We interrupt our Inbound Marketing Series to provide a brief recap of the Facebook updates coming to personal profiles and Pages. In my opinion, these changes provide a cleaner look and more control of your content.
Personal profile updates:
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Timeline - will replace your current personal profile layout. Expect it to roll out over the month of October. I installed the Timeline on my personal profile using the instructions in the post: How To Get Your New Facebook Profile In Just 5 Minutes. I love the new cover photo (the real big one) where you can showcase something in your life that is important. I also like the clean look and ease with which I can get to information (such as pages I've liked sorted by year that I liked them) without a lot of clicking around.
- Subscribe - allows you to follow people's timelines without having to friend them, similar to Google+ and Twitter. Whether you allow people to subscribe to your post feed is entirely up to you. If you do allow people to subscribe, they only see those posts that you share publicly. Your friends are already subscribed to your feed.
- Updated privacy settings - choose what people see post by post. Go into your privacy settings and take a look at all the changes. Facebook has done a nice job of describing them clearly.
- Improved friend lists -Smart Lists create themselves and stay up-to-date based on profile info your friends have in common with you. You can update them as well to make them more accurate. Close Friends, Acquaintances and Restricted lists - See everything posted by close friends. See important posts from those in your Acquaintances list. The restricted list is a kinder, gentler way to ignore people without unfriending them. People on this list only see what you share publicly (like someone subscribed to your feed, not as a friend).
Facebook Business Page Updates:
- Pages can secure a user name with fewer than 25 fans. However, pages that use "local business and places" still need the 25 fans.
- Friend Activity navigation link on your Facebook page allows you to see what your friends are saying about the Page.
- Send an update to fans using Facebook messages is no longer available. They want you to post to the wall so it goes into the news feed.
- Non fans can post on your page wall to encourage more engagement.
- Discussions and review tabs will be removed at the end of October.
- Custom tabs on your page must support SSL as of October 1. Static HTML iFrame Tabs Facebook Applicationhas already handled this for you! However, if not, you might want to read this article: How to Prepare for Facebook's Secure Hosting HTTPS Requirement
- The final disappearance of FBML is June 1, 2012. If you have a custom Facebook tab in FBML, start planning now to replace it before the deadline.
Questions? Post them to the Masterful Marketing Facebook page and I'll be happy to answer them.
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