect and share with the people in your life“, and these priceless insights into your apps/pages levels of success are the metrics you should really be interested in, and more importantly focusing your strategy on.

From a developer’s perspective, Like-Gates are becoming increasingly difficult to incorporate. It seems that particularly since the recent changes to brand timelines, developers are having to jump through more and more hoops in order to employ a simple Like-Gate. What was once a straightforward line or two of code has turned into a full-blown custom page or app. Might it be that Facebook are consciously attempting to phase Like-Gates out from brand pages completely?

Brands seem to be forgetting the most simple of things when trying to engage on Facebook. Instead of forcing someone to Like your brand in order to enter a competition, why not fill your page with interesting, relevant content that will generate new Likes irrespective of rewards? If you want to further enhance the user experience and your brand perception, why not enter all of your new followers into a monthly prize draw? It doesn’t have to be an all-singing, all-dancing prize that costs you thousands. As the old saying goes, it really is the thought that counts.

Without revealing too much about the new Facebook App Center, the announcement has unsurprisingly caused quite a stir in the already saturated application market: “For the over 900 million people that use Facebook, the App Center will become the new, central place to find great apps like Draw Something, Pinterest, Spotify, Battle Pirates and Viddy.”

More importantly from a financial perspective, “Developers will have the ability to charge a fee for apps sold in the store in the near future”, Facebook said. All of this goes hand in hand with Facebook admitting that growth in mobile use could hurt future advertising revenue. Prevention is better than cure, and Facebook are experts when it comes to identifying potential stumbling blocks and solving them before they rear their ugly heads. The App Center is the latest demonstration of this.

When will the App Center be rolled out?

No official release date has been announced, but with the submission deadline for app pages being set as next Friday we can safely assume it’s in the not too distant future. Aaron Brady’s only indication was that people would be able to access the App Center “in the coming weeks”. We suspect it will be fully operational by the end of June, without a shadow of a doubt.

Who should create an app page?

All developers should create an app detail page. This page is required for being listed in the App Center, and it will also become the new destination when non-users search for your app on Facebook. App detail pages are created in the App Center section of the Facebook Developer App, and if you want more information it can be found in this useful FAQ guide.

So, should I create an app page already?

If you haven’t already started planning it, you should start. Right now. Aaron Brady made it very clear that submissions will be assessed on a first-come, first-served basis; “App detail pages that are eligible for the App Center will be reviewed prior to being listed and priority will be given to those apps that submit before May 18^th.”

How do I make sure my apps are eligible?

There are various restrictions on image size, promotional banners etc. Naturally, app pages will be reviewed and tested by Facebook prior to approval. Guidelines on suitable submissions can be found here, and we’ve included four examples below to highlight acceptable and unacceptable graphics for your Facebook app page.

Facebook are in the fortunate position to be particularly ruthless when it comes to hitting the approve button, so try your best to make sure you get it right the first time around.

Which platforms will the App Center be available on?

Facebook have very publically announced that their App Center is not a direct competitor for the likes of Apple App Store, Blackberry App world and all the other various application stores. That said, it quite plainly is going to reduce the amount of traffic these services. The App Center is designed to grow mobile apps that use Facebook – whether they’re on iOS, Android or the mobile web. From the mobile App Center, users can browse apps that are compatible with their device, and if a mobile app requires installation, they will be sent to download the app from the App Store or Google Play.

The social media landscape evolves on almost a daily basis, but two things it seems are certain: Content is the King, and user engagement is its’ Queen. What happens though, when the Queen is ignored? Is it possible for brands using social media without engagement to still succeed?

The short answer is yes, of course it can. A social media presence without engagement isn’t exactly ‘social’; in fact it is the polar opposite – It’s just media. There really is no logical argument to suggest that this strategy can’t generate healthy return on investment. This type of advertising has been employed successfully since the inception of mass marketing, so there is no reason to doubt it simply because a new way of engaging with customers has arisen. The tried and tested methods are exactly that; tried, and tested.

