Every good business looking to maximise its reach needs a Facebook page as part of its overall social media strategy. It’s a great – and inexpensive way – of promoting your brand, keeping your customers updated, encouraging feedback and sharing links, photos and videos. If you’re wondering what it involves, check out Starbucks’ Facebook page, which provides a good overview of the kind of services you can provide through Facebook for your customers.
Page changes
Facebook recently implemented a major redesign of personal profile pages, and this has now been extended to “fan” pages, which have also been renamed simply as Facebook Pages. This reflects the growing use of these pages by businesses and groups rather than just artists and other celebrities.
It’s not just about a name change coupled with a facelift, either – the changes are designed to not just boost the page’s visibility, but also to make it easier to both access and administer from your end.
At the moment, you have the option of switching voluntarily, but by the 10th March this will become compulsory. To help you understand why you should change and how to do it, we’ve compiled a quick-fire guide to explain both the benefits and practicalities of switching.
Facebook Pages – what’s new
• The layout has changed to make the pages look more similar to personal profile pages. Out go the tabs at the top of the page – they can now be found underneath your main profile logo or image in the left-hand column. In their place go a random selection of the latest photos published to your profile.
• Your administrator can now switch between their own personal profile and your Facebook Page’s new profile, which gives them more control over how it works. For example, you can now build specific pages for use as campaign landing pages, freeing up the Welcome message to do exactly that, provide a welcome to your brand.
• More than one staff member can be given access to the Facebook Page, enabling you to share the burden of keeping it up to date. Selected members can even be made visible on the page, providing a human face to your organisation.
• Extend your brand’s reach: when logged on to the Facebook Page’s profile, your Administrator can like or comment on other wall posts as the brand rather than through their own individual profile.
• The Facebook Page profile also ensures your Administrator receives notifications – via both the page and email – whenever someone comments or posts to your wall. The end result is that it’s easier to not just stay in touch with customers, but respond to them in a timely manner.
• Administrators also get their own personal news feed, which includes any posts from other pages they’ve liked – when utilised correctly, it makes it easier to keep up to date with competitors, suppliers and more besides.
5 quick-fire tips to pass on to your administrator
• By default, you’ll always comment on other people’s posts as your company’s brand name, even when logged on as yourself – change this behaviour by clicking Edit Page > Your settings.
• Always make sure you’re not logged on as your band before using Facebook for personal reasons – select Account to see which profile you’re logged on and to switch back if necessary.
• Tabs have been moved to the left-hand column, but only the first six will appear over the fold, so bear this in mind when planning your Facebook Page’s structure.
• By default, posts are not displayed in chronological order, but by how interesting they are. If this isn’t acceptable, change the default from the Edit Page > Manage permissions page. You can also decide which landing page – wall or info – to use from here.
• Sadly there’s not as yet any control over which photos are displayed here, but any photos deemed unsuitable for the front page can be removed from here – roll the mouse over the unwanted photo and click the X button that appears to hide it.
