Submitted by Katie Hellmuth on | 0 Comments
Facebook has been making changes to the way regular people and business use it, and they've been making them fast. More and more people are using Facebook for personal reasons, and businesses know that, so have been clamoring to get in front of their customers. Facebook has been watching how businesses are using it, as well as how regular people have been reacting, and have made changes to help the experience overall.
We asked the pros over at SocialBees to break down the changes Facebook made to business pages. SocialBees design Facebook pages for businesses, so we knew they would have a great understanding of the changes, and how they affect you.
Thank you Thomas Evans, VP of Operations at Socialbees, for contributing this article to our blog!
While it is taking many businesses owners time to get used to the changes Facebook recently rolled out for Pages, the changes provide some exciting new opportunities for Page owners. Let's start with the basics:
PAGES LAYOUT LOOKS LIKE YOUR PERSONAL PROFILE LAYOUT, WITH A TWIST
1. The first change you will notice is that the style of the Pages is now very similar to personal profiles (which also changed recently, as you may remember). The tabs are no longer featured at the top of the page, and have been replaced by a navigation section on the left side. Don't worry, all of your custom Facebook tabs and landing pages are still featured, they will now just be accessed from the new navigation area.
2. The other main layout change is the addition of a line of photos that is displayed for all visitors, just like the new personal profiles.
3. Finally, instead of showing the posts in chronological order, they now are sorted using similar algorithm that the Home Page' Top News feed does.
POSTING ABILITY
And now for the fun stuff. Administrators of Facebook Pages now have the ability to post comments as either themselves, or as the brand, company or page that they are representing. Basically, you can now browse through Facebook as your Page. This is critical as it provides the opportunity to form and strengthen personal relationships as your brand, which is one of the main goals of using Social Media. You can now visit other pages as your page, and like them and comment on their posts. You can even interact with public personal Facebook profiles as your page. To access this, simply find the 'Account' settings at the top right of the page, and select "Use Facebook as Page."
NOTIFICATIONS
Once you have switched to the new Facebook Page layout (all pages will automatically be switched in March 2011) you will probably start to see a lot more activity in your notifications. There are many instances when page owners simply forget to check if anyone has commented on their wall, now, you can get individual notifications for each of your pages to ensure that no fan goes neglected. You also have the option to receive email alerts each time a comment is posted.
When Facebook changed the layout of personal pages, there were a lot of complaints and users did not see the point of making the changes. While this may be the case again for Facebook Pages, users will learn to appreciate and utilize the new features as they are significant improvements to the Facebook Pages experience.