It is relatively simple to measure success of a traditional advertising campaign – you simply compare the amount of time and money invested in the campaign, against the increased number of sales. If sales outweigh investment, you’re onto a winner. Social media campaigns are a different beast altogether, there are countless ways to quantify ‘successes’. You can measure success in terms of the increased number of unique visitors to your website, your rank on Google, or the amount of times your article has been shared on Facebook (and countless other ways). The difficult thing with this approach is measuring those successes how they have impacted your bottom line.

Social Media vs. Traditional Media

Let’s take a minute to think about the main considerations when planning a media strategy. Content is unquestionably of utmost importance, regardless of your media strategy.  Put simply, if the content of your media is unattractive, irrelevant or disinteresting to the user, you are fighting an uphill battle from the start. That said, if your product or service is sub-standard, then media strategy is the very least of your concerns. Aside from that, traditional media is a known quantity and is the time-proven war horse of promotional campaigns. Generally speaking, brands know what and how they’re selling, and who they’re selling to. In marketing terms, knowledge really is power.

Now let’s briefly go through the process of designing an all-singing, all-dancing social media campaign that encourages engagement and actually adds value to your brand:

• Build a community that users are happy and proud to be a part of. Brands should maintain an ongoing and active presence in the community. Whether that is through regularly engaging with users on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or any other social media vessel.
• Ask questions, and actually listen to the responses. Social media is a reflection of real-life, if a brand talks incessantly about what they do without pausing for feedback or input from their users, said users will quickly tire of the dialogue and look elsewhere.
• Include unique and interesting visual content. Pinterest is now officially the third largest social network, and Facebook have just spent $1bn acquiring Instagram. We humans are inherently visual beings. Therefore, the emphasis must be on creating attractive, engaging photos/artwork/promotions to generate interest and draw people in.
• Build a gate, not a wall. Social media users don’t want to be greeted by endless sales pitches. This applies to your Facebook brand page, your Twitter feed, your Pinterest wall – even your actual website. Obviously you should give valuable content and key promotions pride of place in your virtual real estate, but you must also be open to user-generated and free content as well. The key here is to encourage your fans to ‘share’ (promote) your brand to users who have not yet been introduced to you. This will never happen if your page is essentially an endless, monotonous sales pitch.
• Constantly monitor social media for the hot topics, and get involved. It’s far easier to jump on an existing bandwagon, than it is to build one from scratch. Find out what your customers are talking about, and get involved with the conversation. Once you have built up the rapport, you can start talking to them about your brand.

Those are just some of the key considerations of a social media strategy; the list could (and would) go much further if you were actively looking to invest your time and money in such an approach. The question of traditional vs. social media came up in our office simply because a client had asked us to design them a social media campaign without any sort of engagement from their users.

Initially, we scoffed at them and stated that it wasn’t exactly a ‘social’ media campaign. After weighing up the potential benefits compared to the relatively low outlay of time and money, we’re starting to think it might not be such a bad idea. The question is; how would you react to brands using social media without engagement?

7 of the best examples of Facebook apps that we found:

#1 – Innocent Drinks: Innocent Fruit Picker

Design: 5/5
Longevity: 5/5
Shareability: 5/5
Overall: 15/15

This is one of the best examples of Facebook Apps we could find, and should really come with a health warning. It is highly addictive. Trust me. The premise is simple; the user is in control of a fruit picking patch. You must direct your trusty fruit pickers to the relevant fruit basket, making sure they don’t collide with one another or run into the various obstacles scattered around the level. If you’re proud of your final score, you have the option of sharing your fruit picking prowess amongst your friends by way of a status update. So far I’ve resisted the temptation, although a recent high score had me hovering over the share button for a few fleeting seconds. The Longevity and Shareability in particular rank this amongst the best Facebook Apps out there currently.

#2 – Red Bull: Super Mega Nitro Jump

Design: 5/5
Longevity: 4/5
Shareability: 5/5
Overall: 14/15

Of all the brands on Facebook, Red Bull offer some of the best examples of Facebook Apps to their 30m or so fans. Based on a hugely successful game on Miniclip, Travis Pastrana’s Super Mega Nitro Jump (catchy name, right?) gives users a choice of vehicles ranging from dirt bikes to magic carpets. You are then tasked with trying to set a respectable score on a simple platform game based on getting from one side of the level to the other. If you’re proud of your score, you can challenge your friends to beat you via your news feed. In terms of pure playability, this has to be amongst the best Facebook Apps currently in existence.

