How To Implement Exclusive Content For Fans On Facebook

Trying to bolster the number of people that like your Facebook page? Try giving users a reason to like you by offering a special only to those that actually ‘like’ you. Facebook allows for you to deliver different content on FMBL tabs between users that are already connected to your page and users that aren’t.

Facebook offers the “visible-to-connection’ tag that shows the contents within the tag to those who like a page, and can show completely different code to those who haven’t liked your page. This allows you to make your FBML tab exclusive to those who are a fan and great for marketing the following:

• coupons
• trials
• samples
• exclusive events
• sneak previews
• sales

Here is a great example of how you can use the ‘visible-to-connection’ tag on your Facebook tab with a sale/coupon code offering:

Go to the Facebook Page to see the code in action.

In June, I recapped a great example of a promotion that K2 skis executed that features the “visible-to-connection” code to leak their new skis for the 2010 season. Those users that were not fans were shown a blurred out image of the skis and those that were fans were shown a micro-site with all of the new skis for the season.

Here is a sample on how it looks when implementing this code on your FBML tab:

If you like this page, you will see this amazing message.

Those that don’t like this page get this message

When implementing this code, make sure that your messaging that you send to non-connected users features text telling them to like the page for more information and even include the ‘Like’ button and an arrow to the top of the page where it resides.

A warning about using this tag is that it could throw some users for a loop, and will only allow those with Facebook accounts the opportunity to view the content. Users that are not logged into Facebook will not see the content. In addition, all of the content can be found by looking at the source-code as Facebook simply replaces the unique content with whitespace for those users that do not like the page.

For more detailed technical information, check out the visible-to-connection tag and the else tag on Facebook.

About The Author

Greg Finn

Greg Finn is the Director of Marketing for Cypress North, a company that provides digital marketing and web development. He is a co-host of Marketing O'Clock and has been in the digital marketing industry for nearly 20 years. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn.