Facebook is beginning to roll out new page designs with some great new features for media brands looking to build better relationships with their fans. You can see the new look live on Lost Remote’s Facebook page (we’re still tinkering), and all pages will switch by March 10th. Take note: many of the changes go well beyond cosmetics.
One of the most important new features is the ability for page administrators to post comments as the corresponding page brand (in our case, “Lost Remote”), not just as themselves. This certainly comes in handy when moderating a comment string and sharing the admin duties across several people. You’re communicating as a brand, not as a bunch of unrelated people. To avoid dehumanizing pages entirely, admins are displayed in the upper right of the page, which is a nice touch.
Not just for comments, you can carry that page brand identity with you as you “like” and post on other pages. By jumping into your account settings, you can switch your identity back and forth from your name (“Cory Bergman”) and your brand (“Lost Remote”), and by extension, your news feed and notifications change with it. It even works if you’re an admin across multiple pages — you’re just assuming one identity at a time.
This way, you can keep your personal news feed to your friends and use your brand’s news feed to track the latest news from other media brands.
Of course, just like juggling lots of Twitter accounts on your iPhone, that means you have to be careful that you’re posting under your name — not your media brand — when you’re sharing that silly photo of your kid. But fortunately, Facebook has a delete button. And whenever you log into Facebook, it defaults with your personal identity even if you logged out when in “page mode.”
(One weird side-effect: if you’re logged in as your page, when you visit your own site, all the “like” buttons and social widgets will disappear. That was momentarily freaky.)
From a design perspective, the new Facebook pages simplify the navigation and carry over that row of photos from the new profile designs. For brands with visual elements, that’s a great addition — for example, TV show brands for a network page — but for others like Lost Remote, it’s initially a bit of a head-scratcher (what should we put in there?)
One other feature to mention: when you’re on your page, Facebook recommends other pages you might like based upon how many of your fans like them. Apparently, lots of Lost Remote fans like Starbucks.
All in all, it looks like Facebook has rolled out some terrific additions for media brands, and some of the features have been frequently requested. Any other things to add? Please let us know in comments below…
