Facebook Gives Pages a Major Upgrade

First off, thank you Facebook!!! These changes have been a long time coming and I think those of us who admin a Facebook page can all collectively say yea! For those of you who haven’t seen the new changes yet, let me give you a quick overview and why I think this is good news for us all.

1) You can participate on Facebook as your page AND as yourself.
This is big in helping businesses promote their pages. It was always tricky before because you couldn’t comment on a page you administered as yourself. It would only show up as the page. Now you can choose to comment as yourself OR the page (just be sure to uncheck the first box under Edit Page/Your Settings). And even better, you can now go to other people’s pages and profiles and comment as the page. This is great because it will give your page more exposure. But it does mean it will take more time. Now, in addition to updating your page, you’re going to have to make time to comment on a couple pages a day (ideally – and if you don’t have time to do that, give us a shout )

2) You can “like” other pages.

Before you could “like” a page as yourself, now your page can “like” a page . This is good. It increases the  number of likes your page can receive, and by liking other pages you’ll increase the chance those pages will like you. Also, the more pages that like you, the more other pages will see that (see No. 3) and promote your page virally.

3) Your page now has its own newsfeed.

What??? Yep, that’s right. When you go to your page and click on “Use Facebook as INSERT PAGE NAME/INSERT YOUR NAME” you choose how you will appear on Facebook: as yourself or as a page. Then once you’re acting as the page, click on Home and you’ll see in your newsfeed posts from all the other pages you “like”. This will help you decide what to go comment on and should help give your page more visibility to the other pages who “like” it. (I know, kind of confusing )

4) You can edit more features of your page.

Now you can change the category if you happened to pick the wrong thing when you set up the page or if your company has evolved into something else. You can also change which other pages you “feature” on your main page that you like (see No. 2). Unfortunately, though, you still cannot change your page’s name or username.

5) You can get emails when someone comments or posts to your page. Yea!!!

This helps a lot if you’re not on Facebook like we are multiple times a day every day. Now you can be alerted when someone’s commented or posted so you know to go there and respond to them. Check it out under Edit Page/Your Settings.

Effectively, Facebook has made Pages into People if you ask me. But it’s all good. Any other features of the new pages you like/don’t like? Weigh in!!

Yet Another Reason to Update Your Facebook Page

Having a Facebook friend page is a great first step in marketing your business with social media, but it’s only a first step. In order to get the most benefit from your page, you need friends, and in order to attract friends, you need to update frequently with interesting content.

Facebook recently introduced a new feature that automatically suggests pages for new users to “Like.” This feature is placed second in the Facebook signup process, just behind the finding friends page. They’ve also added a section on the top right of your Home page where they sometimes recommend pages for you to “Like.” So how can you take advantage of these new features to help promote your page?

Facebook says the pages chosen to suggest will be based on the pages that people in the same demographic commonly “Like”, and how much the pages are updated and engage with friends.

So, if you’ve been waiting for yet another reason to frequently update your page with good content and reach out to your friends, here it is!

Before you start updating, here are few rules to keep in mind:

1. Update 1 to 3 times per day, even on weekends and holidays!

2. Update at different times of the day, and then monitor which times are most successful.

3. Ask friends to click “Like” when posting. It’s much easier to click “Like” than to actually comment.

4. Make updates conversational and casual.

5. Add in photos and videos when appropriate.

6. Respond quickly to questions and comments, within 24 hours if possible.

Now go start updating and build up your friend base! Have any more tips? Share with us here!