Facebook has recently transitioned all pages for businesses and organizations — like health centers and primary care associations — to their new Timeline format. These changes pushed through automatically, so you may want to comb through what’s changed to make sure that everything still works.
Changes to layout, look and feel
The most noticeable changes to Facebook pages are the new large cover photo and dual-column content layout. You can learn more about how to format and choose a great cover photo here.
Facebook has great resources on other ways to customize what your page looks like, and we will talk about individual best practices in future posts:
- Star stories to make them bigger
- Pin posts to the top of your Page
- Add milestones to mark key events
- Arrange views and apps below your cover
Landing pages are now defunct
Some organizations, like NACHC, previously had landing pages for visitors who hadn’t yet liked their page, but Facebook has removed this functionality with that update. Now all visitors will see the same thing: your page with a cover photo.
You can now have private messages with users
With this new change, Facebook pages can now send and receive private messages with visitors. This allows users to ask questions or post comments that aren’t automatically public and featured on the timeline. Any FB page administrator can read and respond to these messages, and it’s an opportunity to take a public conversation started on the page and make it a private message.
Other resources
The Mid-Atlantic Association of Community Health Centers has a great post about these changes and more, with links to other great resources.
As always, we love to see what you’re doing and creating for your social media projects. Please feel free to e-mail me with your examples or questions.