#3 – Dominos: Play Today

Design: 4/5
Longevity: 3/5
Shareability: 5/5
Overall: 12/15

Dominos Play Today is a simple, Tetris-style Facebook App. The twist is that should you reach Level 4 or above (and post this achievement to your news feed), Dominos will donate $1 to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospice. This is intended to make the average user more inclined to share their enjoyment of the game, using the donation as the main motivator for playing the game. In the few days that this Facebook App has been live, almost $2,000 has been raised for the Hospice. It’s clearly generating the desired effect and is one of the best Facebook Apps designed by brands with Corporate Responsibility in mind.

#4– Rangemaster: Win A Rangemaster

Design: 4/5
Longevity: 3/5
Shareability: 4/5
Overall: 11/15

Rangemaster offer one of the best examples of Facebook Apps with a prize. Prizes are usually relatively low cost; not in this case. Contestants have the chance of winning a £2,000 range cooker, and there are no tricky questions to answer either. Simply fill in your contact details, and cross your fingers. The brand are clearly banking on users sharing the competition amongst their friends. It’s working too, as the amount of Likes that the brand has received has nearly tripled in the last 4 weeks.

#5 – Best Magazine: Eco-Egg Competition

Design: 3/5
Longevity: 3/5
Shareability: 4/5
Overall: 10/15

Best Magazine are one of the most pro-active brands in terms of ongoing Facebook Apps and Competitions. They usually run a new competition once every week or so. The current prize is a basket full of “eco-eggs”, a long lasting laundry product. The competition questions are rarely difficult, and the answer is usually written within the text of the application itself. While this may not be amongst the best Facebook Apps, Best Magazine do this to promote Shareability.  Users will be far more likely to engage and share with their friends if they believe there is a realistic opportunity to win a prize; whatever that prize may be.

#6 – McDonald’s: Golden McRib Quest

Design: 5/5
Longevity: 2/5
Shareability: 2/5
Overall: 9/15

This is less of a game, and more of a quiz-based Facebook App. The user is tasked with answering various questions in rounds of three, before virtually arriving at their local McDonald’s. If you’ve answered the questions correctly and your luck is in, you will unlock the mysterious Golden McRib. Although the aesthetics are great, the long-lasting appeal of this Facebook App is really quite minimal. This explains it’s lowly ranking in our list of the best examples of Facebook Apps. We expect more from you, Ronald.

#7– EA Sports FIFA 12: You’re Covered

Design: 4/5
Longevity: 1/5
Shareability: 2/5
Overall: 7/15

This is by no means one of the best examples of Facebook Apps. Still, it’s relatively engaging and good fun for football fans. Upload a photo of yourself, and fit it into the cover photo template. You then select your nation and your favourite team, and there you have it. Your face is now on the cover of FIFA 12. While it is certainly not amongst the best Facebook Apps, it’s still great fun to see how you would look on the cover of FIFA 12.

Have you recently noticed any outstanding examples of Facebook Apps by brands that haven’t made it onto our list? We’d love to hear from you with any examples that we overlooked.

This means that now more than ever, brands must try to differentiate themselves from the competition. The recent updates to Facebook brand pages have allowed companies far more scope for customization, to the point where a Facebook Brand page is almost equal to a traditional corporate website. Information, multimedia content and competitions are far more prevalent than they have ever been before.  And this is where running competitions on Facebook (Facebook Promotions) come in.

Facebook have made the conscious decision to enhance user engagement with brands, further increasing the amount of time that the average user is likely to spend on the website. That figure already stands at roughly 7 hours per month on average, so brands are constantly coming up with innovative, appealing competitions and promotions to maximise their chances of grabbing a slice of those 100 or so minutes per week.  We have identified three particularly outstanding Facebook competitions that really captured public interest, the oldest of which dates back nearly three years.

