Facebook has recently implemented a number of changes to the ‘fan’ pages that many brands use to generate a community of people who are interested in their products and services.
Facebook are famous for their regular updates and redesigns – not all of which are that popular with its users! However, the recent fan page changes should find favour with business customers as they can now promote their services in a more ‘Facebook’ like way. The most significant change affects the layout of Facebook fan pages. We’re very pleased about this update as it shows that Facebook is listening to businesses as well as end users. If your business has a Facebook page (if you don’t, you need to talk to us!), you’ll see that it looks more like an individual’s page with all the associated functionality. This is in contrast with the previous kind of business page, which we think imposed limitations on brands that prevented them from fully interacting with their ‘fans’. So what do the changes mean in real terms? Well, your brand can act like a person, commenting and interacting with other pages and people. This is great because it helps to give your brand a human-like personality, which is something that can help to connect it to consumers. Also, commenting and interacting with other pages and people is a crucial aspect of social networking for businesses. In the same way as you would on Twitter, you need to be engaging in debate in order to keep up your presence and build awareness and loyalty. To get the ball rolling, go to ‘Account’ at the top right of your Facebook page and click ‘Use Facebook as a page’. The overhaul of Facebook fan pages also enables your brand to engage in real-time dialogue. User ‘likes’ and comments will show up in your Notifications tab, enabling you to see what people are saying and thinking about you throughout the day. Was there ever a more instant way to see how your brand is viewed? This is so helpful, especially if you’re conducting research into a possible product or you want to see how a new product is being received by the market. As if that wasn’t enough, we have more good Facebook-themed news to report (thank you, Mark Zuckerberg!). You can also specify landing tabs in your Facebook advertising campaigns. This means that you – or more specifically, your amazing SEO agency,(as in us!) can put together specific landing pages with ease. This in turn helps you to drive traffic more easily. This is a massive improvement to how Facebook was before: marketing agencies had to adapt their welcome pages to specific campaigns, which was fiddly, receptive and not very intuitive! Stay tuned for our next blog, in which we’ll talk about some of the downsides of the changes (yes, you probably thought all of this was too good to be true!) and how to navigate these downsides successfully.
