Many businesses are starting to understand that they need to be on Facebook and that marketing to Facebook’s 800,000,000 users is a no brainer. Not only is it very cost-effective, but it has a plethora of benefits ranging from improving your customer service to growing your fan base.
The problem lies when non tech-savvy business owners and managers begin to indulge in social media, but fail to adapt to an ever-changing tech world. It’s important that a part of your social media strategy is to stay on top of what’s changing and how you can adapt to it.
Certain features, techniques and practices used on Facebook last year are no longer able to be executed, or may no longer have any benefit for you.
The Timeline
Around 5 months ago, Facebook introduced Timeline. A revolutionary new way to display your personal information, replacing the traditional profiles most social networking sites use. Last month, Facebook announced Timeline was now available for brands, and as of yesterday, it will now be mandatory.
Facebook’s Timeline brought a number of changes to Facebook’s brand pages, including:
- The Cover Photo: A 850 x 315 image that sits at the top of your page, replacing profile pictures and the highly popular skyscraper profile images.
- Profile Picture: Your profile picture will now be limited to a 180 x 180 image
- New Display Order: Posts and fan posts will no longer be displayed as they were, but instead brand posts will be displayed in a double column
- Pinned Posts: You will now be able to “pin” a post or update to the top of your page, allowing a certain status or post not to get buried and to get much more exposure
- Milestones: You can now go back in time and add company milestones into your visual display of aggregated content for your business.
The changes don't stop there though.
Getting Likes
A number of changes are resulting in page owners scrambling to come up with new ideas for increasing page likes. To preface this issue, a few months back, Facebook silently did away with having to Like a page in order to like or comment on any of the posts. It used to be that if someone wanted to comment on a story on your page, they’d first have to like the page. This is no more. Any Facebook user can now post on any page, and like/comment/share any story on the post.
To magnify this issue, prior to the Timeline, page owners could have a different tab set as the default landing page. Many pages had promos to like the page, with graphics of arrows pointing to the Like button. Another change with the introduction of the mandatory Timeline, is the removal of these tabs.
No More Tabs
Facebook has transitioned tabs into Applications. Underneath your Timeline Cover Photo will be icons for different apps your page has. These apps, that each have their own page with a width of 800, now allow you to have multiple pages within your Facebook page.
The downside with this is that it’s not going to make much sense now to have an entire page prompting a user to like your page. At this point, they either like you or they don’t, but either way they have already been on your wall. Sure, it can’t hurt to encourage them to Like you, but the impact it’s going to have is going to be far less in your favor.
Time to Get Creative
Facebook is now forcing page owners to get creative, and to really produce content that users want to like. Even if a user comes to your page and reads a status, comments on it, and then shares it – that might not be enough to get a new Like. Personally, I think Facebook is doing companies a favor, because with each like a brand page now gets, that is a true fan, and not just a watered down click of a like button.
Having a social media strategy in place is now more important than ever. You want to make sure that you are actively engaging with your Facebook visitors and this is going to mean using your page for more than just sharing with all the liked visitors, what you do. If you do that, you’re going to get unliked very quickly!
Basch Soluitons, LLC has been implementing social media strategies for businesses of all shapes and sizes since the beginning of the social media boom. If you’re looking for help, feel free to give us a call and setup a time for a social media consultation or head over to our social media strategy and optimization services page and learn more about what we can do for you!
