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Facebook made changes recently to the way you administer your business pages. Here's what you need to know.[/caption]
Have you noticed a change in your Facebook business page? If you manage or administer a business page on Facebook, you probably have. Facebook quietly changed the way you update your page and check out its news stream.
The change is a subtle one, and it doesn’t impact what you can do with your business page—just the way you have to do it. Until recently, you would log-in through your personal profile and select your business page through the menu at the top right. Then, when Facebook switched you to that business page, you would just select ‘home’ and the news feed for your business page would be displayed.
That’s no longer the case. Now, when you click ‘home,’ you are transferred back to your personal profile. Don’t be mystified and think you inadvertently changed a setting—you did not. It’s a change that is happening to everyone.
That doesn’t mean you can’t see the posts from the pages you’ve liked as your business page. You just need to take an extra step. On the left, you’ll find a new box of options. The box displays some of your preliminary insights—such as number of likes and post reach—and provides a couple of common business-related options. Select the first one, ‘See Pages Feed.’ After a slight delay (depending on how fast your internet connection is) your page’s news feed will be displayed and you will be able to share, comment and react to it the same way you were before.
The recent update includes a couple of other minor tweaks, as well. Now, to like a page as your business page, you’ll have to go to the page you’re interested and click the three dots at the bottom right of the header image.
So why make a change that doesn’t necessarily improve things? Who knows. Change for the sake of change has long been the business model of the computer—and social media—industry. There’s always some form of tinkering going on. Or perhaps Facebook is pushing users toward their Facebook for Business platform, which will ultimately lead to more revenue for the social media giant.
The change does address one problem that may be a mere annoyance to most users: that of accidentally liking or following a page or commenting as your business when you wanted to comment as yourself—and vice versa. Now, since you need to take that extra step, you are less likely to do that.
Regardless of the reason behind it, the key message is that it does not remove any functionality from your business page. It just alters the process a bit. With a little bit of practice, you can easily work it into your routine. After all, adapting to new circumstances has long been the model for the business world, too.
What do you think? Is this a necessary change, or not? Tell us in the comments.