In case you were overzealous on celebrating Leap Year, and missed the news on the many changes that are happening or have occurred on Facebook, we’re going to give you a brief summary, with some friendly advice. There’s a whole lot going on with the changes to business pages, and some of it can be very confusing.
You have probably noticed Timelines on your personal profile or on friends’ profiles. Timelines have come to pages. Your company is no longer forced to work with the 200 pixel wide image. You now have a small image, and an entire canvas (that is 850 pixels wide) to fill. That means you can focus all of your artistic flair on the cover image, and allow your logo to remain consistent. No longer do you have to try and modify your company logo to fit the seasons. You can maintain your branding, and simply change out the cover image to allow for expression.
The “Info” portion is now front and center. Make sure your store hours, phone numbers, etc. are all completed. You’ll also notice something else front and center: your apps. This causes a very large change for some companies. If your strategy was using a like gate that loaded instantly, and forced your prospective fan to like you before continuing, it’s time to come up with a new strategy. The fact that you can now have graphics that represent your apps, and that they are in what I would consider a more highlighted area means that your app quality needs to be maximized.
Speaking of apps, you will notice that you only have room for 3 “above the fold” apps. Put your very best stuff right on top, as only really loyal fans are going to open the drop-down to see your additional apps. If you have multiple locations tied into one Facebook page, I suggest using the Facebook Map app. It’s a sweet way to have a single page, but still have the ability to easily point out all of your locations, and it uses location based information to lead your fan to the closest location. Lastly, most of your old apps are now out of style. You need to go back, and make them fit to the 810 pixel canvas.
As an admin you have additional control over the postings. You can now star posts, which makes them double wide. This can draw extra attention to wide graphics. You have the ability to back date, so you can fill in information from years ago. Milestones are an excellent tool to use when you want to backdate your past events. Rather than simply putting in posts, and backdating them, use milestones to create important events. Use this for big, important events that happened throughout history.
Post of the Week basically bookmarks a specific post, and keeps it at the top of your timeline. It makes sure that the most important post doesn’t get slipped down the timeline. You can also do this with questions, polls, photo galleries, etc. Therefore, if you have something that specifically asks non-fans to like you, it may be a way to ask for likes. It won’t substitute a like-gate, but it is an option.
Admin panel is completely redone. There’s a real reason they are calling it “Mission Control”. It gives you front and center what is happening on your page. It shows all of the social tools you need right away, such as insights, page tips, new likes, etc. Now that pages can message back and forth privately, instead of just on the wall, it will provide this information right away. There’s going to be new admin permissions. You don’t want everyone to be able to control the whole page? Not a problem. Coming later in March, there will be 5 different admin levels. You can give your customer service level people one type of access, without fear that they are changing permissions or moving apps around.
All in all, the changes are good. For the psychology behind the changes, stay tuned.
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