Facebook “pages” have a number of important advantages if you are marketing a product, service, brand, musical group, organization, or “cause”. If you operate a business you should seriously consider having a Facebook Page for that business.
Unfortunately Facebook has made a number of important changes along the way to how “Pages” work. Right off the bat there is the name. These things were originally referred to as “fan pages”, and many people – especially users who got on board early – still refer to them that way.
But Facebook doesn’t. They simply call the “Pages”. So if you’re looking for “how to” videos or tutorials explaining how to set these things up chances are you are going to be confused right out of the gate. Perhaps the best way to think of them is as “business pages”, because that is what distinguishes them from your primary Facebook account page(s). They let you focus on and promote whatever business interest you choose.
Recent changes
The most recent changes to Facebook Pages took place in early February, 2011. So any tutorials or videos you find describing how to do various things will be outdated in some ways.
The most obvious changes are to the layout. Pages have taken on the layout changes introduced some time ago for personal profile pages. If you are used to thinking in terms of “tabs” that can be added, changed or removed at the top of your page, these things are no longer there. Other than the basic links for Status, Photo, Link and Video, all other “tabs” are now on the left.
The most important additions to Pages are:
1. You can now sign in to your Facebook account as one of your Pages. When you leave comments or likes on other Pages it will be the identity of the Page that has left those comments. This should help give your Pages (and the brands being promoted by them) some exposure.
2. Facebook now will notify you of activity on your Pages. You can also set things up to receive email notifications of activity on any of your Pages.
There are many detailed blog posts dealing with these changes. Some that I have found helpful are:
Facebook Fan Page: New Layout and Features
Facebook Launches Pages Redesign
