MSLGROUP: Four-Step Crash Course on Facebook's Updated Brand Pages - Romain Vezirian & Nicolas Sibouni

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Cover image for  article: MSLGROUP: Four-Step Crash Course on Facebook's Updated Brand Pages - Romain Vezirian & Nicolas Sibouni

If you manage a Facebook brand page, you have certainly noticed that brands have a new look on the social network.

Welcome MSLGROUP, our newest MediaBizBlogger.

If you manage a Facebook brand page, you have certainly noticed that brands have a new look on the social network.

Just last Monday, as Facebook community managers for several clients, we received a notification about the updates. We think they create new and exciting challenges, pose questions, and foster new ways to interact with fans. We've spent the week figuring out what the changes mean to our clients, and we are sharing our analysis with you.

Each administrator has the ability to switch to the new layout right away, or wait until March 11, when all pages will automatically be updated. We decided to make the change promptly, as you will see from our Renault ZE example.

Here we go:

1. New look: we don't want to say we told you so but… ...We told you so! The most obvious new feature of this update is the layout itself. This is actually something many of us had predicted here at MSLGROUP: Your official Facebook page now looks a lot more like a personal profile. We understand why this change was made: Users now expect to find their links on the left column. The old "tabs"—those boxes on the top of a page—are definitely gone!

2. Behind the curtain: a new way to create custom links So what does this mean? The content from your old tabs is now accessible from the left column, presented as hyperlinks. As this is more than an aesthetic change, developers will have to use iframes (typically used to add an advertisement or small bit of text into an HTML page) to build custom links.

Facebook has indeed officially announced that it is phasing out FBML code (Facebook Markup language), which had made it easy to develop applications specifically for Facebook according to the network's specifications. Starting March 11, businesses will no longer be able to create new FBML apps and pages will no longer be able to add the Static FBML app.

This is all for the better as it should lead to: à Better design: iframes lets you use your own design tomake your links more consistent with brand guidelines à Better tracking: Content within an iframe actually resides on your own site, even though it is displayed on your Facebook Page. In short: this means that you can use your own web analytics program whereas in the past you had to rely exclusively on Facebook's analysis of your page's performance. Now, you can use your both to measure the effectiveness of your marketing program.

3. More power to the admin!This has been a long awaited new feature for administrators of Facebook Pages all over the world, as they can finally receive notifications ("likes", comments, etc.) on behalf of the brand—by email and directly on Facebook.

For example, we manage the Renault community page. In the past, even when on Renault's page, the notifications that appeared pertained to the community manager's personal account. Now the notifications pertain to consumers interacting with the brand.

On behalf of all our brands, we used to have to check pages constantly and use external tools such as Conversocial or HyperAlerts to make sure we were keeping track of all fan activity. Now, we get notifications in real time.

In short, this means: 

--No more missed comments

--Better overall reactivity, especially in case of negative comments about a brand

Admins can even define a blacklist of forbidden words and ensure that such words do not make it on to their Facebook Page.

Because of the new brand notifications, we now have an "administrator's view" where we see every published post. Posts containing any of the blacklisted words are automatically put aside in a "spam" section. As the admins, we can then choose whether to publish the message or not. And if we don't allow it, the user who published the post can still see the message…but he will be the only one. It's the ultimate smoke & mirrors move to discourage trolls and facilitate a community manager's life.

A brand can also decide if it wants to publicize the names of its page's admin(s) in the right hand-side column. This feature could be useful for companies who want to communicate directly through their community manager and give a "face" to their online presence.

4. Interactions between pagesFinally, and this is probably the most exciting new feature, admins can now literally "log in as a page" instead of through their personal profiles. Admins can now act on behalf of brands in new and creative ways.

In the past, despite our ability to manage brand pages, we couldn't comment on behalf of the brand on other brand pages. Today, we can. A brand can now "like" other brand pages (not personal profiles) and comment as the brand on another brand's page, just as consumers who like things can comment as themselves. Time will tell us how this new functionality will evolve: however, it seems obvious that new partnerships or co-marketing opportunities between brands will emerge, helping them to promote each other's news, "share" friends and grow their fan bases.

In addition,

*When Brand A likes Brand B's page, Brand B's logo is displayed on Brand A's page. The "like" function replaces the "favorites" category.

*Brand A will now receive news from the Brand B in its newsfeed.

Update your pages with the new layout now, by following this link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/status/

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