As you probably already know by now Facebook is an ever changing creature and if you are going to use it to market your business effective you need to stay on top of what’s new … sometimes it can feel like a full time job just trying to keep up so today I wanted to give you a quick summary of what’s changed recently and how you can use these changes to your advantage.
1. Facebook Cover Design Rules have changed
The most exciting recent change is the great news on some new changes to Facebook’s rules regarding Cover Designs.
You can read the official guidelines here. But I will also give you a quick run down on what’s new:
The rules before stated that you could not have any contact information, calls to action, or price information stated on your FB cover design. In the new rules all of those items have been removed which is great news. The main rule of the 20% text still applies so you still can’t go hog wild on text on the designs but the other rules that many people found constricting have been relaxed.
Not sure what 20% looks like on a design … No worries …
Click here to check out a great tool by paavo.ch that will help you see if your design meets the 20% text rule.
If you need a new design make sure to let me know I would love to work with you on a new design that will meet these guidelines and represent your business in a great way.
2. Facebook adds a “reply” option to comments on pages.
Another great announcement this week is that Facebook has finally added a “reply”option to comments on Facebook Pages. When this new feature is launched when someone comments to you on your page you can reply right under the exact comment so you can address each individual comment instead of having to leave a response way after other ones have been left in the newsfeed. This will help with better communication and engagement especially with pages with a very large following and a lot of conversation going on. For more information on this new feature make sure to check out this official blog post by Vadim Lavrusik, Facebook’s journalism program manager where he talks about the plans for the new added feature.
3. Facebook released a brand new Best Practices Guide written to help organizations get the most out of Facebook and Instagram.
You can view the guide here “Building your Presence with Facebook Pages”
The guide is written to focus on Non Profits but has some great tips for any business using a Business Page to grow their exposure.
4. Facebook will incorporate hashtags
It’s not clear how soon this new feature will be available but this will be a great new feature to help with categorizing and finding topics on facebook. Here is a great article on the Wall Street Journal summarizing what’s coming with this new feature.
5. As announced the beginning of this month Facebook will be launching a new newsfeed design
The new design has not been released to everyone yet but you can get on the waiting list by visiting this link. For more information on what to expect make sure to check out this video because it does a great job summarizing what to expect.
If you have been using Facebook for very long to market your business then I’m sure you already realize that change is inevitable and it is much easier to just learn as you go and adjust as needed then to stress out over the inevitable. Change is good and Facebook has become a master of continually improving their platform for the best user experience possible.
To Your Success
Kate Wilber
The Marketing Momma
** If you are interested in a new Facebook Cover design to meet the new guidelines makes sure to contact me through my contact form here for more information on how to get started.
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