What Facebook’s new layout means for marketers

In March, Facebook introduced a new News feed layout to optimize the users’ experience on desktop and mobile devices. While not everyone has the new News Feed layout, it is slowly rolling out to more and more users. Here’s a look at the new Facebook in pictures. With each picture, we’ll also cover what these changes would mean to social media marketers and they can make the most of the new Facebook. Your News Feed will now be categorized so you can choose what types of updates to see. You can see all of them or filter just the photos or games. For social media marketers, this means that specific post types will appear together. If you share a photo, it will appear next to other photos. This brings a new challenge. It also means that your posts will be seen by the user when he is feeling most receptive to your category. He will ‘choose’ to see the type of updates and will already be willing to explore. You’ll have a better chance of grabbing his attention. Furthermore, this means that you should diversify the content on your Facebook page so that it can prop up under different filters. In a listening mood? Select “music” to view what your friends are listening to. Also, if you’ve liked pages of musicians, you’ll see updates from them in the Music feed. This is what your News Feed will look like showing updates related to Music. As a marketer, you should note that the user’s most popular apps appear as a quick link in the left-hand panel. You should try and make that spot by creating engaging apps that customers return to frequently. Another view of the News Feed with the left panel minimized. Compare the layout to the mobile version and you’ll immediately notice the consistency in the web and mobile interfaces. This should come as a relief because you’ll no longer have to worry about how your posts will look to the mobile user. The interface will be streamlined across all channels. When sharing a video on the new Facebook, the original video is shared along with its likes, comments and share count. When more friends share the same video or link, their profile pictures will get added to a column on the left hand side. This means that you won’t be commenting on the video in your friend’s timeline. Instead, you’ll be commenting on the original video which will keep all comments, likes and shares consolidated in one place. For social media marketers, this is good news. You can now track all engagement in one place - where you shared the video - instead of going to the Insights section for compiled statistics. Photos become larger because there’s now more space in the center column. So your News Feed will get juiced up with larger graphics and bigger buttons to like, share and comment. The muted grey fonts will keep it subtle as you’ll be looking at this app for long hours during the day and you don’t want to strain your eyes with dark colors. The same advice again: focus on visuals. With the advent of social networks like Pinterest and Instagram, it is clear that aesthetic visuals are gaining popularity. If you haven’t already jumped the bandwagon, 1.11 billion users should be a good enough reason for you to start now. A screenshot of what event invitations and link shares will look like. Everything gets more space so thumbnails, profile photos, descriptions and call-to-action buttons get emphasized. As a social media marketer, you’ll want to focus on uploading aesthetic featured images to your pages and blog posts so that when a link is shared, it brings a nice picture with it. The left-hand panel on your desktop is easily recognizable as the same one as in your phone. With a more consistent theme to the overall design, Facebook plans to make the experience richer for its social users. Do you love it or hate it? Let us know in the comments below. Nabiha Zeeshan (on Twitter @NabihaZeeshan) is a social media enthusiast currently loving her job at @CygnisMedia. She loves observing people around her, researching on anthropology and reading tech and media magazines.

Social Pro Daily

What Facebook’s new layout means for marketers

Guest

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Guest