Since Facebook began rolling out the New Pages Experience at the end of January 2021, there has been a lot of speculation about whether businesses should switch to it. This week, Facebook has officially finished rolling it out to businesses of all sizes, so now is the time to decide.
Facebook's New Pages Experience - What To Know
The New Pages Experience is designed to make it easier for businesses to create and manage their pages. It includes several new features, such as:
- A streamlined design that makes it easier to navigate
- A new tabs system that allows you to organise your page content more effectively
- Customisable tabs that give you more control over how your page looks
- The ability to create and manage multiple pages from one account
- The ability to post updates as stories
So, should you switch to the New Pages Experience? Well, this is where it gets complicated.
No more Facebook “likes” and a new layout
The best way to describe the new look and layout is that it’s more like a magazine. On mobile platforms the profile picture is now directly in the middle, overlapping the cover photo. Underneath that, is the page name and the new ‘followers’ count.
Page ‘Likes’ are now officially gone and have been replaced with the new ‘Followers’ count. This change is to put the focus on user engagement rather than a like count. Previously users could ‘like’ a page but not follow it, potentially not seeing posts from that page. Now with the one option being ‘follow’, only interested people in your page’s content will follow, giving you a better insight into your reach.
What to Know Before a Facebook Page Switch
While there are many good things about the New Pages Experience, it’s important to understand the differences before switching.
Post Scheduling Moved
The New Pages Experience brings many new tools to help run your page, but it also takes away some tools such as scheduled publishing directly from your page. Now you must go through the Meta Business Suite to schedule content.
Review Counts Removed
The update has also seen the removal of review counts. This is an issue because many businesses have spent a lot of time and worked hard to grow these review counts.
The New Pages Experience sacrifices those tools to bring us many new tools such as new safety and integrity features to unearth spam and fake accounts and remove them quickly.
Post Threads
They have also added the ability to create ‘threads’ similar to Twitter, although it’s only available on the mobile app, it allows for pages to update any previous posts with new information without having to edit the original post or add a comment.
Will Switching to New Pages Experience Be Mandatory?
It is also important to know that Facebook will soon be making the New Pages Experience a mandatory switch and the classic page will no longer be available. There has been no date announced for this yet, but they have confirmed that it will be soon.
Facebook page roles now fall under three categories:
In the New Pages Experience, page roles are combined into three separate categories.
Previously you could give people roles such as
- Editor
- Admin
- Moderator
- Advertiser etc.
Now you only have the choice of
- Full access
- Partial access
- Task access
More emphasis on User Engagement
The New Pages Experience changes the way a page should be run. Now it’s all about user engagement and Facebook has given us new tools to help grow the engagement of a page.
Simplified Insights
Similar to the classic page’s insights but far more simplified to give a cleaner view to help determine what content your followers are engaging with the most.
Followers Count Rather Than Likes
As previously stated, with the switch to ‘followers’ anyone who follows a page will now see that page’s content as opposed to the previous ‘likes’ where you could unfollow but still like a page so their like number would go up, but the content would never appear on your feed.
Comments Increase Post Success
With the New Pages experience, a post needs more than just a reaction to be pushed onto more users’ feeds, it needs real engagement. Now you will need to gain comments on your posts, this shows the algorithm that your content is worth showing to other users therefore making your post more successful and driving more engagement.
But is important to note that once you do switch, we do not recommend switching back to the classic page
When switching to the New Pages Experience, all your information and prior activity gets carried over. This is not the case when you switch back the classic page from the New Pages Experience. If you decide to switch back, all posts made while using the New Pages Experience will be deleted during the transition. It’s also important to know that all of the new business tools are exclusive to the New Pages Experience so if you switch back to classic they will be taken away as well.
Need Help Making the Transition to the New Pages Experience?
Changing to the New Pages Experience and not sure how to go about it? Our team has helped many clients do just that. So if you’re looking to make the switch and need some assistance, contact our team today for a free quote.
