Is your nonprofit wondering how the recent update to Facebook affects your existing page? In this post, I explore what these changes mean for your nonprofit, how they affect your page layout and functionality, and provide tips to make the most out of your new Facebook Page!
On Thursday, February 10, Facebook announced a new layout for Facebook pages. The goal of this update is to bring the social network in line with the recently redesigned personal profiles and to provide a more consistent user experience.
Many nonprofits are wondering what to do about the new update to Facebook pages, so let’s take a closer look at these changes and what they mean for your nonprofit.
1. Navigation links (tabs) are now on the left-hand navigation, just like on people’s profiles.
Pages now have the same layout as Profiles. The tabs at the top of Pages are now located in the left-hand sidebar, under the main avatar(image). This is a significant change in the user interface and many brands and businesses are not happy with it.
Essentially, the ability of nonprofits to present clear tabbed options at the top of the page, in line with how websites present navigation, has been replaced with a less prominent listing of page sections in the left column, just below the profile pic.
Tips to maximize the visibility of the left-side navigation, especially if you have Facebook custom tabs:
a) Keep the profile pic to under 200 px in height, so that your navigation isn’t pushed below the fold and is as close to the top of the page as possible.
b) Reorder your sections/tabs in the navigation so the most important are first. You can easily do this using the “More—Edit” feature, then click and drag each section to achieve the desired order.
Note: As before with the top navigation tabs, Wall and Info come first!
c) Keep your navigation concise, including only the essential sections of your page. Tabs that are removed via the new navigation Edit function (click “More” to see “Edit” at the bottom of the navigation) can be restored later with their content intact.
d) Consider incorporating text into your profile pic to highlight “tabs” you don’t want visitors to miss (obviously a trade-off with profile pic height!).
2. Improved Page Management: New Admin View and Wall Filters.
a) “Admin View.” This is a new feature and a convenient way for Admins to manage wall content.
Select “Most Recent” to see all (not filtered by Facebook) non-page posts in reverse chronological order. Select “Hidden Posts” to see posts by users you’ve hidden or posts filtered by EdgeRank. Admins can un-hide hidden posts as well as perform familiar functions such as banning a user or reporting spam.
Things to consider: Users now have more control over what appears in their news feed. They can filter their feed to show “Friends and pages you interact with most” or “All of your friends and pages.” The default setting is the former, and given that default settings usually go unchanged, nonprofits may more frequently be filtered from news feeds when users don’t interact with their posts in their news feed when the user may actually still want to keep up with the brand’s news.
2) Wall Filters.Admins now have two ways of viewing wall posts, accessible via the left-column nav:
If “Wall” (the default) is selected, you can view posts either by “Everyone” or just by the page.
Note that the “Everyone” option is not in chronological order but is presented according to how relevant, shared, interacted with and other criteria (Facebook’s algorithm for assessing post quality is called EdgeRank) the posts are. So a more recent post can easily trail behind a more commented-on post, for example.
3. One-Click Access to Admin Tasks.
One big improvement is providing quick access to several admin tasks, rather than having to go through the “Edit page” link. Let’s explore them:
a) Managing page admins is now accessible via clicking “See all” in the Admins area in the right column.
b) Basic Information can now be edited by clicking the “Edit info” link just below the page name at the top.
c) The “Edit page” link is now a button, located in the top right, just below the “Home—Profile—Account” links.
d) Although it is unlikely that your nonprofit want to change its page category, the new Facebook updates now let Admins change their page’s category by clicking the “Edit info” link under the page name, then selecting the category from the pull-down menu in the edit screen. This is also available by clicking the new “Edit page” button, as shown above.
e) The Fan Count section in the left navigation has been simplified, with the fan pics eliminated and replaced by a simple count.
Clicking “people like this” brings up the familiar pop-up dialog where Admins can remove or ban fans or make them Admins.
f) The “Information” box has been removed entirely, and there’s no longer a place where a brief description of the page can be presented when it loads. Visitors will have to click the “Info” link in the new left-column navigation to access more information about the page.
g) The “[number of] friends like this” section has been moved from the left column to the right column, with smaller thumbnail images but a count of how many of the owner’s friends like the page, as well as some other pages that have liked your page.
h) View Insights and Suggest to Friends have both been removed from the left column to the right column, just below the Admins area.
On my next post, I’ll explore:
1. Login as Page or Profile.
You can now toggle between being logged in as a Profile or logged in as a Page. When logged in as a Page, you can comment and like content on other Pages as a Page. A single username and password is all that’s required for both modes.
2.- The new masthead: How to make the most of this new feature.
Like the redesigned personal profiles, Facebook pages now feature the five most recently added images (Facebook calls this the “Photostrip”) which, when clicked, expand to full size in “lightbox” fashion, keeping users on your page instead of taking them to the photos page.
3. Featuring “Liked Pages” on your Nonprofit Facebook page.
A maximum of five pages can be featured and admins have been given the ability to decide which pages to be shown.
4. The future of custom tabs coded with FBML
Facebook is phasing out FBML and migrating to iFrames. After March 11, 2011, Admins will no longer be able to add the Static FBML application to their pages. We will explore how this affect your custom pages!
4 Responses
The switch from FBML to iFrames has no doubt been painful for many people, but facebook has made some good moves and this is one of them. They need to evolve as their members evolve. Rosita you did a good job on your tutorial!
What do you think about Facebook’s newest changes from today, Rosita? Doesn’t look like a whole lot of changes to Pages, but may affect how posts show up in the newsfeed…!
Love the insight! Facebook is such a powerful tool it’s always nice to learn something about it
Would you posit that facebook is becoming the all-in-one in regards to social media and advertising? I enjoyed the read, and seeing as we just started a non-profit business and foundation in South America, this is very useful information.
Thanks!
-Ryan