New Facebook Page Experience Revealed for Brands and Businesses

Let’s start this article with a disclaimer: everything regarding the new Facebook Page experience is subject to change. That said, Facebook is revamping the Page experience that will have a significant impact for brands and businesses. If you don’t have a Facebook Page or don’t use your Page frequently, you’re not likely to see these changes until the updates rollout everywhere. However, you can see glimpses of the new user experience on Facebook. Keep reading to find out where.

Facebook Beta Group Selection Methodologies

Facebook has developed formal feedback apps for it’s products like Study from Facebook and Facebook Viewpoints. However, the Page Beta Group appears to be based on how Pages are used and how often. Your Page audience helps provide engagement feedback. As for MADEGRANDBYCAM, our Facebook Page is a vibrant conversation with our friends, fans, followers, and tribe. The Pages managed by MADEGRANDBYCAM were selected for the temporary Public Beta Group. The Page followers don’t see the changes to the page. It behaves like a one-way mirror for now.
Many of the integration features for our Facebook Page are tied into other MADEGRANDBYCAM assets for Portrait Booking Reservations, Event Ticketing, Instagram, and Twitter. Moreover, MADEGRANDBYCAM has several brand Pages for our other brands and divisions: Bodyscapism, MADEGRANDBUSINESS, THE MODEL BOOK, IMMORTAL BRANDING, and CAM EVANS. It’s a massive orchestration to manage new content for all of these pages. However, our content marketing plans for that diversity in our creative publishing. So let’s get into the changes.

Facebook Revamped Page Experience At A Glance

Revamped Page Layout Looks Familiar and Different

If the changes look familiar, then perhaps you have used Creator Studio to publish content to your Page. The design language and style of the Creator Studio is the default for the beta Facebook Page. A similar style can be found on Facebook Watch if you don’t use Creator Studio. Both Facebook Watch and Creator Studio reflect Facebook’s increasing focus on being a video first platform for content creators. As such, there is an obvious focus on video getting prime real-estate for Pages.

Facebook Video Gets First Class Treatment

Along with Creator Studio and Facebook Watch, Facebook also introduced a new Video Page template and Video Creator Page category. Video Page templates have Spotlights. Spotlights function like channels versus Page posts. Additionally, the Video Creator Page category can be applied to any existing template. Facebook uses Pages with the Video Creator category to pull content featured on Facebook Watch. All of these video-first changes are embedded into the beta Page DNA.

Did Facebook Kill The About Page?

Let’s face it, most About Pages suck. They are humble-bragging narcissistic rants about how they fell in love with blah at age blah blah. Since then they have been in love with blah. And they want to put their blah blah all over yayayah! So it may not come as a surprise that the About Page is missing in action in the beta test.  Right after a perfectly sized every image for my About Page too!
What is featured is the short About text from the More Info section of your page. So your one opportunity to tell your vivid brand story has been reduced to 150 characters. Brevity is truly the soul of wit for the beta test. So, make sure you get focused on how to make your brand story a six-second sound bite. Watch the Immortal Branding Episode 5, Crafting Your Brand One-Line Story for details on how to do this.

Facebook Leaves Live Videos Missing in Action in Beta Test

Live Videos are not necessarily live streaming videos. Facebook follows YouTube’s practice of enabling content creators to prerecord videos and premiere them later. During the premiere, the content creators can focus on engagement and conversations versus trying to manage a live stream and audience engagement at the same time.  MADEGRANDBYCAM has Live Videos as the first tab for the page. However, the Live Videos tab is missing action in the beta. Additionally, Facebook did not provide a facility to produce a Live Video.

Facebook Is Changing the Cover Video Dimensions for Pages

The current dimensions for Facebook Cover Video for Pages is an unconventional 820×462 pixels. This doesn’t match any common video format. So if you don’t design your content for that resolution, your content simply won’t fit perfectly. In the beta Page test, videos that were formatted to fit perfectly in the current Page Cover Video dimensions are now too small. After seeing this, we produced a new promo folio reel video. The 2-minute, “You, Celebrated“  video is ultra HD 3840×2160. The video content is centered in production and works great for the current Page Cover Video and the revamped Facebook Cover Video.

Lessons Learned from Facebook Revamped Page Experience

1. Make Video a first-class asset in your content creation and marketing. Low-end, smartphone videos are better than no videos. However, if you can budget to produce higher-quality videos, it will make your business more discoverable  on Facebook Watch. MADEGRANDBYCAM creates brand videos and video portraits for our Immortal Headshot and commercial clients.

2. Make Your Featured Services Actionable. On MADEGRANDBYCAM, you can book your portrait reservation directly from our website or our Facebook page. It all goes to our atelier calendar. These Featured Services are prominently displayed as featured content in beta Page. This is smart. You don’t want customers searching for your call-to-action. For business owners that book by email, this a missed opportunity to make your Business Page more useful for your customers and your bottom-line.

3. Photography Gets the Coveted Top Spot on Revamped Facebook Pages. People respond to visual content more rapidly than plain text. This provides you with an opportunity to publish professional images from a Day-In-the-Life, Behind-the-Scenes, Planning, Products, Demonstration,and so much more. Your photography assets are mission-critical to your brand. They also have a lower-production costs than video. So let’s create amazing images.
4. Use the Platform to the Fullest. MADEGRANDBYCAM.COM if the flagship property for our company. Nothing will ever change that. However, we recognize that our tribe and fans are on social networks. So, we build extensions into social platforms to drive value back to our website; where we make all of the rules. That said, Facebook is better if you exploit it strategically to meet your goals. You don’t have to use every feature. However, make smart decisions regarding why or why not use the features.