Facebook is at it once again in what is likely to throw all to many people into a frenzy of confusion. So brace yourselves…
Facebook is updating the layout to Pages! (queue the b-movie horror soundtrack)
The changes are not huge, though there are a few things that are important for you to note so we thought we’d compile them here for you in one place:
Pages to Watch
In the last few months, Facebook rolled out a new addition to the Pages Insights section for some page admins, allowing them to track up to 5 competing pages so that they can be compared through analytics.
With the rollout of the new Facebook Pages layout, Facebook is now opening up this feature to all page admins. This tool can be particularly useful when comparing yourself to local competition as you’ll be able to track their increase/ decrease in growth, as well as the strength of the engagement on their page. The latter feature presents a great opportunity to follow the pages of other musicians you look to for content inspiration to see what is working / not working for them, to better develop your own content based on their ideas.
Hidden Custom Tabs
This… is a pain.
There is no doubt that Facebook has made it increasingly difficult for the content from your page to actually be seen, let alone engaged with. One of the remaining beacons of light with Facebook Pages was the ability to customize tabs so that as new traffic came to your page, you could choose how to engage (or funnel) your fans into longer-lasting opportunities, such as newsletter sign ups, tours, etc.
Well with the rollout of the new Facebook Pages layout, you can (sort of) kiss this goodbye.
The new layout has stripped the big (and customizable) tab buttons off the homepage, opting to instead file these custom tabs as sub-tabs under the new ‘More’ tab. While it’s nice to know that you will still have the opportunity to offer these customized calls to action, it is more than likely that they will go completely overlooked as Facebook is simply adding yet another step for people to take before they can actually see and engage with your content (the opposite of effective website navigation).
One Column vs. Two Column View
Honestly, this shouldn’t have much effect on your content as far as we can tell. The streamlining of your content from two columns into one may make your content easier to consume and/ or engage with as it will all be displayed in one consistent fashion, but that is a big may that has yet to be seen and/ or proven. Only time will tell how this effects the overall structure, functionality, and engagement of your Facebook Pages.