Ikea Tag Marketing Facebook Promotion Example, Autumn 2009:

Ikea were one of the first brands to effectively utilize this technique, and it proved a huge commercial success among their followers. The idea was quite simple; Ikea posted showroom pictures to their fan page on a weekly basis and then asked fans to tag themselves in the photo. The first user to tag a specific item won it as a prize. Prizes included beds, wardrobes, sofas and everything in between. This was Ikea’s promotional video to highlight the competition:

Kohl’s Cares Scholarship Program Facebook Promotion Example – Summer 2010

Concerned with their public perception in terms of Social Responsibility, American department store Kohl’s ran a Facebook Competition in the summer of 2010 which resulted in a total of $10,000,000 worth of charitable donations to 20 various schools in the USA. The relatively unknown brand page exceeded 1m Likes in a matter of days, with the 20 eventual winning schools each receiving in excess of 100,000 votes. Recognising their success, Kohl’s have now turned this into an annual Facebook Competition; albeit with much smaller donations, and their Brand page now has some 6.5m followers.

Coca-Cola Recycling King, Facebook Promotion Example, Summer 2011:

Corporate Responsibility has always been a big issue to Coca-Cola, and their ‘Recycling King’ Facebook Competition in June 2011 really highlighted their commitment to the cause. Coca-Cola took it upon themselves to scour Israel for the locations of recycling bins; 10,000 of which they meticulously added to Facebook Places. Fans were encouraged to ‘check-in’ at one of these locations, and submit photos of themselves recycling Coca-Cola cans. The user who submitted the most entries was crowned as Coca-Cola’s Recycling King. The month-long promotion resulted in over 250,000 Check-Ins, and the uploading of some 26,000 photos, and was a huge boost to Coca-Cola’s Brand perception.

Have you noticed any Facebook Competitions that really caught your eye? We’d love to hear from you with your examples.

If, like me, you fondly remember the early days of MySpace, you will probably consider the level of music integration to be one of the websites’ biggest selling points. MySpace quickly became the hottest place for commercially successful musicians, along with aspiring ones too. This was primarily down to the ease of use, and the level of analysis afforded to its’ users.  Even the most simple of statistics, like ‘number of listens’ offered a great insight into the popularity of a particular musician; but more specifically which of their songs was likely to be the most commercially viable.

Unlike MySpace, songs are not hosted on the website itself. If you want to listen to a particular artist, you have to go through the same process as you would do organically; without the assistance of Facebook. This means an absolutely massive boost for services like Rdio, Deezer and Spotify, who will be now be privy to the marketing prowess and sheer numbers of Facebook.

When you click the Listen button, you will be prompted to confirm the music service you predominantly use, and this will of course be stored for future reference/ease of use. If you don’t already have one of these services installed, you will be guided through the install process in a matter of minutes. Here’s how the new function appears in practice:

The Listen Button has taken pride of place alongside the Like option

Not looking to miss out on a PR bonanza, Spotify have begun advertising their new partnership with Facebook in earnest, and you should expect to see reciprocal links plastered all over their website (and indeed, Facebook’s Help Centre) straight away. This will all come as fairly ominous news to Apple, as iTunes is not amongst the list of preferred music suppliers hand-picked by Facebook. This latest string in the bow also vastly enhances the amount of time the average user is likely to spend browsing Facebook, further detracting from the allure of chargeable services such as iTunes.

The most notable benefit that Facebook brings to the table is the sudden increase in potential audience, and the ability to search for and discover new artists that we had previously never heard of. It’s as simple as looking at your friends’ profile to see which artists they already like or have recently listened to; and then hitting the Listen button if a particular musician happens to catch your eye. Naturally, we will all have the option to post updates to our status feed, to tell our friends what we are currently listening to.

As you would expect, listening to a track allows you the typical Facebook interaction options such as liking the song, and commenting on it. This promotes healthy discussion and interaction amongst your peers, and also allows musicians to promote their own tracks with more of a personal touch – something that is becoming increasingly mandatory in the world of social media. Interaction is King in this day and age, and Facebook understand that fact as well as any global brand.

