New Facebook Business Page Design
Our personal Facebook profiles changed a while back, and now our business pages are getting an overhaul as well.
When you go to your Facebook Page now, right at the very top you can see the announcement of the new upgrade option. If you haven’t switched your page over yet, take a look at the preview to get an idea of how things are going to change. All pages will be automatically switched over on March 10, 2011 so it’s important to know what these changes mean for your business page.
This quick little video shows you some of the most important changes, and how they look on my Facebook page, which I’ve just finished polishing to work with the new design. Read on below for more detailed information about what you need to know for your business Facebook page.
I’ve updated this post on April 1, 2011. All additions in yellow.
The changes and how your they affect your strategy
Photos
Right at the top of the page, there will be a scroll bar of 5 photos, similar to what is on your personal profile. These are strictly the photos that you have uploaded, so you have complete control here. A fan is not able to put photos here.
Ideal photo size is 970 pixels x 680 pixels. Not sure how to get photos in a specific size? Here are some photo resizing options for you.
This bar will display the most recent photos. You have the option to hide photos – there is a little “x” in the right hand corner which when clicked will remove the photo from the banner. You’ll have to do a little playing around to get the photos you want there. Clearly, you want to pick the most relevant photos and the ones that put your small business in the best light.
What if you don’t have 5 photos uploaded? With the new design, no photos means ugly blank areas. And that’s no good.
I’ve since come across pages that have no photos. If this is the option you prefer, just hide your photos and your photos bar should disappear.
If your small business involves selling a product, then the pictures will not be a big deal for you. Product images work great. Same goes for businesses that offer a service that can be visually represented. A landscaping company can add photos of the gardens they have worked on, for example. Easy, easy.
Social Mouths does not have "tangible" services to display, but has chosen photos reflective of social media, which is his area of expertise (definitely check out his site - a great resource!)
The biggest challenge will be for businesses that don’t sell a tangible product. If this is you and you’re struggling with what pictures to display, getting a photo of yourself up there is definitely an idea. Your logo would work too. Or general pictures that are related to your business somehow.
I thought it would be great if businesses could have a phrase running across the top, but unfortunately the pictures along the top are not static. Every time you refresh the page, they move around and get jumbled up. It currently has nothing to do with the order they were uploaded in, which I find super strange. So you have to think of images that will work fine regardless of the order they are in. I’m hoping that this is something that Facebook will fix in the future.
There is currently an app called Profile Maker that allows you to customize your personal profile so that the 5 pictures together make up an image and remain static (so that you can have a phrase as I touched on above). I tried to use it for my page and was not able to. It currently only works for personal profiles, but I suspect that they will soon capitalize on the new page design to make this possible for pages. I will keep you posted on any developments in this regard.
Tabs
The tabs will no longer run on the top but on the left hand side of your page. Straightforward.
You can easily change the order of your tabs by simply dragging them to where you want them. Just click the little “edit” button you see under your tabs. You can also hide tabs from showing up by clicking the little “x” next to the tab.
Landing Page
If you have set up a custom landing page for your business page, it is still there. So no worries about that one!
Wall Posts
This is a BIG change and one that I really don’t like. The posts with the most feedback will show up at the top. The posts will no longer be in chronological order. I find this really counter intuitive. When I go to a page, I want to see the most recent activity. I’m still scratching my head on this one.
I have noticed, however, that when I select to only view what I have posted on my wall, this remains in chronological order. I’m not sure if this is temporary, so we’ll just have to see what happens as the Facebook crew finalizes this new design.
Yup, sure enough this odd setting has been adjusted. Yahoo! You now have the choice at the top of the wall stream to either view the most recent posts, or check out the top posts.
Notifications
Another major change, but this one I like. You can now get notified via email when there is interaction on your page. Which is awesome! No need to keep on checking back to see if there are any comments.
Logged in as your Page
This is another huge difference. You can now use Facebook as your page, rather than as you the person. Just click the “Use Facebook As” on the top right and away you go.
Here’s what will happen when you’re using Facebook as your page:
• Your newsfeed will only be the pages that you have liked. It makes it much easier to keep on top of what’s going on it your industry.
• You can like other pages as your page. This page will show up under “Likes”, if you choose to have that enabled. This used to be called “Favourite Pages”.
You are not able to control what gets shown here. The pages you have liked as your page will rotate randomly.
• You can comment and participate on other pages as your page, which is terrific. For networking and interacting with other businesses in your industry, or businesses that also serve your target market, this will make it that much easier to bring people back to your business page. Before, you would be commenting as yourself as a person, which would make it challenging for someone to link you to your business.
• Alternatively, if you ever wanted to interact with your page as yourself the person, you can now do that too.
Hopefully that all made sense 🙂 It will take a bit of getting used to, switching back and forth between yourself and your business.
Change your pages’ category
This again is a great one. It used to be that whatever you originally set your page category to was it. No changes allowed. You had to delete and start again. No more! You are able to change categories easily, so if you are not happy with what you originally chose, go to “Basic Information” under edit and change away!
What’s missing?
The biggest thing that’s now missing is that you no longer have an area on the left hand side, where you could write a little blurb about your biz and have your website link. This is a change that I personally do not like. I liked being able to give a little description of what I was all about. But that’s gone now…sigh!
It’s back my friends! There is now a small “About” blurb. What is visible is just the first 73 characters of what you have put in your about section (Edit/Basic Information). If someone is interested in reading the whole shebang, they can click “more”. Just make sure your teeny little blurb that automatically shows actually gets some sort of message across.
Other little changes
There are some other little changes that you will notice as you’re playing around with the new design. I recommend going through the “edit” section, just to familiarize yourself with the new options.
No more static FBML tabs
Facebook removed the FBML tabs, which allowed you to create custom tabs (for example, a welcome tab, or a tab where your fans can sign up for your email updates) and replaced them with iFrames. iFrames is much more complicated to use, so if you’re not techie, don’t even bother. There are a few free options that have come up: Wildfire, Static HTML iframe tabs and Involver If you’re ready to give things a go on your own, this is a great post from SocialMouths that gives you excellent step by step instructions for the Wildfire option.
And there you have it! So, what do you think of the new Facebook pages design? Love it? Hate it? A little of both? Share your views in the comments…
My name is Martina and I’m a 
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