The Facebook Fan Page: When Installing a Like Gate is a Mistake

If you've developed a Facebook fan page for your business or brand, or even if you're still learning the ropes, you've no doubt heard about or seen like gates, otherwise known as a reveal page or a fan gate. It's when you tease a visitor into liking your fan page with an image separate from your main welcome page that promises unique information, coupons, freebies or downloads to visitors who like the page. Once the visitor clicks like, the reveal page disappears and they are taken to a new welcome page which divulges secrets, or has free information or a download link that contains useful and unique information.

Fan-gating is "in" right now, because it's been said that a like gate or reveal page will ensure up to 38% more likes than a page that takes you straight to the wall. That statistic may or may not be accurate (Concrete data with references are all but impossible to find), but are like gates being overused?

While fan page like gates are relatively new, my prediction is that they will soon go the way of passé website enter pages that do nothing but waste a visitor's time and feed the ego of the designer or website owner. That's not to say reveal pages don't have their place; Just don't use them because you think it's the only way to gain more likes, or even worse, because they look "cool" when they are blurry and mysterious-looking. If you're desperate for likes, it will show, and not in a positive light.

Like gates are appropriate when you have something of real value to offer your visitor - something they can't find online with a Google search, or on someone else's fan page. If you're going to use a reveal page, make the reward worth your visitors' time and sensibilities. Offer a promotional code that you can get only after liking your page. Offer a valuable coupon. Offer a free e-book with useful information - something along those lines. Just make sure you're not losing too much money in the process.

If you don't fall into the above scenarios, or if the information you provide isn't unique or particularly helpful, there's a good chance that like-gating your visitors will cheapen your business or product. How many times have you Googled your way onto what looks like a promising, information-packed website only to find it's one of those cookie-cutter long, thin, spammy ad pages with common-knowledge information that exist only to charge you for $25 e-books and other such drivel. You feel a bit swindled, right?

Although like gates aren't as dramatic or time-consuming, many still have the same negative feel. Why force a user to like your brand? What kind of first impression does a needless reveal page give to today's web-savvy population? Now that like gates are becoming ubiquitous, they're definitely starting to get a spammy stink to them. Besides, if your visitor is simply bored and brand surfing, they can get to your wall whether they hit like or not. I believe as time goes by, more and more visitors inundated with reveal pages will bypass liking the brand all together and go straight to the wall.

Some of the best like gates come from big corporations, and they're always simple, sometimes abstract, and contain a modern graphic design model. A good reveal page will make you want to like the brand even if there's no special offer to be had. Red Bull's Facebook page is a great example of a friendly graphic design-oriented reveal page. Likeable Media, an advertising agency out of NYC also has a simple, graphics-oriented page that doesn't make you feel forced into liking their brand.

While there are some well-thought out reveal pages on Facebook, guess who's most likely to pester their visitors with spammy like gates? Small-business freelance social media "experts." Go figure.