As the new year began, Facebook was ready to roll out significant changes to its platform. On January 6th,  Facebook announced that they will be removing the like button from its public pages, replacing it with the Pages follower count information.

These pages are ways in which artists, public figures, businesses, and brands communicate with their audience. Though this does not sound like a significant change for Page users, it will quickly show its worth to you. This update will allow you to focus on actual conversations on your personal newsfeed as well as a separate newsfeed designed specifically for your Page. This will allow for a more streamlined approach to Page’s brand management, and community building endeavors.

What is New with Facebook?

  • Redesigned Layout: This new design is more straightforward and more insightful.

  • Dedicated News Feed: This new feed will allow users to discover and join conversations, follow trends, interact with peers, and engage with fans.

  • Easy Navigation: Users will easily be able to toggle through their personal profiles and pages.

  • Updated Task-based Admin Controls: This new rollout will allow you to give trusted Page admins full control of your Page, or just partial access.

  • Actionable Insights: Actionable insights allow for more relevant notifications.

  • Safety and Integrity Features: The new safety and integrity features work to detect spam content and impersonator accounts.

How will dropping the like button from public pages affect your Page and your community Page view?

Facebook announced in a blog post that they have chosen to allow a dedicated news feed where Pages can join conversations, interact with peers, and engage with fans, while still having the same connections with the Page owners’ personal connections through separate newsfeeds. Facebook said, “We are removing likes and focusing on followers to simplify the way people connect with their favorite pages,” and we agree these new features could be wonderful for Page owners everywhere.

These changes include a new layout, News Feed, navigation that is easy to use, updated task-based admin controls, actionable insights, and safety features.

The Dedicated News Feed has a Simple and Intuitive Page Design

This new update has made it easy for someone to toggle between their personal profile and a public Page. They choose a cleaner and more streamlined look in order to help all users to see bios, posts, and other information that is important to them in an easier fashion.

This minimalist approach will help you as a page owner to be more involved with your Page’s community and help your community to see your information – the information that matters most to them.

Facebook appears to be most proud of this feature, saying, “We are bringing the power of News Feed to Pages for the first time.” Pages can now discover and join conversations, follow trends, interact with peers, and engage with other fans about topics and content your brand cares about! This ability to cultivate relationships could help take your brand to the next level.

The new dedicated News Feed is impressive! It shows and suggests new connections, including other public figures, pages, groups, and trending content. This could mean that your brand continually gets pushed in front of Audiences similar to the community of followers you already have.

According to Facebook, “Unlike Likes, Followers of a Page represent the people who can receive updates from Pages, which helps give public figures a stronger indication of their fan base.”  To enhance page visibility, comments from public figures will be bumped to the top, and users will thus be able to toggle easily between comments and recommendation posts. Facebook has even begun to implement a follow page from the comments section to ease the following.

Facebook seemed to have fully thought through the challenges public figures and Pages may have in this transition and did what they could to combat those difficulties. For example, they choose to make Page conversations more visible to a larger audience. The social media giant decided to expand the visibility of verified badges to make it easier to identify posts and comments from authentic pages and profiles.

Sense of Community

If you have a Facebook Page, your top goal should be about building a community. This should be your goal because creating a sense of community on a platform such as Facebook allows you to promote your brand effectively and inexpensively. It also allows for you to reach more people that are likely to become your customers and engage your audience on a more personal level – providing you with valuable feedback in the process.

The redesigned Facebook Pages make it simpler for both public figures and creators to build a community that will help them to better achieve their business goals. Facebook took the popular feature of Q&As and created a new format that is text-based and allows for interactive conversations, meaning that you can better cultivate relationships with your Pages following.

The new Pages experience also allows for seamless interaction to take place between other public figures, brands, and partners. Your Page will have its news feed that is separate from your profile, which will allow you to stay in the know about the topics that mean the most to you.

Facebooks Safety Features and Improved Page Management Tools

At Momentum3, we are especially looking forward to this portion of the new rollout because we manage an excessive number of Pages for businesses. The new features could ensure better account safety and integrity for our clients. For example, clients could easily grant us full access as they have done in the past, or strictly access to Ads, Content, Community Activity, and Community Messages, without providing complete access to all their personal information.

Facebook wants their platform to be a safe place for Pages to interact with their community, so they added new features to help. These new safety features will ensure the proper detection of spam and impersonator accounts, which may have hurt your following in the past. The new Page experience also allows for improved detection of illegal activities such as hate speech, violent, sexual, or impersonation.

Transitioning to the New Pages Experience

We should start this section by letting you know that now all Pages have access to the new Pages experience yet, but they will. When you do have access and wish to switch to the new Pages experience, all Page content, including posts, photos, videos, stories, and Groups your Page is an admin of, will automatically move to your new Page. Meaning, anyone who was previously an admin of your Page will retain that status post-transition. Should you have had an Editor of an Advertiser for your Page, they will be given task-based access to your new Page.

All your followers and your blue verification check will transfer to your new Page as well. However, when it comes to transitioning Likes, things will be different. For example, if someone Likes your Page but does not actually follow it, then they will not transition to your new Page. Though that clearly has a downside to dropping in your previous Like number, it will allow only the individuals who actively care about your Page to transition with you.

Should you be worried about the previous posts you made on your classic Page, do not be. Facebook has guaranteed that all previous posts will be preserved on your Page, and insights will continue to be available for them. On the flip side, content from stories may not migrate, and information on your classic Page, such as contact info, may not transition as well.

They also stated that upon switching you may need to check how your bio looks on the new Page because they are allowing for less Page space for this type of content. And be prepared that the Our Story section of your Facebook Page will go away completely as of February 28th, 2021.

Not all of these new Pages features are currently available. However, they will continue to roll out in the coming months. Facebook is still diligently pursuing a proper integration of the classic Page features into new Pages; some of those features will hopefully be available soon.

The new Pages experience is exciting and will provide businesses the ability to engage with users and cultivate a community that can lead to their business soar. With roughly 2.8 billion people on Facebook’s platform, utilizing it to get your message out there just makes sense. Businesses have hired us for years to help them manage their presence on Facebook, and these new opportunities we have to cultivate a community will mean big things for our clients. We have the ability to manage your page and cultivate your following, allowing you to focus on running your business. Contact us today to get started!