Without any real fanfare or promotional push, Facebook Listen went live as of Tuesday 17^th April; so expect your home page to start filling up with posts about everyone’s new favourite song almost immediately.

We’ve trawled through some of the most recent and interesting examples of AR technology that we could find, and come to the conclusion that AR tech simply shouldn’t be ignored; but embraced with open arms. Here are two of the examples that we felt really stood out from the crowd, quite literally in the first case.

Tupac Shakur 3D Hologram at Coachella, USA

The AR 3D hologram of deceased rapper Tupac Shakur at a concert in Coachella, USA, last weekend has got the wider public asking two questions – how on Earth did they do that, and what are the limits to such technology? The 5 minute video is a bit on the ‘explicit’ side to include in a blog post, but media coverage of the performance has almost instantly spread worldwide and a HD quality video recording posted less than two days ago has already amassed nearly 3,500,000 views. It shouldn’t take you too long to find it on YouTube if you’re not easily offended.

Spot the difference has never proved quite so difficult...

It is rumoured that it cost the rappers Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre some $10m to put the five minute hologram together completely from scratch, which not only was an exact replica of the deceased rapper’s face and body, but was also completely in tune with his former mannerisms and style of movement. It is no exaggeration to suggest that even the most trained eye would have difficulty spotting the difference between the hologram, and the real thing.

The possibilities with this sort of technology are quite limitless, and open the door for a whole host of possibilities; assuming the costs reduce in line with tech advances. Can you imagine having the opportunity to go to a full-length music concert starring the likes of Elvis Presley, John Lennon, or Bob Marley? If the quality of AR is comparable to this example, it would be a sure-fire success that could potentially bring past icons ‘back to life’ for an hour or two, allowing fans the chance to see their favourite artist one last time.

Google Glasses

On April 4^th, the highly secretive Google X Lab published their first official video showing off their newest innovation – Google Glasses; Project Glass. It seems that Google have single-handedly taken it upon themselves to make glasses cool again, and on this evidence they are certainly on the right path. Just watch the two minute clip below, and you’ll start to get a feel for how this technology could start to play an integral role in your average day.

Functionality is exactly what you’d expect from Google; slick and user-friendly. As soon as the Glasses have booted up, you are greeted with a host of in-built applications. Look up at the sky out of your window and you will be presented with a local weather report for the upcoming day, or take a photo using the in-built camera and you will instantly have the option of uploading it (remember Google+, anyone?) or simply sending it to like-minded Google Glasses pioneers.

Google took the opportunity to gather some public feedback within minutes of the video launch, and although there was the odd negative comment, it was almost universally positive. As Google have proudly announced, the most frequent user-comment on the Google+ page completely echoes our sentiment on Google Glasses: “SHUT UP AND TAKE OUR MONEY!”

Since 2008 Big Dot Media have been proudly supporting creative, advertising, digital and PR agencies the length and breadth of the UK with their digital projects.  As a digital production agency we create tight-knit relationships with our partners to ensure a seamless and highly valuable service.  But what is it that makes a digital production agency so important to the long term success of an agency?

Why use a digital production agency?

In these challenging economic times, agencies are required to do more for their clients, with less budget to work with.  Not only that but they can’t guarantee the level of digital work coming in. Whilst the agency may be a hive of activity with digital work one month, it may be quiet the next.

And while it’s understandable to want to bring digital in-house, many times it’s just not a viable option and partnering with a digital production agency becomes the sensible choice.  For example, if an agency employs a head of digital with a salary of £45,000, the agency needs to make up that figure in digital projects before they’re at a stage when they can balance the books and break even.

Add to this the cost of then employing developers skilled in the seemingly never-ending areas of digital media, agencies need to make sure they’re bringing in a constant stream of digital business.  You can see why it makes sense to use a digital production company to handle the digital projects.  At least until the stream of digital business coming into the agency is stable and ongoing.

There is a wealth of talent, knowledge and experience a digital production agency can share. Over the phone, in person at planning meetings, or attending a pitch with the agency as the technical specialist.  A team of digital experts only a phone call away.

