At the end of September, Facebook announced massive changes to pages, profiles and its “social graph”. For union communicators just getting the hang of setting up a Facebook page for their union or their campaign, what do these changes mean?
Thankfully, Wildfire, a social media marketing company, has produced a good summary of the changes and their implications:
Timeline
Very soon (if you haven’t hacked it already), your profile will be completely overhauled into a sleek new page with large cover pictures, featured actions, certain aggregated information and more. At its core, this Timeline is a chronology of a user’s life on Facebook, with items automatically appearing based on an algorithm intended to capture a user’s most important life events. …Open Graph and Custom Actions
Last year, Facebook rolled out Open Graph, allowing brands to connect to a user’s Facebook social graph. This year, it rolled out significant changes, allowing app developers to create custom actions using any verb and object related to the activity taking place on the app. …Newsfeed and Ticker
Closely related to the Open Graph changes are the Newsfeed redesign and introduction of the Ticker. According to Facebook, ensure that the overall concept behind these changes is to make sure users don’t miss important events, regardless of how often they log in. …
And the main take aways:
- “Likes” are still very important – they are still the lifeblood of Facebook
- Newsfeed vs. Brand Pages – Only more engaging updates from Brand Pages will appear in the newsfeed
- Reevaluate your brand’s strategy – Make sure you focus on increasing engagement (likes)
Read the entire Wildfire post here.