It seems that as soon as we all hear that Facebook is about to make a change, we get a little worried, or even sometimes irritated. As an integral part of both our social and business lives, Facebook plays a major role in how many of our interactions are made, so it’s understandable to get a little jumpy over an out-of-the-blue change in our communication dynamic. 

Luckily for us, the changes made to the Facebook business page layout, which finalized on June 13, were minor, and for the most part, pleasant. No matter what, if we embrace the inevitable changes from Facebook when they happen, we will be able to better use the new features to our advantage. 

Here’s a look at the 3 major changes Facebook made to the business page layout and how you can adapt your social marketing to maximize the new features. 

Timeline Layout

Gone are the days of the awkward, crowded, two-column Business Page layouts. We have now entered a new era; one with clear, concise, easy to navigate one-column designs, as it seems it should have been all along.  The right side of your timeline will now display your page’s posts as the left side features your bio information, such as hours of business, phone number, website URL, etc. 

With this more streamlined, linear appearance, the new layout will look more like our own personal pages, making our company page more familiar to visitors and thus easier to navigate. This is good news for us, as business owners, because if our visitors are more comfortable with our Facebook site, they are more likely to stay on our page longer, therefore we have more opportunities of sharing with them the important news and content we want them to receive.

Pages to Watch

The most distinct change with the new design is the Pages to Watch feature, which is accessible only to admins. Under the Insights tab in the top navigation bar, under the subhead Overview, the new page allows you to create a list of other businesses you care about in order to track the performance of their page and compare it to your own. The feature will then report on the total page likes, new page likes, number of posts this week and engagement this week for each of your chosen businesses. 

Note: when you add a page to your watch list, admins of that page will receive a notification that their page has been added to a list, but will not disclose whose list. 

What does this mean for you? It means you have the ability to see how well companies like you are doing with their social media through Facebook which will give you more data, not just your own, to determine what is and isn’t working in your industry.

Administration Navigation Tabs

A new navigation option was placed at the top of the page that includes Page (your homepage), Activity (where you will view your messages and notifications organized by date), Insights (pages to watch), and Settings (page settings). There is also a This Week tab on the right-hand side to show metrics from that specific week and a Build Audience tab that takes you straight to your Facebook Ads Manager account.

 With these new tabs you can access information about ads and likes, as well as notifications and messages from anywhere on your page. Sounds good to us!

 So now that we have all survived the transition, what do you think? Please share with us your likes and dislikes of the new layout of Facebook’s Business Page.