The New Facebook Pages Experience: What it Means and How to Adapt

Sam Figuera - January 12, 2021

On January 6^th, Facebook announced and rolled out its new Pages experience, which is redesigned to make it simpler for creators to build community and achieve their business objectives. Like any update, it all sounds exciting, but what do these changes mean? Read on to learn more about the new updates and how they might impact your social strategy on Facebook.

New Features

Keeping in line with their goal to simplify the Pages experience, the new updates focus on making it easier to manage your Page and connect with your community. Here’s what’s new:

• Redesigned layout that’s simpler and more intuitive
• Dedicated News Feed to discover and join conversations, follow trends, interact with peers and engage with fans
• Easy navigation between personal profile and Pages
• Updated task-based admin controls giving trusted Page admins full control or partial access
• Actionable insights and more relevant notifications
• Safety and integrity features to detect spammy content and impersonator accounts

Likely the most notable change is the removal of likes and a focus on Followers. Facebook supported the change saying that the Followers of a Page are a stronger indication of a creator’s fanbase, as they represent the people who can receive updates from Pages.

What The Changes Mean For Your Social Strategy

The new Pages updates will not change your existing content, ads and campaigns, or permissions. However, this does not mean you shouldn’t rethink your social strategy. We’ve assembled a couple of changes you should consider making to your social strategy:

1. Update Metrics and Goals
   With the removal of likes, it will be important to make changes to the social metrics and goals you are tracking. If you had a goal to increase your Page Likes in 2021, you’ll have to consider another goal or simply change to a focus on increasing followers.

   It will also be important to consider the way you interpret historical data at the end of 2021. If you typically track changes in Page Likes year over year, be sure your 2021 analysis focuses on other metrics as Page Likes will no longer be relevant.

2. Delegate New Administrative Permissions
   Facebook has added new Page management features that allow you to clearly assign and manage admin access permissions based on specific tasks. For example, you can now grant different levels of access to manage specific tasks including, Ads, Content, Insights, and Community Activity & Messages.

   If your Page is managed by a team, be sure to think about how you will delegate the new permissions. The new permissions help to ensure account safety and integrity, so consider making these changes.

3. Make Conversations a Focus
   Your new social strategy should integrate new ways to engage with your followers and favorite influencers. Facebook’s new dedicated news feed for Pages will allow your page to discover and join conversations, follow trends, interact with peers and engage with fans. The updated News Feed will even suggest new connections, such as other public figures, Pages, Groups and trending content that a Page or public figure cares about.

If your strategy revolves solely around posting, and you don’t regularly comment and engage in conversations, now’s the time to consider changing that, if it fits within your social strategy.

Why? First, with the new update, your Page conversations will now be more visible to a wider audience and surfaced more frequently in your followers’ news feeds. Second, any comments you make as a Page will be bumped to the top of the comments section for those people who follow your Page. And finally, people will now also be able to follow your Page directly from your comments. Consider creating and engaging in conversations to capitalize on these new opportunities to increase your visibility and follower base.

Conclusion

The new Facebook Pages Experience brings forth many new changes, so it is important to rethink your social strategy going into 2021 and onward. Be sure to reevaluate your goals and engagement strategies to capitalize on new opportunities for growth on this platform.