Last week Facebook made a change that made it possible for social media marketers to use likes and comments as entries into Page promotions. Essentially, you won't have to use a third-party publishing platform to run promotions on the network any longer.
While it's a significant improvement that has been well received by the SMM community, it is not easy to keep track of those engagement metrics and user information but there is at least one tool that's making it possible right now. DIY app creation platform Shortstack has released a tool that allows its users to collect and import likes and comments from a Page's status update into a database when they run promotions on the Facebook timelines. Once the information has been imported into the database, Shortstack users can then pick a random winner and even use the data in the future for their marketing efforts. Facebook Page admins can also ask entrants to provide additional contact or demographic information through a custom app.
"Businesses that run promotions on their timelines will most likely see a big increase in immediate engagement on their posts," said Jim Belosic, CEO of ShortStack. "However, for businesses that have a large number of fans and are looking to further leverage the data they collect from their fans, a tool like ShortStack's Comment/Like Importer can help them do that by collecting the information and organizing it into a database."
ShortStack's new database and comment/like importer feature is available for businesses using one of its paid plans (which start at $30.