How the Recent Facebook Changes Affect Your Business Marketing Plan

Over the past two months, Facebook has rolled out a number of different changes designed to improve its user experience and to streamline some elements of the site’s operation.  And while the publics’ reception of these modifications has been somewhat lukewarm, it’s worth keeping in mind that many of these changes were designed to allow brands and companies to interact with prospective customers more easily.

With that in mind, here’s what you need to know about the various Facebook changes thus far, as well as how each of them could impact your business’s Facebook marketing plan.

Real-Time Ticker

One of the most obvious new additions to the latest Facebook rollout is the creation of a real-time Ticker that displays every action taken by a user’s friends and “liked” brands.  The Ticker sits next to the user’s Wall, which no longer displays updates in chronological order, but instead prioritizes specific updates based on the user’s past preferences.

And although Facebook’s engineers would never release details about the specific factors that go into determining which posts are classified as “Top Stories”, social marketing strategists have noticed that the site is more likely to prioritize messages from friends over messages deployed by brands that the user has “liked.”  In addition, changes made to the Facebook News Feed mean that brand images won’t be as aesthetically pleasing as they are on personal pages, leading to a diminished brand importance.

The implications of this change for Facebook marketers are pretty obvious.  It’s no longer enough to simply plaster your sales message across every area of your profile – chances are your clients won’t even see it!  Instead, you’re going to have to invest the time in crafting compelling messages that resonate with your prospects and customers if you want to maintain visibility in this new environment.

Like Button

Though the Facebook “Like” button was widely expected to play a larger role in determining how information was prioritized within Facebook and on search engines using this information to create more personalized search recommendations, the latest updates make it seem as if the button is actually decreasing in importance.

In rollouts thus far, it seems that when a user “likes” a specific piece of content from within the Facebook platform, that link is no longer automatically posted to the user’s Wall.  For brands that rely on the social sharing nature of the site, losing the impressions generated by friends viewing each other’s content could be significant (although it’s worth noting that this applies to content pieces only, not fan pages in general).

Subscriptions

Another one of Facebook’s newest releases is the “Subscribe” button which enables users to customize the stories that appear in their News Feeds by opting in to some updates, important updates or all updates from their Facebook friends.  Although the appeal of this feature for most people will be the ability to turn off Cousin Billy’s “Farmville” updates, the move does offer some advantages for brand figureheads.

If you’re branding yourself as an industry leader or business owner, chances are you already have a fan page to promote your business activities, but up until now, you may have avoided “friending” potential customers in order to maintain the separation between your personal and professional lives.  While this can be great for your sanity, it also means that potential customers might be missing out on connecting with you if you aren’t as active on your fan page as you are on your personal profile.

Enter the “Subscribe” button.  By simply turning on this feature, brand leaders and other superusers are able to share public updates with anyone who has subscribed to them without having to “friend” these readers in the first place.  Brand leaders will also have the ability to direct message subscribers and will have the former 5,000 friend cap removed, enabling them to connect with even more people.

Data Availability

One of the bright spots amidst the recent Facebook changes is the availability of personal user data, which could substantially improve the quality of targeting within Facebook’s Ads platform.  Users are already sharing more of themselves than ever on the service, but the increased presence of apps and the new organization of information within the Ticker and Timeline features could make this information even more accessible to Facebook and the marketers that use its advertising services.

Mobile Marketing

Some of the most interesting changes to Facebook for marketers are the new and improved mobile marketing features that debuted in this most recent rollout, including the creation of a Facebook app for non-smartphones and the long awaited release of the iPad Facebook app.

But why are these changes so interesting?  For starters, did you know that over 350 million people access Facebook every month from their mobile devices?  That’s a pretty big segment that many website marketers overlook when planning their Facebook marketing campaigns.

According Facebook engineer Luke Shepard, in a quote on the Social Media Today blog:

“Today, we are extending Facebook Platform on mobile, bringing all the social channels that have helped apps and games reach hundreds of millions of users on the Web to mobile apps and websites. You can now easily reach the 350 million people who use Facebook every month on a mobile device, including iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and our mobile web site.”

So what does this mean for you?  Even if you’ve never considered mobile marketing a part of your business’s promotional plan, know that consumers are likely seeing your marketing messages from within a mobile environment.  Because of this, it’s a good idea to invest in setting up a mobile version of your site, so that consumers who see your Facebook posts while on-the-go won’t have to click through to a website that isn’t optimized for smaller screens.

But beyond this, it’s enough to simply be aware that Facebook is pursuing expansion throughout the mobile world and to keep up with developments in this area, as they could have a significant impact on your Facebook marketing strategy going forward.  As Steve Olenski, writing for Business2Community noted:

“Facebook sees the future and knows that it’s a mobile future and I would expect more enhancements to their mobile arsenal and I would equally expect Google and Twitter and ALL social media platforms to up their mobile marketing capabilities as well.”

These changes represent one of the largest overhauls that Facebook has seen since its launch in 2004, but all indications from the f8 Conference where these new tools and resources were introduced demonstrate that we haven’t seen the last of the updates that will be included in this rollout yet.  If you rely on Facebook as an important part of your sites marketing campaigns, staying up-to-date on new announcements from this social networking site will be vital for the next few months.

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