Last week I was with a client setting up their Facebook Business Page, and getting very confused when it kept going to the look and feel of a ‘Place’. Tabs were down the left instead of across the top, along with a couple of other issues. Of course within a couple of hours, the notification went out that Facebook were changing over the design of these pages (would have been great to have had that knowledge before!).

So, to stop you going through the same level of stress I did last week, here is a quick summary of what the changes are and what affect they will have on your business page.

To start

The first thing you will notice is that when you go to Accounts, and drop down to Manage Pages, this has now changed to ‘Use Facebook as Page’. This will then give you a list of the Pages you manage and when you select ‘Switch’ it will change you to being logged in as the page rather than yourself. (You can always switch back to being ‘you’ by selecting the ‘Use Facebook as [your name]’ on the right hand side)

What does this mean?

You can now post as a Page on other Pages. This is a great new piece of functionality, as before it would come from you as an individual. By using this you can now increase the visibility of your Page by commenting and providing value on pages other than yours. That way, people visiting that page will be able to check out your Company and become fans. Be careful with this though as it could start to be a way for people to spam your page.

A word of warning: make sure you know ‘who’ you are logged in as before you go commenting!

What are my fans up to?

You will also notice that you suddenly have notifications at the top of the screen that were not there before. This is because you can now receive notifications and emails to let you know when someone likes your page, posts to your Page or comments on your post. This is an invaluable feature for helping you monitor your activity. You can change your e-mail notification settings for each Page that you manage.

Once in your page, you will notice that the Tabs have moved from the top to the left hand menu. The tabs are still all there, but it is going to take a bit of time to get used to them to being on the left hand side and not at the top of the page. Make sure you review what applications you have – it’s a great excuse to have a clear out of those you don’t use anymore!

You can also now change the category Of Your Facebook Fan Page. If you set up your page a while back, and are unhappy with the category you chose, you can now choose this. Great if your business has adapted and you don’t want to set up a whole new page now.

So go and take a look at the new design, as I said it will take a while to get used to but there is some great new functionality in there to enjoy!!

Let me know what you think about the new layout in the comments below.