The story of a successful digital production agency is a tale of mutual trust and respect

Building a strong, healthy, trusting working relationship is of paramount importance.  This relates to business in general, but even more so with a digital production agency.  Your are entrusting your name, reputation, and clients to us with every single project we work on.  Trust is huge. Massive!  One of the great things about working with Big Dot is that we’re not interested in fancy client logos on our website! We are only interested in servicing our agency partners to the best of our ability.

Yes it would make life easier if we could shout to potential new partners about all the ground-breaking digital development work we’ve done before that have won awards for our partners.  Or the jaw-dropping Facebook applications that are so good our partner is advertising them all over the TV. But we decided that our digital production agency would work in a silent and confidential capacity because what is so much more important to us is that our partners feel safe in our hands.

And secure in the knowledge that we are not about to show off the hard work of the agency on our own portfolio, or deal with the client directly.

We are set up purely and simply as an add-on to complement your agency. We have a team including Project Planners and Managers, and highly skilled digital developers.  No creatives allowed, we leave that up to you! Just how digital outsourcing should be!

What can a digital production agency give me that a normal full-service agency can’t?

Using a digital production agency will give you access to a team of people with a varying skill set. And thanks to those digital production agencies like ourselves who don’t add a commercial value to a project, there is plenty of room to add a healthy markup to increase your bottom line.

Our team of techies are not only specialised in complex development work including for the web and social media, but we purposely run under capacity so we’re available for rapid-response development work.  Working with agencies means we understand not only how you work, but what your clients expect of you!

Sometimes a digital production agency will account manage from the UK but outsource the development to teams in other countries. We like to ensure our team is UK based at all times. Not only is it good to be a UK employer, but certainly here at Big Dot Media we couldn’t give such high levels of service and attention to our partners as we currently do.

All our developers frequently communicate with our agency partners throughout the life cycle of a project, to keep them informed on progress. This makes it easy when making amends and handling other queries.

Digital Strategy for Agencies and Client Projects

Here at Big Dot, we like to go one step further, and have a team specialised in digital strategy who work closely with the more traditional agencies wanting to be able to integrate digital into their offering. We often go on secondment and work closely with the Board of Directors and train their account teams. We also recruit the right digital staff to match the agency. It’s hard to recruit digital staff when you maybe aren’t quite up to speed on digital yourself.  This is what we feel makes Big Dot Media as your digital production agency stand head and shoulders above the rest.

Our experience with so many successful digital projects across a number of creative and PR agencies throughout the UK means we can offer the most up to date advice and support to your projects.  This includes advising on planning and strategy as and when requested to do so.

If you would like to talk to us about the services we can offer your agency, please call us on 01270 613310.  We look forward to hearing from you.

Digital Production Agencies in the UK

Whilst our particular business model is fairly unique in that we work on all projects in a strictly silent and confidential manner, there are other digital production agencies throughout the UK offering digital outsourcing, two of which are listed below.  We list them for information only, we have no affiliation them with nor are we endorsing their services:

The Inspired Agency
London
www.inspiredagency.com

Pirata
London
www.piratalondon.com

And of course ourselves, Big Dot Media.  And you can find our digital production agency in Cheshire, Manchester and London
www.bigdotmedia.co.uk

Infographic courtesy of Ivan Cash

A former colleague of mine once said to me, “we humans are visual beings, with very short attention spans”, and I don’t think that statement could be much closer to the truth. My intention was to demonstrate ten of the most interesting infographics I could find within this article, but for the sake of aesthetics you can view these images in this separate PDF document.

Infographics seem to be the solution to the ongoing problem of generating and sustaining interest in the message you are trying to convey. Pre-Infographics, it could have taken you ten minutes worth of reading to absorb all of the above statistics, from a traditional report or blog post. The key figures are now compressed into a concise and informative graphical format, allowing its’ designer the creative freedom to prioritise the most salient considerations.  This is clearly demonstrated in the attached document, where it is very evident in more than one example that the author wants to immediately draw your attention towards what they consider the key statistics. This is not only a good thing for the infographic’s designer, but also for the viewer who is likely to be chiefly interested in only the most essential facts.

