Keeping up with the changes at Facebook takes some energy these days. Here are some things you should know:
- Facebook had two forms of verification badges. One was a grey badge for any Pages who had verified their details with Facebook. The other, a blue badge, for prominent organizations or people. On October 30th Facebook eliminated the grey badge hoping to eliminate confusion. I don’t think most people paid much attention to the grey badges but it isn’t a bad time to seek positive reviews to add some credibility to your Page.
- Facebook is making improvements to the analytics to ensure they are accurate. They will be changing the time frame that cuts off when two impressions from the same user can be counted as unique reach. This will likely make it look like your reach is down. The change will not affect distribution of posts or post engagement. This change will roll out mid to late November.
- You can no longer schedule posts from your Page. Now, you can only schedule Page posts through the Creator Studio, Business Manage, or Publishing Tools natively. You can also use third-party scheduling tools. You can still schedule posts from Page Manager app on mobile.
- Facebook is for the first-time offering search ads. It’s recently been announced that these placements are becoming available to more advertisers. These new ads will allow advertisers to bid to have their Page show up in relevant mobile searches users make within Facebook. So, if someone searches for a Page similar to yours through general search or in Marketplace you could reach that user with an ad. These ads will be very visual and simple.
- Groups are big right now and have high engagement. This is a great opportunity for businesses but moderating a group can become time consuming. Facebook has created a tool to help. Now there will be post topic tags. This will enable group members to search for the topic or post they are looking for without asking a question like “I know someone in here posted about…but I can’t find it.” This should make for a better experience for the members and the moderators.
- Facebook is testing out various photo layouts for posts with multiple images. Hopefully, this will give us more options. The new layouts would allow the business to choose with images were featured (larger) for instance and provide a more interesting visual experience.
Impact of These Changes
Overall, I’d say these are positive changes. The addition of search ads is the most exciting change and has big potential to help businesses reach consumers looking for the service or goods they offer.
Undoubtedly, there will be more changes ahead, but for now, you are up-to-speed. If you have questions about any of this or how it can help your business, please contact me.
Michelle