Facebook Page Redesign 2011: Marketing Strategies and Best Practices

The following is an excerpt from the Facebook Marketing Bible, the comprehensive guide to marketing your company, app, or brand using Facebook. The full version of this article, available through a Facebook Marketing Bible subscription, includes strategies for using every new and modified feature from the February 2011 Page redesign. It teaches marketers how take advantage of the Photostrip, mutual interests panel, and "Everyone" relevant posts wall filter. It also features strategies for using iframe Page tab applications, the new wall moderation tools, and the ability to post and comment around Facebook as your Page. In February 2011, Facebook launched a major redesign and expansion of functionality of its Pages for businesses, brands, media, and public figures. The Page layout matches the December user profile redesign, and as of March 1st, 2011, all Pages use it. Here we'll walk through each of the changes, and outline strategies for how you can use the new features to convince new visitors to Like your Page, drive traffic to affiliated Pages, highlight or silence user opinions, moderate your Page's wall to give a good impression of your brand and promote high quality conversation, draw traffic from other Pages by posting and commenting as your Page, and engage fans and visitors with iframe Page tab applications. "Everyone" Relevant Posts Wall Tab, and Wall Moderation You can select between an "Everyone" and a Page posts only default tab for your Page's wall in the Edit Page admin interface. All users who visit the Page's wall will first see this default view of the wall, but can switch to the alternative view using a link at top right of the wall. "Everyone" shows a mix of posts by users and the Page. Facebook surfaces the posts it thinks will be the most relevant to the viewer. Recent posts by friends, posts by other users in same language or country, and posts that have received a lot of Likes and comments will bubble to the top instead of appearing in reverse chronological order. Your Page's own posts will appear in reverse chronological order intermixed with the user content. The Page posts only filter, which is displayed as the name of your Page, won't display any user posts and will show your Page's posts in reverse chronological order. If you want total determination of the content that visitors first see when they visit your Page's wall, or are focused on driving traffic to outbound links you post, select the Page posts only tab as the default. Since visitors won't be distracted by posts by other users, they'll be more likely to read your Pages updates and click your links. Users will still be able to click the other tab to see posts by fans. If you want to completely silence fans, such as during a public relations crisis, you can deselect the Posting Ability options to prevent users from posting updates and links, photos, or videos to you wall. Users expect to have this ability, though, and may be angered if they're denied the option. Page that want to allow their fan community to have a prominent voice on their Page should use the Everyone tab as their default. This will allow users to express how they feel about your brand and ask questions. When visitors see organic, positive posts from other users, it raises the credibility of your brand and encourages visitors to Like your Page. If you select this option, you'll need to have a community manager, customer service representative, or other employee monitor your wall and politely respond to questions. They can also Like user posts to thank fans for their support. If brands want to control but not silence the voices of fans in the Everyone tab, whether it's set as the default tab or not, they can use the moderation options in the Manage Permission tab of the Edit Page admin interface. The Profanity Blocklist can be set to "None", "Medium", or "Strong" to filter posts containing curse words into the Hidden Posts tab that only admins can see. Most Pages should set the filter to at least "medium". However, brands that want to align with a rowdy, informal, 16-24 year old male demographic such as men's magazines, motorcycle makers, extreme sports clothing lines, tattoo parlors and other edgy brands, as well as brands who want to make sure not to censor anyone should leave the Profanity Blocklist set to "None". The Moderation Blocklist allows admins to automatically send user posts with the selected keywords to the Hidden Posts tab. To control the sentiment of users so only positive posts are visible, block words such as such as "hate, sucks, bad, boring, stupid, useless, poor" and their synonyms. To prevent users from recommending your competitors on your wall, block words such as "competitor, worse" and the names of any of your competitors. Admins can click the "Admin View" link beneath the wall tab in the navigation menu to reveal the Hidden Posts tab. They can then review any posts that Facebook automatically removed, or that were removed according to the Page's moderation preferences. If an admin wants to return a user post to the Everyone tab, they can click the 'x' button beside it and select "Unhide post". A good moderation strategy is to set your Profanity Blocklist to "Strong" and add a wide range of words to your Moderation Blocklist, but then diligently unhide posts that are actually acceptable. To moderate posts that haven't been moved to the Hidden Posts tab, click the Most Recent tab in the Admin View. This will show a reverse chronological view of all user posts, making it easy to scan through and hide any objectionable posts. Since the Everyone tab in the user view isn't reverse chronological, moderating from that list will cause you to miss some less relevant posts and read the same relevant posts on every pass. Access strategies for the rest of the new features in the Page redesign, and learn more marketing best practices at the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s complete guide to marketing and advertising on Facebook.

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Facebook Page Redesign 2011: Marketing Strategies and Best Practices

Josh Constine

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