There is no longer any doubt that Social Media represents the single quickest way to reach the widest possible target audience, and prudent marketers are very much aware of that fact. Of course, this is a double-edged sword for marketers. While there are vast amounts of people to communicate with (for sake of argument, Twitter and Facebook have a combined total of over one billion users; one sixth of the planet give or take), there are also vast amounts of individual users and businesses vying for the people’s limited amounts of interest. Differentiation has become absolutely vital in ensuring that your blog post, infographic (or similar) doesn’t get swept under the virtual carpet.

Infographics offer this differentiation; and although they are becoming a lot more common place these days, the designer still has a great deal more artistic and creative license than with traditional forms of portraying facts and statistics. The next challenge for any would-be infographic creators out there is adopting an innovative approach to design, that keeps them one step ahead of the competition… Long may that trend continue.

I hope these great examples of like gates for Facebook business timelines will not only inspire your own Facebook page, but show you that the like gate is still a real possibility.  Some of these like gate examples will be time-sensitive if a competition is running so I’ll keep it updated as necessary.

Our Best Like Gate Examples:

1.  Hotel Indigo Europe

Hotel Indigo have a nice like gate example competition on their business timeline.  You will find the tab underneath the cover photo, titled ‘Win with Hotel Indigo‘.  Good use of creative, and the extra pixel space that the new custom app area gives us.  In fact, all the custom tabs have great creative and are very attractive which will boost fan engagement.

2.  Tiffany & Co

A beautiful business timeline and a beautiful, emotive like gate example.  The Tiffany & Co like gate is in good keeping with the branding and is entitled ‘True Love‘.  Once you click like, providing you haven’t ‘liked’ this business timeline already, the content is revealed.

3.  Next

Clothing giant Next use a like gate competition tab, called ‘Room ReStyle Competition‘, and although the competition creative once you reveal the content is striking, the initial like gate screen could be better.  It’s rather dull.  However I’m sure it’ll do its job and attract new followers to Next.

4. Cadburys Creme Egg

This is a fun little Facebook competition like gate, Goo Games, however the closing date is April 9th so if you’re reading this article later, there may be something else in its place.  The creative unfortunately hasn’t been optimised for the new larger pixel area which the custom tabs have been given since the change to the new Facebook timeline for business pages, and the arrow to ‘like’ the page is in the wrong area but if it’s only running until April 9th then they probably decided there’s no point in changing the creative.

5.  Johnsons Baby

Johnsons Baby have a like gate on their Offers and Contest custom facebook tab.  And a cute one it is too.  If only they’d have changed the creative once the app space changed, because as it stands now the arrow which is supposed to be pointing to the like box, is pointing in the wrong direction.  Sort it out Johnsons!  It’s a very good example of a Facebook like gate though, using emotive creative and imagery.  And it tells you what you can expect for clicking on like, in this case coupons and sweepstakes. If you’re going to use a like gate, make sure you tell your would-be followers what they are going to get for liking you!  Make sure you get the maximum from your like gate.

6.  Rihanna

Yes, even Rihanna has a like gate.  Even with 54,000,000 likers already, I guess you can never have too many followers… Rihanna Unlocked: Simple, with uncomplicated creative, and some nice interactive content once the page is revealed.  This is what a Facebook like gate should be about; Interactive content, engaging the user, not just demanding that they like your page for the heck of it.  That’s exactly why you can now only like gate off the main business timeline, and not on the business timeline itself.  It encourages more engaging content, and you get to work harder for your likes.

7.  Kuoni Travel

You just can’t resist a vacation business timeline right? The images look so inviting on the new business timelines, they’re shown off to great effect, and Kuoni Travel is no different.  This Facebook like gate example (the custom tab is creatively called…competition!) does everything right and adheres to guidelines by telling potential followers they’ll get access to information as well as being able to enter the competition.   And what a great competition, I entered myself!!

Interested in seeing who is doing the new Facebook Timelines for Business Pages really well? Then have a read of this article here.

I hope these Facebook like gate examples give you inspiration for your own campaign, as always if there’s anything we can help you with then please get in touch.