Photo courtesy of smileham
By now you have likely heard of the design changes coming on Facebook. On March 30, all Facebook Pages will be upgraded to the new format, so it’s a good idea stay ahead of the curve and optimize your business page to take advantage of the new design and features right away. Facebook can be a powerful storytelling tool for any business, if you are able to position yourself to keep up with the speed of communication.
As you may have noticed, the new design no longer has a landing page. People will always see the timeline view of your page when they visit. Your landing page and other tabs will still be available, but you cannot make them the default page that visitors see first.
With no landing page, Facebook has created a space for a large cover image to represent your business. There are rules about what you can use for this image that mainly limit your ability to use it for promotion. You can’t use the image to provide price or purchase information, contact information or calls to action. Instead, be creative and choose an image that best represents your company in an engaging way. Highlight a popular product, use a fun photo of your employees or give an inside look at your operations. There will also be a small square spot for another image, which is a good place to put your logo.
There are lots of other new features to get to know. You can:
- “Star” stories to highlight posts you think are important. This will automatically expand these posts to full screen and give them added visibility.
- Pin posts that you want to keep in front of your audience to the top of your page. Pinned posts stay at the top for seven days, and then go back to their usual spot in the timeline. This is a great way to ensure important events or special offers reach your audience.
- Add milestones to mark important events in your company’s history. Milestones are automatically expanded to full screen in the timeline and give you an opportunity to share your company’s heritage. You can note when a product was launched, when key employees were hired or when you opened a new location.
- Rearrange the order of the views and apps that appear below your cover image. The Photos view will always appear first, but you can shuffle other views to prioritize them.
- Send private messages to people who have contacted your page. Visitors to your page can now send you private messages by clicking the “message” tab on your timeline, and you confidentially respond. However, you can only contact people who have initiated the contact through a message.
- Go beyond “Like.” Fans will have the opportunity to do more than just like your posts and photos. They will be able to love, want, own – with a list of verbs for them to choose from.
Don’t miss the Admin Panel right at the top of the page, which will show and makes it easy to quickly respond to anyone who has interacted with your page. You can use the Admin Panel to send messages, view notifications and insights, access your activity log to manage the content on your page and use the Edit menu to control your settings. Visitors to your page won’t see the Admin Panel, it’s only visible to you and any other page admins.
Another new feature is Facebook Offers. Currently only available to managed advertising clients of Facebook, they expect to expand the availability soon. Offers are like coupons that that people can claim to redeem for special deals at your business. There’s no cost to create offers, so we’ll be keeping an eye on how things develop.
If there is one thing we know for sure about Facebook, it’s that it is constantly evolving. Take advantage of the new features to tell your story and keep your audience up to speed. You can learn more about the new design here, and of course you can always contact us for advice and assistance. We’re happy to help you with the transition!