A few months ago Facebook accidentally leaked their new version of Pages to the masses, but last Friday the changeover to the new layout happened for real. If you haven’t upgraded to the new layout yet because you’re unsure what it will look like then fear not, here we present a quick review of the changes that have been made and analyse their implications for page admins:

Overview of new layout interface and main changes - click to enlarge

#1 Smile! - Photos are up front and centre

The new Pages layout mimics the recently updated personal profile layout by publishing a selection of 5 photos at the top of the page. While Facebook will originally select a random handful of photos from your albums, you can control which ones to display  by selectively hiding the ones you don’t want to be visable (see #1 in image above). Indeed you can remove all photos by hiding them all (reset this through Edit Page > Profile Picture > Unhide All). Photos are some of the most-viewed aspects of band pages so the prominence of photos in the new layout is probably a good thing for musicians.

Additionally, you’ll notice when you click to view your photos that Facebook have updated their picture viewer - it now appears as a pop-up box or ‘lightbox’ which overlays your original page.

#2 Tabs replaced by links

Again reflecting the changes already made to personal profiles, tabs have now been moved to the left hand side of Pages, underneath your Page picture. Thankfully this change hasn’t impacted on your ability to select a different default landing tab (you can still do this in Edit Page > Manage Permissions > Default Landing Tab). However the move away from a tabbed display has generally been viewed negatively by page administrators and app developers since it’s a deviation away from the habitual way people navigate webpages. Only time will tell if it results in a fall-off in visits to page applications such as stores and music players.

#3 Page Admins more clearly displayed

When you are logged into Facebook and on your bandpage the other Page administrators are now more visually prominent in the top right hand corner.

#4 Comment as your page rather than as your personal profile

The “Use Facebook as” is a new feature which will excite page admins - especially those like ourselves in Amp who administrate multiple pages. It allows admins to navigate around Facebook and leave comments and ‘likes’ on other pages and personal profiles while under the guise of your bandpage, rather than as your personal profile. This is a great engagement tool for musicians, particularly for solo artists who use a stage name.

#5 View Page Insights

Facebook have been making great strides to improve their Insights offering and this prominent link is likely to encourage admins to monitor fan activity on their page more often.

And Finally: Page Alerts comes to Facebook

Very recently we recommended the service HyperAlerts as a way to get timely updates of fan activity on your Facebook Page; “the function Facebook forgot” (to use HyperAlerts words). Well it looks like Facebook have remembered to include this function in their most recent platform update because now page admins can opt to receive email updates when fans leave comments on your Page. Enable this function in Edit Page > Your Settings > Email Notification. However, having used the notification system for about a week now, we’ve found it to be little more than a way to clutter your email inbox, so we’ve switched it off for the pages we manage and stuck to using HyperAlerts which send you one-email-per-day/hour /week/month with a summary of all your fan activity. Good to know Facebook are moving towards better management systems for page admins, but for now we’ll be sticking with HyperAlerts.