Facebook places - checking in the same as a Like?

Cianos

Hey,
I'm wondering is there a difference between someone checking in to a listing on Facebook Places, and Liking the page?

If someone checks in, is that the end of the interaction or will they receive info in their news feed as if they had Liked the business page?

If the former, is it better to push people to Like a page rather than Check In via Places?

Thanks!

BrianD

Check ins are into physical locations.

If I'm a retail business I can create a page for my business and others can 'like it'. We're all familiar with that.

Facebook also created 'Places' whereby you can create a place for your business using a mobile device with GPS (very similar to Foursquare). If I have my smartphone, I can 'check in' to this place e.g. a cafe. In otherwards, I'm saying I'm phsically in this place and you may see my location on a map (depends on your privacy settings). If I check in it will appear in my newsfeed just like a 'like'. However, a check in does not equal a like. You will also have to 'Like' the place as well.

The ideal situation is to have your Page and Place merged - so the place and the page are the one entity. Facebook are in the throes of allowing this to happen but there seems to be a lot of bugs and glitches. So far as I can see the 'check in' and 'like' for a merged Page/Place will still be separate actions.

Cianos

Yes from what I can see, after checking in the "Like" button is still there on the page, meaning the user has yet to Like it.

I don't quite see the value of this for the retailer - they've to entice a check in by giving something away, but there's no way to keep that customer connected to their page afterwards to send out info about future offers etc.

Or am I missing something?

mneylon

You can merge the two together ie. a page and a place.

As a business you could also generate ads based on the "story" ie. the checkin.

BrianD

Cianos wrote: »

Yes from what I can see, after checking in the "Like" button is still there on the page, meaning the user has yet to Like it.

I don't quite see the value of this for the retailer - they've to entice a check in by giving something away, but there's no way to keep that customer connected to their page afterwards to send out info about future offers etc.

Or am I missing something?

It's fair to say that with the absence of being able to offer a deal that there is little that the place owner can offer as an incentive to check in. At the moment the place owner doesn't get to see who has checked in either.

On the plus side, if somebody checks into a place then it appears in their newsfeed and there is a value of that. X, Y and Z have checked in to your place and all their friends can see this activity. I would guess that if somebody has gone to the trouble of checking in that they'll also like the page. If they have checked in their friends then there's a high probability that those friends will also like your page.

As Blacknight said the best option is to merge the page and place as one.

Cianos

I have the Page and Place under the same listing, so that's good.

We're offering a "free gift with any purchase" incentive in the shop window to encourage people to check in. Apparently three people in total have checked in (me and two others), and more have gone home and Liked the page on their computer (which is great imo, shows they care enough to remember to do it when they get home). For now we're also allowing the free gift to those who Like the page, because some people see the two as the same action, or at least people reading the poster would probably not differentiate between the two actions.

However, the page currently only shows there being 1 check in (me). I was looking at the page yesterday and it said 2 people have checked in, but today it's down to 1. I presume you can't "uncheck in", and I think it'd be unlikely someone would go to the trouble of doing this anyway

Anyway, I think I'm going to push in the direction of getting people to Like the page when they get home rather than check in, as you have them listed then for future promotions which is the real goal here.

BrianD

Facebook are very precious about the 'Like' button - hence they tend to ban pages that use the 'Like' function as part of competitions on the wall. You'd want to check that your promotion is not breaching their terms of service.

I'd imagine that the Like and Check-in functions will be kept separate. Because I check in or get checked into a place by somebody else does not necessarily mean that I 'Like' the place.

As regards your check-ins. You'll only ever see your friends who have checked in and the rest will be just an aggregate number. It is possible that if a person 'unlikes' a merged page/place that their check-ins also disappear.

You can't 'uncheck out' of a place though you can remove the post from your wall.