I cannot believe it but I actually feel the need to praise Zuckerberg’s Army for the complete redesign to their Pages interface. Being able to switch to “use Facebook as page” makes it easier for me to share information with my audience and I couldn’t be happier. I am admin for several pages and the new interface makes it simple to cycle through my various “identities” without losing my mind in much the same way Hootsuite lets me cycle through my various Twitter selves.
Pages can now interact in most of the same ways that individuals can on Facebook, the way they comment, share, and like other pages is all reflected as belonging to the page, rather than the admin. Being able to share events and posts directly is probably the change I most appreciate but it’s also handy to be able to like similar/like-minded pages. For example my craft page, Cheryl’s Creative Miscellany likes my friends’ craft pages as well as the Zibbet page and so on whereas my page for FrugalVictoria likes things such as CardSwap.ca, Groupon, and GroceryAlerts.ca. The biggest benefit of liking these pages separately is that it then creates a custom news feed when you are using Facebook as your page. Also helpful? Getting notifications of page interactions (it’s about time).
My only issue with the Page wall layout is that the posts and activity do not appear in chronological order which can make it challenging to find the post that a fan added to the page.
So, now that Pages look almost exactly like personal profiles, there’s no more excuses for building a personal profile for your business — in fact, I suspect that’s exactly what prompted this redesign because Facebook had recently stepped up deletion of non-conforming profiles. It also raises the question as to why any business would use the Group function any more; Group posts do not show up on walls and most only seem to attract wall-spam now.