Facebook has made an upgrade for Pages, which will be optional until March 1. Many of our clients will find some of the new features very useful, and this post will guide Page admins in some ways to take advantage of the upgrade. You can also take a live tour of the new features, or visit Facebook's Pages Guide for more details.

Comment and Post as Yourself

Until now, Page admins have not been able to post or comment as themselves on their own Pages. For instance, on the Bloomfield Development Corporation Page, any posts or comments made by an admin would be attributed to the Bloomfield Development Corporation rather than the individual author. We had been dealing with this by using the caret symbol and our initials (e.g., ^JC) after any personalized communication, but this will no longer be necessary. With the new upgrade, you are now able to choose whether to allow admins to comment and post as themselves. Click Edit Page, then under Your Settings > Posting Preferences, uncheck the Posting Preferences box. Admins will now comment and post as themselves by default, but will still have the option to post as your Page.

Comment and Post as Your Page

On the right side of the Page is a link to "Use Facebook as [Your Page]." Click that, and not only can you post to your Page as your Page, but you can get notifications about fan activity, Like, comment and post on other Pages as your Page. Just click it again, or click on Account then "Switch back to [You]" to start using Facebook as yourself again.

This may take some getting used to, and if you have a social media policy, you may want to revise it to include guidelines for posting as your Page and interacting with other Pages.

Email Notifications

By default, Pages will now send email notifications to admins when people post or comment. This is exciting news for some, but it may be overwhelming and unnecessary on other Pages. To turn it off, go to Edit Page > Your Settings and uncheck the Email Notifications box.

New Page Design

Showcase Your Latest Photos

The new Page design more closely matches the recent profile design changes, including photos at the top of the Page. This area will display photos that you post to your Wall or photos that you tag your Page in, so double-check these when you upgrade. One of our clients had several of the same photo, so we deleted the extras. In this case, we were lucky that only one of the photos had comments, so we deleted the other duplicates.

Featured

Your Page will continue to show other Pages you have liked, but you now have the ability to specify which of your Liked Pages appear hear. You'll find this setting under Featured when you click Edit Page. Also under Featured is the ability to Add Featured Page Owners. Here, you can choose which of your admins to feature on the left of your Page under a "Page Owners" heading. Unfortunately, you can't edit the "Page Owners" text, and for many clients this isn't the ideal way to present the site admins. For the Bloomfield Development Corporation, we don't want our staff and volunteers to be seen as "owners," but we do want people to know who they are. To do this, we are using a Static FBML tab to display the Bloomfield Development Staff, instead of using Featured Page Owners. This requires a bit of coding, but can be customized according to your needs. For at least one of our clients, confidentiality is important, so rest assured that both Featured options are disabled by default. As a Page admin, you will also see a section on the right called Admins, which lists the Page admins. Only admins can see this section. We tested this by logging in under a different account.

Navigation

Navigation links have been moved to the left, just like on profiles. The old tabs have been replaced with a simple icon and text menu. We're not going to argue for one navigation system over another, but there is one feature of the new menu that we don't like. Remember that Static FBML tab? Static FBML allows us to render HTML or FBML (Facebook Markup Language) for enhanced Page customization, but unfortunately, the new menu uses the Static FBML app icon. While the content within the tab can be customized, the icon cannot be. We hope this bit of irony gets fixed in a future upgrade.

Profile Picture

One result of this navigational shift is a resizing of the left column width from 200 pixels to 180 pixels. Check how your profile picture looks in this new layout, and upload a smaller image if your current picture doesn't fit well.

Wall Filters

Last and maybe least is the ability to filter the Wall to show posts by Everyone or just your Page. The default is Everyone, but can be changed in Manage Permissions if you have a reason to do so.