Facebook Changes Can Sometimes Be A Good Thing

That’s right, Facebook is rolling out yet more changes. This time it’s Pages.

Facebook Pages are the primary source of business activity in Social Media. This new set of changes will affect every company that wants to have a Facebook presence, or has one already.

After March 30th, old Facebook Pages will be mandatorily changed to the new format and if you are not ready for that you can end up with obsolete pages.

“Fail to Prepare… Prepare to Fail”

Here are the major Facebook changes coming…

A complete overhaul of the profile page, Facebook is introducing the Timeline, a virtual scrapbook of you or your business. Facebook is removing the ability to have a default landing page of any type. There are still iFrame tabs/pages, but they cannot be the default landing page. iFrame pages can be linked to on the main page.

Facebook is removing one benefit and replacing it with another: they are changing the iFrame pages to be 760 pixels wide, which gives you more real estate to work with – this is a huge benefit!

I am certain that, even after these Facebook changes, you will still be able to drive visitors to your iFrame pages and offer a like-gate to view each fan page’s unique benefits.

If you have custom headers and/or custom like-gate image backgrounds for your existing Fan Pages I recommend that you begin modifying them to be 760 pixels wide to fit the new layout so you will be ready.

Cover photo: your cover photo should represent what your page is about.  The image should be 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall.  Your photo should be at least 399 pixels wide.  Facebook specifies that your cover photo may not contain:

• Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”
• Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section
• References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features
• Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends.”
• Additionally, cover photos must not be false, deceptive or misleading, and must not infringe on third parties’ intellectual property. You may not encourage or incentivize people to upload your cover image to their personal timelines.

Your profile picture: your profile picture can’t be a banner anymore, but will be just a small picture that will represent your Facebook page in other parts of Facebook.  The picture should be at least 180 pixels wide.

This combination of cover photo and profile picture presents a unique opportunity to separate yourself from the crowd and therefore capitalize on these new Facebook changes. Here are 40 very creative examples of how some people have taken advantage of the Timeline.

Photos, likes and apps are now at the top of the page.  With the apps, you can see 4 apps on the page.  The photo app is first and can’t be changed.  The other 3 visible apps can be moved and ordered as you want to. You can show a maximum of 12 apps.

Control of your content:

• Weekly pinned post: this means that the post that you pinned, will be anchored to the top of your page for 7 days.  Use this to highlight your most important content since it is the first thing people see when they visit your page
• Starred post: a post that you star will become larger and take up the entire width of the page.
• Milestones: emphasize important event in your business.  Milestones have a flag icon and will also use the entire width of the page.  Examples are a new product launch or an event that you are hosting or participating in.
• Change post dates: you can now give a post a past date in order to populate your timeline.

Activity log: activity log helps you manage your page’s timeline. You can hide or unhide posts, star posts or change dates.

Admin panel: the new admin panel helps you keep up with all the activity on your page. You can see notifications, insights and messages all in one.

Privately message to pages: yes, you can now privately message to pages.

Personal experience: people have a more personal experience on your page since they will see how their friends are engaging with your page.

Helpful Video for Facebook Changes

Facebook has a great video on how to change your Facebook page to the new timeline look: http://www.learnfacebookpages.com/.

Remember: change is inevitable. Facebook changes are inevitable in order to adapt and survive. In business, the difference between people who are successful and people who fail is that failures let change run them over like a truck while the successful people roll with the changes and figure out how to turn what at first looks like a setback into a gold nugget.