1. RESOURCE INTERACTIVE
Facebook Changes to Brand Pages
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On Thursday, February 10 , Facebook announced an anticipated redesign for Pages affecting
brands, businesses, celebrities and media figures. You‟re likely already familiar with the new
page design from your personal page, and now many of those same changes, including a few
others, are extended to Pages.
The changes revolve around 4 key areas: layout, administrative functions, moderation of content
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and technical updates. Brands have until March 10 to preview these changes, but after this date
all Pages will automatically switch to the new design and functionality.
Page owners and administrators must take action now to address these changes. We‟ve included
our recommendations below each of these main points:
1. Explore the new layout, and how to take advantage of the new thumbnail
presentation.
o Select appropriate image, size and quality (resolution) to ensure the best
experience possible in the new image viewer.
o Select icons to appear at the top of your Pages or next to applications.
o Brands must now more carefully consider strategies to drive traffic into sub-
pages, shopping apps and custom content with the removal of the tab approach.
2. Carefully experiment with new administrative settings to understand how your
communication strategy may be impacted.
o Create or use existing test pages and get comfortable with how to toggle
between new settings to post on the brand page (i.e., between personal page
and as a brand admin).
o Identify who has the authority to speak on behalf of the brand (i.e. brand
spokesperson, customer service teams, or brand only).
o Ensure you are not using a personal profile to toggle and post on the brand page.
Instead, create a business-specific profile if you use this tactic.
3. Decide how you want to leverage the new moderation tools.
o Use the keyword-based spam filter tool to take quick action when your page is
being spammed by building unique filters to mass-exclude comments that follow
a predictable pattern.
o Consider what profanity filter level is appropriate for your brand.
4. Evaluate the technical changes introduced by the use of iFrames on pages.
o Consider how your custom content can be integrated using this approach and
have a more seamless experience within Facebook (without the reliance on the
Canvas app).
o Distributed Commerce Platform users should not need any significant changes
made beyond minor tweaks to the UX and style guide, since this change aligns
with our current implementation approach using iFrames.
Overall, these are beneficial changes for brands, and should help enable more functionality,
control, and an enhanced set of presentation options. The following takes a deeper look at
individual changes specific to your branded Facebook page.
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1. Layout Changes and Images
The most visible change is the removal of tabs across the top of the page, which moved to the left
navigation under the profile picture. The list of apps now includes icons displayed next to each
name. There are now five thumbnail images stretched above the wall, which display the last five
images posted to the brand's wall by an administrator.
The inclination to leverage the 5 photo spots for a continuous image may be apparent; however,
Facebook has these spots set up for randomization. You can use these spots for standalone
images that follow a cohesive aesthetic that feature new product launches or programs.
Figure 1: Layout changes shown in the example with Levi's highlighting core products in thumbnail images
The tabs, which previously appeared horizontally across the top of the wall, have been moved to
the left side below the profile image. This is a significant change to the user flow, which in our
opinion will reduce the page views for most brands on custom content and shopping apps, at
least in the short term until users become familiar with the new layout. As a result, brands should
incorporate this into messaging strategies and test tactics to drive fan engagement across these
apps. It remains to be seen how this will positively or negatively impact views of sub-pages and
custom content, and we will be watching it closely.
Two minor changes also coincided with this move. Icons now appear next to applications and
sub-pages, and the space allows for more text to appear describing your sub-pages. While
application icons are small, we expect these will provide smart visual cues to users that can help
draw attention to these apps. Brands should think about icon design unique to each application or
sub-page.
2. Changes to Admin Functionality
The most notable change to admin functionality includes the ability to log in as the brand. To
enable this, a toggle has been created to switch between the user‟s role of page administrator or
as your own profile. The result is that users with Admin rights can now post content on the brand
page as themselves.
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Figure 2: Page administrator toggle options between "self" and "admin" (brand) page
This change gives brands the ability to assign representatives (i.e., customer service, marketing
manager or celebrity) to communicate to their fans directly on the brand page on behalf of the
brand. Through the "Featured" portion within the admin page settings, Pages can choose to
identify and visually represent a "Page Owner" by selecting an administrator to be visually
identified on the wall as associated with the brand. This should help add credibility and
authenticity.
