When it comes to the Internet, and specifically social media platforms, change has become the only constant. Usually, platforms simply update the look and feel of the site or app, maybe throw in some improved user experience features, and call it a day. However, Facebook recently announced that they’re making a major overhaul of a huge sector of their site – Facebook Business Pages. Here’s what you need to know about the new Business Page layouts and how it will affect your profile.
Action Buttons
Brand new action buttons will now be featured at the top of Pages. These buttons will make it easier for patrons to interact with your business by booking an appointment, ordering food, or sending a message. Businesses will be able to choose the action buttons that are best suited for their industry to display on their page in their Facebook Page settings. It is vital for businesses to take advantage of this change, as it is optimizing the user experience for visitors to business pages.
With Facebook’s new business page layout, businesses will now be able to choose the action buttons that are best suited for their industry to display on their page in their Facebook Page settings.
Business Information
There has always been a spot for businesses to display their hours and location, but the new page layouts enable owners to feature information more prominently on their page. This feature is especially helpful to pages that Facebook classify as a service business. Service businesses can choose to highlight the latest content like events and offers. This makes changing your specials or promoting your business events easy. In conjunction with events, businesses will now be able to sell tickets to their Facebook Events directly through their Page. There will also be event-specific ads to help promote the events.
Jobs & Careers
Not available immediately, but in the next few months, Facebook will be rolling out job listings to businesses across the world. After testing the feature back in 2017, companies will all be able to take advantage soon.
It’s a CHOICE
Contrary to popular belief (and maybe due to some misleading verbiage on Facebook’s part), businesses are not going to be forced to make the change to the new layout. In an email notification sent by Facebook in previous weeks, the company says “You can make this change now, or we’ll automatically update your Page layout on August 24. You can also continue to use your current template”. If a business decides to maintain its current layout, they can change to the new one at any time.
The News Feed
Beyond the changes to Business Pages, Facebook is also making changes to the News Feed and its algorithm. There are a few things you can do to keep your business relevant and stay seen:
Organic Ranking
Nothing new, but Facebook is putting an even more substantial focus on engagement. The significant difference will be the importance placed on genuinely excellent and engaging content. This means that consumers will see less “engagement bait” articles and superfluous listicles. Instead, Facebook hopes to promote quality content that truly makes the consumer’s life better. In a very direct comment, Adam Mosseri, Facebook’s Head of News Feed, had this to say: “Because space in News Feed is limited, showing more posts from friends and family and updates that spark conversation means we’ll show less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.” Ouch. This isn’t to say that businesses won’t be seen at all, but it’s going to take a little effort and some high-quality content to convince your followers to interact with posts.
Paid Presence
Shocker, Facebook still has to make money, so ads aren’t going anywhere! That said, with a limited number of “slots” in the uber-competitive News Feed, it is highly encouraged for businesses to begin thinking outside the box…er… feed.
Facebook Ads provides a whole slew of alternative ad placement options including:
- Groups
- Right column
- In-stream video
- Sponsored messages
- Instant articles
- Instagram (feed and story)
This means that these alternative placements should be included when considering your ad design and strategy. Even with these changes, the “pay to play” system won’t leave us any time soon.
If you have questions about your Facebook Business Page or your social strategy, please give us a shout. We’d be happy to help you devise and implement a plan of action.