We are pleased to present this inaugural post of the Digital Marketing Minute.  Each week will provide a short post on some news in the digital marketing world.   This week’s post is about a change on Facebook’s platform that affects how marketers conduct promotions.

In an August 7 post on its Developers blog page, Facebook announced that, effective November 5, 2014, use of a “Like Gate,” which requires Facebook users to “Like” a page before participating in a brand’s promotional activity, is not allowed.  In other words, marketers cannot require consumers to “Like” a brand page before entering a sweepstakes or a contest, participating in an offer or accessing certain content.

Facebook reasons that banning the Like Gate will help “ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them” and that consumers “’Like’ pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives” (see https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2014/08/07/Graph-API-v2.1/).