Figure 3: Option to select “Add Featured Page Owners”
Because Page administrators featured as Page Owners will display the profile image associated
with the user profile, brands employing this tactic should create brand-appropriate profiles
different from personal profiles. Brands should ensure representatives message users as
themselves, and indicate they are from the brand if it isn‟t obvious from the username.
For brands that already allow everyone to post on the wall, the new format will facilitate increased
engagement with fans, because brands can now use representatives to address specific topics,
provide celebrity endorsements or unique content, or address customer service issues head-on.
Brands should begin thinking about how these tools will impact their communication strategy and
develop guidelines around posting on fans‟ pages and other Brand pages, which is now possible.
A consequence of these changes will also mean discussing how Brands should deal with other
Brands, including competitors, who may also post directly to the Brand wall. The new tools
introduced in content moderation will be useful to Brands in this situation.
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3. Moderation
Facebook has added moderation tools within the page permissions for Facebook admins, most
notably greater flexibility for keyword filters and profanity levels. Brands should identify how to
use the new moderation settings and perform due diligence to see potential overlaps with
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existing, 3 party moderation tools.
Admins can now set up keyword spam filters, triggering comments or posts including blocklisted
keywords to be automatically marked as spam. It is important to note that when content is marked
as spam, it is hidden from the overall brand fan community, yet the post remains viewable for the
person who posted the comment. In essence, a person is not notified that their post has been
block listed and removed.
Figure 4: Moderation blocklist featured within page administrators "Manage Permissions"
Profanity filters are now offered by Facebook, which will block the most commonly reported words
and phrases marked as offensive by the broader community. Pages administrators can now
specify filtering levels of “Strong”, “Medium”, and the default setting of “None”. This new
functionality will aid brands in the automatic moderation of their pages. Brands can test the
setting by using a “Medium” filter and adjusting accordingly.
Page administrators will notice that the ability to sort by “Brand + Others”, “Just Brand”, “Others”
and “Spam” has been revised to sort by “Everyone” and “Brand”. Brands should identify how to
filter pages for their fans, either by “Everyone” or by “Brand”. Start by selecting “Brand” only to
eliminate the clutter for your users.
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Figure 5: Old and new admin filter options.
4. Technical Changes
Tab applications can now be built with iFrames, allowing for functionality that was previously
reserved for Canvas applications to now be implemented into Tab applications. Tab applications
are now essentially portals to load externally hosted web content.
The introduction of iFrames means other improvements for the user experience. Clicking to
activate Flash content is no longer necessary, and „Like‟ buttons are now officially supported in
Tab applications.
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However, FBML is no longer supported and will be deprecated on March 11 . All applications that
have been created with FBML will continue to work indefinitely, but future applications must use
the iFrame implementation.
Our Distributed Commerce Platform in the tab is already built using iFrames and does not rely on
the Canvas application. Therefore, we don‟t expect any changes to our solution beyond making
adjustments to the user experience and style guide to ensure a seamless presentation to the
user.
In Conclusion
We think this is a round of positive improvements for both brands and the Facebook community.
The majority of activity is already focused within the stream, and the page layout changes reflect
an effort to de-clutter the stream experience. Unfortunately the impact to traffic driven to unique,
custom content on the former Tab design is not yet known. In the meantime, brands should
continue to focus on engaging messaging in the newsfeed to draw attention to custom content.
For brands, the changes also mean a more sophisticated and targeted approach to the
communication strategy, along with enhanced tools that are long overdue.
Several brands have already taken the plunge and are using the new layout. It doesn‟t hurt to just
dive in as well, provided you have actively tested the experience prior to making the switch, as
there are clear differences between the old and new version that must be understood. As an
admin, you want to be comfortable with the changes and how to maneuver in this new layout.
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If you need further assistance, our Social Marketing & Media team at Resource Interactive is happy to walk
you through the changes in more detail. Contact Andy Kennemer by email at akennemer@resource.com, or
by phone at 614.410.2185.
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