Last Friday Facebook rolled out significant changes to their Pages in more ways than one! I’ve spent the past three days exploring these changes (across some 40 Pages I’m an Administrator of!) and on the whole these allow greater leverage for the Admin to expose their Page and consequently their business!

The first change is the new layout which you can choose to change now or wait until it changes on the 1 March. I have opted to wait. I never rush into these things if there’s a choice, like most new products, there’s usually some teething and bugs that need ironing out, which in this case there was. I had a number of clients who had decided to upgrade contact me complaining that the new Welcome Tab width had reduced. Leaving their beautifully designed Welcome Tab cropped. This was the first noticeable bug.

The new layout has relocated the Page Tabs from the top of the Page to the side and under the avatar. As an Admin of the Page these can be ordered. I suggest if you have a custom Welcome Tab, Email Signup form, etc, ensure these are at the top and in view to the visitor. The Wall and Info Tabs will remain at the top of the list as they are fixed Facebook features.

The second less obvious change but super powerful feature, which I did get a glimpse of last year when Facebook went live for an hour by accident, is the ability to ‘switch’ from your Profile to a Page you’re an Admin of. To make this ‘switch’ simply head to your Account option in the top right hand corner and select ‘Use Facebook as Page’. All the Pages you are an Admin of will be listed. You can see our business option below and we simply select ‘Switch’ to move from a Profile user, to the Facebook Page user.

This allows the Page, your business brand, to comment and like posts on other Pages it’s connected with. This spreads your brand further afield in its entirety and not relying on the Admin Profile to do the promoting. This of was one of the biggest issue many Facebook users had, who really wish to keep their Profile for personal use and their Page for business use. These new changes allow just this and it’s even more valid now for a business to not only have a Facebook Page but to ensure their branding is present. This can be achieved with a custom design Welcome Tab and matching side banner. If you’d like to learn more about these services we can assist. Interim Business Solutions offers two options with the Facebook Page set up and the FBML design work to cater for varying budgets.

Now we just hope and wait for Facebook to fix the ‘Suggest to Friends’ option which was previously the tool to readily promote a Page!

I would love to hear what you make of the changes to Facebook Pages. Do you see your Page having more leverage?