New Facebook Pages Rolling out – What You Need to Know

This week Facebook started rolling out the redesigned Pages news feed. The new News Feed is very clean and fresh. It is one change I don’t think we will hear much complaining from the average Facebook user. However, from brands and page owners it may cause a few issues.

Unlike the last redesign to pages, Facebook didn’t change the entire layout. This time the Cover and Profile images stayed intact just everything below it changed!

I am using Facebook’s example on the pages. Here is a rundown on what you need to know:

facebook tapsTabs are non-visual – With every page redesign it seems people think Tabs are always on the extinct list . As you can see above the images for the tabs are the only thing that has been removed. But, don’t think the image is completely gone. Not shown in this pic is below the box on the left there is a section for apps that will show thumbnails. I’m mixed on this redesign. I like that its now in once place and your likes don’t take up a tab, but will fans notice them? Remember you can go under your page settings and reoder your tabs.

settingsAn Easier Way to get to settings – When you used to go to your page in the old pages you had Too many boxes at the top of the page. It was information over load. So now they have simplified the way you get information. You have four buttons at the top of the page. They are Page, Activity, Insights and Settings.

  • Page – is an easy way to get back to your page. In previous page designs you would get lost in the different areas and have no easy way back to your page.
  • Activity – is just what it says, all the activity on your page. It includes messages and the activity log. So you can see recent likes and comments.
  • Insights – is just an easier way to find your analytics. So far nothing has changed in insights. They did move “pages to watch” from the main page to insights.
  • Settings – is the previous edit your page option. It’s easier to find any setting you need. Gone is the drop down menu that you never knew which setting to go into. They made it simpler to manage your page.

this weekThis Week – This is my favorite feature of the page. This Week gives you a very quick overview of your page for the week. It lists any ads you have running, how many likes you received, post reach and any unread notification. This is only available to admins so your fans won’t see it.

news feedNews Feed – Gone is the flip flopping news feed that was confusing to fans. I will admit even I had issues with this, I couldn’t at times tell what  order the posts were in. The timeline format was a great concept but not well executed. Now fans will see a logical progression of posts. They also redesigned the status update bar. Its not a big update just a simple visual refresh that looks nicer. One other change not showing is at the bottom of each post there is a bar that shows the reach of the post.

info barInfo Bar – Its not an official name but that is what this section is, information about your page. Your “About” will show up here, so if you haven’t updated it in a while now is the time to do it. Also you will see how many likes you have on your page and Friends that like the page and friends to invite. It puts your information in a place where fans can see it easily.

These changes aren’t game changing to pages. It’s great to see them clean them up into something more pleasing visually. Overall I think these changes will help pages.

There is no time frame when this design will roll out for all pages. I have signed up for all the pages I manage and they are not releasing the redesign in order you clicked the update button. If you want to see a version of the new page, Lego was the first page I saw in the wild that has the new design. Note, even if you didn’t click the update button, the page will be converted automatically. Facebook usually gives you about six months before it becomes mandatory.

Tim is the founder of Element33. A social media agency specializing in education, management and strategy for small businesses. He comes from a traditional marketing agency but has embraced all things digital. He considers himself a marketing nerd and believes that all marketing is tied together. This means no matter what silo you are in, social, email, seach, etc, changes in one will affect the other!

One comment on “New Facebook Pages Rolling out – What You Need to Know

  1. Reply Lamis Khamis April 23, 2014 at 9:25 am

    I there I wanted to ask you about image sizes in timeline. I want to add an image in my tweet but want it to show without pressing expand to my followers. Recently I added images of 440×220 and it worked, but now since the new layout it doesnt work, it only shows the image as a link. Please can you advise as I tried everything with no joy.

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