Yesterday, Facebook launched a new layout for fan pages. This brings the design of Facebook business pages more in line with the latest design for individual profiles. This not provides a more consistent user experience, but the MAJOR NEW CHANGE is the ability to comment on other profiles and pages as your business. In this post we cover how to upgrade to the new Facebook fan page design, and how to make best use of the new features. Read on for invaluable tips…

If you don’t already have a Facebook Fan page – why not?! – Find out how to set a short URL for your Facebook Fan Page. Oh! And how to Optmise your Facebook fan page for Google!

If you want to learn EVEN MORE about getting the best out of Facebook, attend our 2-day Social Media Training course. We also run regular SEO Course, Google Analytics Course, jQuery Training and AJAX Training courses in Brighton, Sussex.

New Facebook Fan Pages – How to Upgrade

OK – simple things first – how to upgrade to the new Facebook Fan Page…

1. Log in to the Facebook account you use to Admin your fan page (or pages)
2. Select “Adverts and Pages” from the menu on the left navigation
   
3. In the top right corner of your list of pages, click on the “Upgrade My Pages” button
   
4. You will now be taken to a list of all of the pages you Admin, and have the option to upgrade them one by one – or if you want to do them all at once just click on the “Upgrade All Pages Now” button at the top.
5. That’s it! - Right… Let’s get to grips with the new page design and functions, and what this means for how you use your page:

New Facebook Fan Pages – Important New Features

CHANGE 1: Use Facebook as Your Business – THIS IS BIG!!!!

On the right hand side of your page you will now see a button called “Use Facebook As ….”

This is a MAJOR change to the way you can use Facebook as a business. Until now – the only place you could post comments, links etc… as your company was on your own wall. If you wanted to post anywhere else, the comment or link would display as being shared by you from your personal profile – for instance my comments would display as being from Colin Welch – like this:

Now – if I click on the “Use Facebook as Silicon Beach Training” buttion, I can comment on other people’s profiles and pages like this:

And if you want to switch back to being ‘plain old you’ again – just go back to your business page and click “Use Facebook as (your name) again.

This ability to comment as your organisation vastly increases your potential to increase awareness of your brand, products and services. If you’ve made a new resource or product available, or written a killer blog post (like this one), you can now make everyone aware that it has come from your company directly by sharing them all over Facebook AS YOUR COMPANY. The knock on effect of comments and links made by your business then being shared on by others could be MASSIVE!

When in “Use Facebook as your Business” mode, you can use Facebook much like you would in your personal profile – except that you can’t make friends (sad!). You can however go to other business pages and “Like” them and comment on them – so if you run multiple Facebook pages (say, for different products), you can now share content across them, for more coherent brand integration.

NOTIFICATIONS!!!

Now – when you’re in “Use Facebook As Business” mode – you now get notifications in the top left corner. So every time someone comments on one of your posts, or you get a new like for your page, you get a notification with a red reminder notice – just like on a normal profile page.

CHANGE 2: Show Top Posts on Your Wall

At the top of your fan page there are two filter options at the top of your page determining the content shown – Everyone or Your Business

On the face of it – that’s not too different from what we had before.

However – the old Facebook Fan pages would just show all of the posts chronologically. In the new design, if you select to display posts by everyone, Facebook will display the “top news”, which it describes as a way “for people to see the most interesting stories first” – i.e. – the ones that have had most response, or that their friends have also commented on etc… – again, this is much more like the way normal profiles work, with the ability to view “Top News” or “Most Recent”

IMPORTANT SETTING CHANGE…!

If you would rather your Facebook Business Page just displays your posts, in order as the default – you will need to do the following:

1. On your Page – hit “Edit Page” in the top right hand corner
2. Under the “Manage Permissions” Tab – change the drop-down where it says “Wall Tab Shows” from “Everyone” to “Only Posts By Page”:

How you use this setting will depend on whether you want to use your business page as a stream of new information about the business, or as a vehicle to interact with your customers.

Cosmetic Changes

The other new changes to Facebook Business Pages are largely cosmetic… The pages now display your latest photos at the top, like personal pages, and the menu navigation on the left is now in line with the new personal profiles too.

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