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On February 10th, Facebook introduced the new Business Page layout that has included many new and often asked for features. Facebook gives you the ability to tour the new design before you have to upgrade, but all pages will be upgraded to the new design by March 10th. If you want to see what the new page design looks like, visit the Masterful Marketing Facebook page or view this video tutorial by Jason Keath of Social Fresh.
I chose to upgrade immediately because I liked what I saw from a clean design and some new features that have been asked for for quite some time.
The following is a list of the important changes and how they will benefit you:
- Photo strip above the Wall – If your business is like mine, there aren’t a lot of pictures for show and tell but this very visible feature makes you think about how you can enhance your page with more imagery. For businesses that do have a lot of pictures, this will enable you to showcase photos relating to your business. Also note the new photo viewer that was also a recent upgrade for viewing photos in a lightbox fashion.
- Tabs are gone and the navigation has been moved to the left panel – Just as your personal profile, removing the tabs makes the page neater and more organized. Some are complaining about the removal of the tab view, but people are already familiar with this new layout and it shouldn’t result in confusion. The good news is your landing page for those who have not liked your page is intact and as with the tabs, you can order the important areas of your business page so they show above the fold.
- Change the category of your page – Many people when they created their page didn’t understand the implications of choosing a category and may not have selected one that gave them the most benefits. Now you can!
- Interact on Facebook as your page – When you choose this option, you can now post comments on pages you have liked from your business page and see stories from the pages you like in your news feed (click on the “home” link in the top navigation). Pages, however, cannot comment or like on a personal page as a brand page. The search box on your page only searches for pages, not personal profiles.
- Post on your page through your personal profile, rather than the page – For all my client’s pages for which I am an administrator, I can now interact on the page as a person and comment and like posts as me, not the admin of the page.
- Receive email notifications regarding activity on your Page – Now you don’t have to make it a point to check the page for comments or likes by your fans. You can choose to receive email notifications to alert you of comments on your page. This allows you to be more attentive to your fans without having to remember to go check your page.
The following are other changes that you need to be aware of:
- Profile picture is finally reduced from 200 x 600 pixels to 180 x 540 as promised a while back. I noticed mine was a bit blurry so I recreated it at the correct size.
- The information box that was below the Page picture has been removed and the information is now on the info page.
- Admins can be featured on the page to provide visibility if you wish.
- You can select which featured pages appear in left column or let them randomly rotate to give all of them visibility.
- Use of iframes rather than static FBML for custom tabs and applications.
For more details on these features, read Facebook Page Redesign 2011: All You Need To Know by Inside Facebook.
Many of these features are things people have been wanting for a long time and I highly recommend that you upgrade your page sooner than later. Facebook is delivering on the requirements voiced by their users in an organized fashion.
What do you think of the new features? Have you upgraded your page yet?
Article source: http://masterful-marketing.com/facebook-business-page-recent-updates/
