Social Media Talk: Facebook One Column Page Timeline

If you’re a social media marketer (or community manager or whatever you call yourself) like me, you probably have this love-hate relationship with Facebook. With all these changes that happen abruptly with little announcement (or sometimes none at all), there are times you’d feel you and your at Facebook’s mercy. Read what the Daily Dot has to say about this (as shared by Mashable). One of the recent changes Page admins are dealing with right now is the new Page Timeline.

The new Facebook page layout is right-aligned and simple without looking cluttered.

Back in March, Facebook asked admins to sign up for the new layout which, based on my experience and among the fourteen pages I am managing, only one got it. Last week, Facebook made another announcement about turning all pages to the new layout by the 12^th of June. Of course, admins have the option of changing their page as soon as the news came out. This includes a tour of the new layout for admins and also the option to delay the change. From Facebook, “Admins that want to update their Pages before switching to the new design can wait up to two weeks before making the switch. However, every Page will automatically switch to the updated design two weeks after the tour has been viewed.”

On the bright side, Facebook should be our ally in marketing, not the enemy and there are some things we should note with this new change coming in. What I particularly love about this is that tabs are positioned in the right places, the top navigation menu and the left column, to give everyone (both admins and fans) easy access to things they want to see on the Page.

To know more about the redesign and changes, visit the Facebook FAQ here.

Why I Think the New Facebook Page Layout Is Heaven-Sent To Marketers.

If you’re a social media marketer like me (or whatever you call yourself), you probably know what I’m talking about. That Facebook NewsFeed algorithm is a pain in the ass. The new layout is a mixed emotion kind of thing (wow!, whoa!, wtf?, etc.). Facebook ads probably has ROI if you know what you’re doing. Hello marketing friends, welcome to social media (although recently it’s Facebook in the spotlight, Twitter will have to take a back seat for a couple of days with its recent changes).

I kind of avoid talking about my job that much because of several reasons. First, I might vent out and that would hurt my reputation (trying to keep everything I post PG-13 at least). Second, I might break a few company policies and cost me my job. Third, I have a lot of things to explain just to give you an idea what my job is like. Fourth, I hate being technical about things.

But this. God, I just love the new Facebook pages layout.

It’s been out for weeks now and I am so, so, so glad I made that decision to turn the pages I manage to adapt the new layout. It is easy to manage the posts. And no, I’m not talking about the Insights tab, we’ll get there later. The layout is so user-friendly, I can even teach an intern to navigate through it in five minutes!

I am assuming our fans see the same thing I see everyday on our page, and if they are, then I must say it’s definitely working for me as a marketer. It’s very simple: cover photo, important details, and stuff posted by the page. It does kind of look like the old layouts where all posts get pushed down to the bottom when a new one is published, but I think it makes the audience focused on what you just posted.

In my nearly three years with this job, I have been recycling the same status updates within a year. And with this new roll out, boom! Fans are finally starting to notice the latest update that gets posted because THAT IS THE FIRST THING THEY’RE GOING TO SEE!

I don’t know about other pages’ fans but mine even comments things that are totally irrelevant to the update. Not that it’s a big deal, but that simply means my engagement’s going up. I honestly think it made fans lazy to scroll down because the posts now take up a huge space. They’re bigger. I just feel bad for my older updates, but hey, if your fans are really that into you, they’ll take time to scroll down and keep reading your content.

So this is another reason why I don’t like to talk about work. I jump from one thing to another because there’s a lot going on! :p