Everything You Need to Know About Facebook's New Updates - Total Advertising | Total Advertising Everything You Need to Know About Facebook's New Updates - Total Advertising

Everything You Need to Know About Facebook’s New Updates

May 17, 2022

Let’s be honest, Facebook has changed A LOT over the years. There seems to be a new feature, update, or change every other week. At the end of 2021, Facebook dropped the news that they were rebranding to Meta and shortly thereafter released Meta Business Suite, a totally new way to interact with and create content for Facebook Pages. Most recently, Facebook has started rolling out yet another new Pages experience.

It might feel impossible to keep up with the changes, but for businesses with active Facebook Pages, it’s important to try! Read on to learn what’s new with Facebook.

No More “Likes”

“Liking” a Page on Facebook has been a function of the site since 2009. Clicking a Page’s “Like” button enabled the user to see the Page’s status updates, photos, videos, and more in their newsfeed and easily interact with what was shared. It’s no secret that social media algorithms have changed dramatically over the years, and Liking a Page no longer means that you’ll see most, if any, of that Page’s posts, but now Liking a Facebook Page will fully become a feature of the past.

Instead of Liking a Page, users will be prompted to “Follow” a Page. Following a famous person or company on social media is certainly not a new concept, as most social media platforms only give you a “Follow” option, and soon it will be no different on Facebook. In fact, for a stretch of time you had the option to Like or Follow a page on Facebook (and if you were interacting with Facebook as a Page, you could only Follow other Pages). This is why most Facebook Pages had a different number of Likes and Followers.

With the update, those who had previously both Liked and Followed your business’s Page still count as a Follower. Those who only Liked your Page will not transition into a Follower. Luckily, most who previously Liked a Page were also automatically counted as a Follower. Users had to manually Unfollow a Page if they didn’t want to see that Page’s posts in their newsfeed, so any who only Liked your Page weren’t seeing your posts, anyways!

Shorter Page Bios

The age of unlimited character usage in your Page’s biography has passed. Once your Page is updated to the new Page experience, your bio can only be 101 characters. That’s right, characters, meaning you’re allowed 2.7 times fewer characters than a Tweet.

Once your Page transitions to the new experience, it will cut whatever existing bio your Page had off at 101 characters precisely, so you’ll need to compress your company’s history, mission, and services down to about one sentence.

Page “Profiles”

One of the biggest changes with the new Pages experience is Pages getting their own “Profile.” Previously, any and all Pages your personal account was an admin of were directly accessible through your own profile. If you managed multiple Pages, you could easily cycle from one Page to another. With the new Pages experience, each Page is given its own “Profile.”

You can still view the Pages you run on your own Facebook profile, and Facebook acknowledges that you are indeed an admin of the Page. But if you actually want to manage any part of the Page (post, view statistics, etc.), Facebook prompts you to “switch into” the Page’s profile.

Page-Specific Newsfeeds and Interactions

Now that Pages have their own Facebook profiles, they also have their own specific newsfeeds. Pages did have their own easily accessible newsfeeds before, but shortly before this new Pages experience was rolled out, they were more difficult to access.

Now, if you’re interacting as your Page’s profile, the Page’s newsfeed displays just like your own personal newsfeed does. The Pages that your Page follows populates this newsfeed, and it makes it much easier for you to like, comment, and share posts as your Page.

It also lets you more easily Follow public figures and brands that are relevant to your own Page’s industry and posts, as well as Pages run by local businesses and loved ones that you’d like your own business’s Page to publicly support.

Abolishing Page Roles

With the new Page experience, Page admin roles as they’ve existed before are going away. Instead of different people having different admin roles, you must now assign people to different Page tasks.

People with task access to your Page can manage the following things, if given the proper access:

  • Content: Users with Content Access to your Page can create, manage, or delete posts, Stories, and more. They can also respond to comments and update Page information. Basically, granting someone Content Access allows for them to have much of (if not precisely) the same power as someone who previously held the role of Page Admin.
  • Messages: Those with Messages Access to your Page can send and respond direct messages as the Page as well as manage and use other Page Inbox functions.
  • Community Activity: Users with Community Activity Access can review and respond to comments, remove unwanted content, report activity on the Page, and engage in other similar activities.
  • Ads: People with Ads Access to your page can create, manage, and delete ads as well as handle other ads-related tasks.
  • Insights: Insights Access grants users with the ability to see how the Page, content, ads, and other metrics are performing. Insight Access is granted to all users who have task access to your Page.

You can grant people with Full or Partial Access to your Facebook Page, and toggle what someone can and cannot access at any time. Additionally, any action someone takes as the Page may be visible to everyone who helps manage it. These actions can be seen in the new Page Management History menu, accessible through your settings when you are in your Page’s special profile.

New Look for Page Insights

Once your Page experience changes to the new version, it initially seems like Facebook Insights has changed. You can view Insights on the new “Professional Dashboard,” but the Insights shared here are just a list of numbers. Unfortunately, this new way of presenting your Page’s Insights doesn’t even specify the dates from which they’re pulling these analytics from, which may be frustrating if you like to compare your Page’s analytics from month to month.

On this Professional Dashboard you can also see some minimal statistics about each individual post on your Page. It’ll show you the Post Reach and Engagement numbers for your posts from the last 7 days, 28 days, or 90 days. You can also see basic Audience analytics through this dashboard, namely the percentages of men and women in each age demographic who follow your Page and where these followers are from geographically.

While these changes may feel like you’re getting even less insight on your Page’s analytics than you previously were, all hope is not lost! The Insights available on the Professional Dashboard are basic snapshots of your Page’s analytics, but you can (thankfully) still see the more detailed analytics you may be accustomed to on your Page’s Meta Business Suite dashboard.

On the Meta Business Suite dashboard, you can see the graphs and numbers Facebook has been providing as analytics for the last few months, as well as more detailed analytics about all your Page’s posts (number of likes and reactions, replies, link clicks, etc.). On the Business Suite dashboard, you can also continue to adjust the date range that the analytics are being pulled from and compare them to any stretch of time that you desire.

 

While Facebook tweaks its platform regularly, this new Pages experience is the most dramatic change since the creation of the Meta Business Suite. It also seems to be rolling out across the platform slowly, but once you get a notification that your Page is changing over to the new experience, it will occur with or without your agreement in a matter of days.

With how frequently Facebook tweaks and changes its platform, it’s difficult to stay on top of it all. The digital marketing experts at TOTAL Advertising can help you manage your business’s social media accounts and stay up-to-date on what’s new so you can focus on what’s most important: running a successful business. Contact us today to start planning a successful social media strategy for your business.