5 Ways to Prepare for the Latest Facebook Changes

Jump in now. Facebook is slowly transitioning all accounts to include the new news feed, in addition to the new Graph Search feature. But you can request to sign up for the early access list to both of these features, so you can get a head start over everyone else. Jumping in head first to the new Facebook layout is smart because it can give you an edge over the competition.

Educate your staff. Graph Search will make all “likes” public for public profiles. That means the Facebook likes of your entire staff will be out there for the world to see, unless they change their profiles to private. The time to instruct your staff to switch to a private profile is now, particularly if most of the staff has liked the company page. Doing this will ensure that customers who like your page will not be able to see who among your staff your likes controversial or offensive content on Facebook.

Analyze your Facebook “About” page. Graph Search will also tap into contact information and keywords to decide which users want to see your brand in their searches. That means it is urgent to do a checkup of your Facebook About page. Is your address correct? Are you identifying yourself in the right business category? What about your keywords – are they the words you want to be found for in the new Graph Search? Your About page will become more relevant once this feature has reached all users.

Start increasing visuals. Visual features such as images and videos will be bigger, and in the words of Facebook, “more immersive” with the new news feed layout. If you have not used many visuals in the past, that needs to change now. The new news feed will favor images and videos, so you have a good chance of appearing in more news feeds if you post more of them.

Post content on specific topics. Facebook doesn’t utilize hashtags to categorize topics à la Twitter, but the new news feed promises to group together stories on the same topic under categorized headlines. So, start strategizing on which topics you will find news stories for (see the popular “newsjacking” trend), and get into the habit of posting on those topics now. When the new news feed hits your audience, they will start seeing those categorized headlines in their feeds.

While there is no guarantee that the latest Facebook changes will help you increase conversion rate, a smart social media agency will certainly do the work to find out. For more information on Facebook marketing, contact Crest Media today.