March 10th Facebook announced an update to the look of Facebook company pages. Some businesses have already updated to the new look. It is your option to do it early or wait until Facebook converts everyone’s business pages.
The Admin Panel has updates providing relevant details up front. You can dive deeper into the metrics just as before.
“Overview” tab provides access to the “Pages to Watch” tool that gives insight on what pages your fans are watching.
Cover image change moves company page name onto image area, which is a cleaner look. The cover image size doesn’t change. Also, notice the tabs. The few that are visible are like simple website navigation links. Your pretty app icons are still there, but further down the page.
Newsfeed
Ahh – it’s made simpler too. It runs in one column on the right rather than the alternating stepped view of old. Immediately to the left at the top under your profile picture is all the relevant information about your company including number of likes. And just below that are all your custom apps: photos, events, etc.
What should you do?
- Review your cover photo design to be sure it will still look good with the text and buttons overlaid across the bottom. The profile photo is shifted up and may impact the layout of your customized cover and require editing of your cover photo.
- Additionally cover photo are now above all of your tabs. In the old design, cover photos were only visible on the Timeline tab. Now they are everywhere! So consider whether you should change the cover image regularly if you aren’t. Cover image is more important than ever. It can be effective in engaging fans and driving brand identity.
- Choose your most important tabs and reorder them so that they are the first two items after the About tab (which you can’t move). Since you can only show two at a time, it’s going to be even more important to promote your tabs (contests, events, etc.) with visually engaging posts. Cross market your events and contests on your website and other marketing to increase fan visits and likes. You still have the ability to use Facebook advertising or pay to boost post exposure, as well. ShortStack and Pagemodo are two web based systems that make it easy to create custom content like contests.
- If you aren’t using custom tab images consider making them. Though they are small and now positioned on the left below “About Us”, images enhance their visibility and help in attracting attention. A visual is worth a thousand words so using the right image will make it easier for your fans to see and recognize the tab.
One more note: this new Facebook company page design will be rolled out to some degree on the mobile version of Facebook (m.facebook.com) but not in the Facebook mobile app yet.
Don’t wait for Facebook to convert your page to the new look. Be proactive in managing your social media content strategy to leverage the changes to your benefit. Let us know whether Facebook evolution of page look is a benefit to your company page or just more work.
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