Facebook Pages Update Something To Smile About
We knew it was coming and now we know when. The official switch from the current Facebook Page layout to the new one is less than a month away (March 1, 2011) and with the preview they are blessing us all with, it looks like the majority of the updates will bring real estate agents something to smile about!
Here’s how Facebook let us know about these changes when we received our weekly Facebook email update:
And how we found out when we logged back into our Fan Page around 4 pm yesterday afternoon:
So what does this all mean? Here’s our synopsis:
PROS:
POST AS YOU OR YOUR PAGE
You can now post a comment, post an update and “like” something on another business’ Page as either yourself or your Page. This is fantastic news since you’ll be able to present your business when posting on a Page instead of you as an individual. Think of all those additional opportunities to advertise and promote your Real Estate business on some highly trafficked pages! After a little playing around with this feature this morning, it’s a little strange and will take some time to get used to, but overall it’s a great option to have for business owners such as Realtors.
Additional modifications can be made within the “Edit Page” link on the top right of your Facebook Page (the link used to be located directly under your Page image)
INSTANT EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS
Get instant notifications sent to your email address on file with Facebook when someone posts on your wall. Great for immediate attention and staying in touch with prospective clients – If you have your email linked to your mobile phone, you can respond to wall posts on the go too…
POST RELEVANCE
Determine what is shown on the Wall and in what order. As an admin to your Page, you can determine if everyone’s posts show or just yours. The Everyone option will show users posts in order of most relevance (per Facebook determination) – recent posts by friends, posts by those that are not friends in the same country or same language and posts that have received many Likes and/or comments will be pushed to the top of the list.
IMAGES PHOTOSTRIP
Here’s an opportunity to get creative and systematic with what you have within your photos. Image the ‘Featured Properties’ section on Realtor.com but on Facebook! Use your imagination and use this hot space for promoting your market area, your open houses, your listings, and more!
CONS:
NO TABS / SMALLER LINKS
Your tabs along the top of your page have been removed and replaced with smaller, not so obvious text links beneath your page image. This will certainly diminish the likelihood of visitors checking out your other tabs, unless you include a call to action within your page’s image.
NARROWER CUSTOM LANDING TAB
*** UPDATE: Rumor has it that this is a bug that Facebook is fixing so don’t go changing your Custom Page dimensions!: If you already have a Custom Landing Tab you’ll need to get it revamped to fit the smaller, narrower space that is provided – from 520 px to 490 px wide. That’s quite the difference from the original 700 px that Facebook initially had given us to play with back in the day (I mean, 6 months ago!)…
NARROWER AND SHORTER PAGE IMAGE
The same thing goes for your Page image. This size has also been reduced from 200 x 600 px to 180 x 540 px. Get out your Photoshop tools…
RESETTING OF LANDING PAGE
When you choose to upgrade (or when it becomes mandatory on March 1st), your landing tab for new visitors will be put back to the defaulted wall tab. If you have a custom landing tab set up for new visitors, you will need to reset it up again. This may go unnoticed by many for some time.
Overall the updates are ones that will be positive and welcomed for Real Estate Agent Facebook Page owners and administrators. Personally, I believe they did their “accidental” update a month or so ago to get the initial reactions from the general Facebook Page owners and took those responses into consideration when making this final launch. I’m very thankful that they chose to keep the ability to say which tab a new visitor lands on most of all. First impressions last, and sometimes your wall is so filled with extraneous “stuff” that the call to action to “Like” your Page is overlooked, and off they go…
Let us know about your feelings and thoughts about this new update and what your the most happy about.
There are 26 responses to this post! Join in...
Thanks for this great recap! I am most excited to be able to comment as a page!
This is very cool. Many of my clients have been asking about something like this for a long time! It seems to make sense, but I will miss the tabs.
You rock it Chris… Thanks for keeping us in the loop.
I changed my page over yesterday and I too saw the possibiliites for the new changes as a great way to interact with Fans directly, let alone being able to post on other pages as my page. Nice to see what others are saying in such a timely fashion.
I upgradedmy page yesterday and like that they are making the layout/feel cohesive with personal profiles but agree it will take some subtle changes to effective market.
One nice change I noticed is how you can now change the category of the page. Before if a page was set up and categorized wrong there was no way to change this except deleting the fan page and creating a new one. I don’t like that once you create a custom URK there’s no way to change it at all even if something such as the brokerage you work for changes.
Great Job Suzanne & Chris!!
You guy’s are always on it. Now for us old guys it will be just a metter of if we get it or not.
Email notifications for comments are huge and long overdue!
Great Post Brotha! I agree, overall just the mere fact that we can comment, like, and update as our biz page is amazing! Simply Amazing! The fact that the tabs are no longer at the to is a bummer, yet I am extremely grateful that we still have the option of setting our landing tab!
Love the new changes- I think the PROS’s FAR outweigh the CON’S. Thanks for this update- it comes at just the right time as I’m having my new call to action Face-pic designed today!
I absolutely HATE the new pages upgrade. I spent a lot of time and effort setting up my tabs and I really liked how they highlighted the important aspects of our business. How will people know to go look at our current sales or contests now that the tabs are gone? I could barely find them, and I’m an admin!!! It seriously diminishes the possibility of it’s use as an advertising tool and get new “likes”, regardless of the improved ability to interact with current fans.
When you look up “change” in the dictionary it’s a picture of facebook.
I’ve taken advantage of the new page design for my movie photo trivia page. I use different ways of disguising movie images as clues and people try and guess what movie it is.
I absolutely love the changes. The one (additional) con, so far, relates to the reveal tab functionality being lost. Hopefully this is just an oversight and facebook will introduce a ‘fix’.
Thank you for doing a fantastic job of keeping us updated on all the new Facebook changes!
I love the new upgrade.
Very happy with these changes for the most part! Commenting as a biz page is huge, as is recategorizing a biz page. Not too thrilled about the loss of tabs as I just set several up but at least we have the freedom to say what we want as our landing page. For me it will probably be my new TP tab unless I get a custom landing page.
I’m loving 90% of the changes, but the loss of “suggest to friends” is a whopper. All I can find is “tell your friends” which is the contact upload – I can’t send it to friends on facebook. Major bummer!
Hi Chris
This is great but overwhelming. can’t get everything running.
Have a nice weekend
Thanks, Chris. I am upgraded and am enjoying the new features. One quick sort of related question. On my personal profile it has my clickable employer name. It should be the same as my business page and go there but it does not. How can I get it to work that way? Thanks!
Chris – Great post.
QUESTION: I am having a technical issue which developed about 1 week before I upgraded my business page. The URL to by business page (http://www.facebook.com/angelocosentino.realestate) directs to the facebook login page. If I am logged into my accout, it actually directs to my page, but if I am logged out, it directs everybody to the login page? I checked a few other pages (yours)and there are no issues. Do you have any suggestions? Is this a facebook bug? I read something about a bug like this back in 2007?
@Stacy, ‘Suggest to Friends’ is still there on the right hand side, below the other ‘Admin’ links (insights, etc).
Yeah very welcoming and interesting move.
I think the new updates were an excellent addition by Facebook.
Awesome! The only thing still missing is “send a message to admin” – not sure why you can’t send a message to the owner of a page.
Thanks for the article!!
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