A Report on Facebook Pages Upgrades February 2011

A Report on Facebook Pages UpgradesFebruary 2011

LIKE CHANGE?

oxfordcommunications.com

| Like Change? | Feb. 2011 oxfordcommunications.com2

The subsequent pages of this report cover the full range of changes that Facebook has announced in Feb. 2011, including:

• Tabs have moved and now allow use of iFrames• Advent of targeted postings based on location and language• Profanity block is now available to administrators• New ability to post questions to users• Exciting new Facebook Advertising announcements

Many of these updates create interesting opportunities for brands to continue growing closer to their consumers. We look forward to ongoing work with our clients to explore innovative strategies for energizing those consumers most passionate about the brands they ‘like.’

Yours Truly,

Ben GrossmanCommunications StrategistOxford Communicationse: [email protected]: 602.741.0314

LIKE CHANGE?Oxford Communications is an agency deeply committed to understanding the way consumers live, eat, sleep, socialize, make decisions and (ultimately) buy. So, believe me, we de!nitely like tracking changes. This report is less about how consumers change, and more about the nitty gritty details of the recent changes to Facebook - the platform that fuels the social lives of half of the people living in the United States.

On Feb. 10, 2011, Facebook released its !rst major update to Facebook Pages, its product offering for businesses, in over six months. The changes, billed by Facebook as ‘upgrades’, move Pages closer to the newly re-designed Facebook Pro!le Pages, which users have been enjoying (or complaining about) since Dec. 2010.

Some of the upgrades premiering today had actually already been previewed accidentally by Facebook on Dec. 16, 2010, when an error in its system prematurely pushed the changes public. The kerfuf"e was widely covered by Facebook enthusiast publications and prompted a bigger conversation about Facebook’s level of communication with its business Users. At the time, a Facebook spokeswoman who was interviewed by Mashable had this to say:

Organizations invest a lot of time on their Facebook Pages because millions of people !nd them useful everyday. We remain committed to providing ways for Page owners to customize and control the experience on their Page. If we do make changes, we will provide partners with advance notice.

Facebook is offering Page administrators the option of activating the upgrades manually between the date of launch and Mar. 10, 2011, creating a one month period of ‘advance notice.’ As is true of many of the Facebook updates, these changes will surely improve the product offering in the long run, but will be met with hesitation in the short term.


Released February 10, 2011

PAGE UPGRADES


TABS: LOCATION & iFRAMESOne of the most customizable areas of Pages, Tabs, will experience two major changes. First, Tabs will now be located on the left hand side of Pages, rather than along the top of the Page. Second, Tabs — previously only the result of savvy FBML coding — will now be able to support iFrame-based applications.

Tabs, which are still limited to a quantity of six) will also accommodate longer Tab names. Icons appearing beside the Tab names will identify what type of application is supporting that Tab—creating some less-than-perfect results for the majority of Pages out there that use Static FBML-based tabs.

Facebook had initially announced that the iFrame compatibility would be released in Q4 2010, but it was postponed until Q1 2011. ‘Inline Frames’ will now be an option for Pages, expanding the number of options for developers and creating less dependency on the Facebook Platform for running applications. This feature will affect the way we utilize Tabs and their capabilities going forward, but will not require any immediate changes on Tabs completed in the past.


PHOTOSTRIPThe !ve latest images posted by Pages will be prominently displayed across the top of the Page, much as they appear on user pro!les (since Dec. 2010).

We see amazing potential for this new feature. Initial ideas range from using this space to promote new product callouts to featuring the season’s latest fashions. Administrators will have the ability to curate the photos in this space and to exclude speci!c photos from the Photostrip.


PROFILE IMAGE DIMENSIONSPreviously, Facebook accepted pro!le images at sizes up to 200 x 600 pixels. Going forward, the maximum size of these images will change to 185 x 540 pixels.

Though the real estate devoted to pro!le images may be shrinking slightly, we still think making full use of this space—with optimizations for the new size restrictions—is a key part of a quality branded Facebook Page.

LIKES: A BIT MORE LIKABLEPreviously, Facebook’s design has put an emphasis on the photographs of users who like a given Page, rather than the sheer quantity. In the new layout, however, much more emphasis is put on the number of people who like the Page.

While we still maintain that brands should seek quality users to like the page, rather than quantity, we do see it as increasingly important that Pages have a number of ‘likers’ that validates the brand and is competitive with other like-sized businesses.


TARGETED POSTSPreviously, when administrators of Pages sent out a post, they were required to send it out to all users who had liked the Page. This dynamic often created major quandaries for brands with multiple extensions in geographically and culturally diverse locations. With this update to Pages, that dynamic changes.

Administrators will now be able to geo-target posts to countries, states and cities. While Facebook refers to this feature as ‘geo-targeting,’ posts can also be targeted to speakers of speci!c languages. This new feature opens up possibilities for franchises with managers running local specials, regional announcements based on weather conditions, and relevant, multilingual posts for multi-national brands.

The new functionality may also resolve some of the con"icts faced by brands in the past when considering whether individual locations or branches of businesses should have their own Facebook Pages, as opposed to one uni!ed corporate Page.

E-MAIL NOTIFICATIONSAdministrators will now be empowered with the option of having individual emails sent to them every time users post on the Page. At this time, email noti!cation will not be customizable. While there would have to be a form email sent hourly and/or a standardized noti!cation sent when a post is blocked, we expect this feature to be frequently requested by users.

This new feature may empower the administrators of smaller Pages, but the frequency of emails is likely not very useful to administrators of larger Pages. In the long term, the advancement of this feature may make third party services, like NutshellMail, less necessary. However, there is still a place for vendors to provide more user-friendly services.


THE WALLThe main portion of Pages that features conversations and posts from brands will now offer two settings: Everyone and Page Posts. While administrators will be able to choose the default setting for users arriving to the Page, users will also be able to toggle back and forth between the two settings.

The Page Posts setting will only show posts by administrators of the Page, creating a stream of content fully controlled by the brand. (This functionality has always been available). The Everyone setting will show posts by users as well as administrators, but will use an algorithm to determine the most relevant posts to the viewer of the page. Facebook’s algorithm, likely similar to that which controls the News Feed, will prioritize posts with more comments, likes and interactions, as well as those authored by friends, by featuring them in more prominent positions than less relevant posts.


PROFANITY BLOCKAdministrators will now be able to select and automatically block ‘keywords’ and ‘profanity’ from users’ postings on Pages. Facebook will provide administrators with three choices in terms of settings: Strong, Medium and None. Facebook has not indicated which words will be blocked automatically for each setting, but administrators can also build their own customized list of words to be monitored, based on brand sensitivity.

Posts that are caught by the moderation block will be held for administrators to review before they go live. Administrators will be able to view posts that include ‘keywords’ and choose to keep or remove them from the Wall.


POSTING QUESTIONSAlso released in Facebook’s Page upgrades documentation is a glimpse at what the roll-out of the long awaited “Questions” feature might look like. While Facebook hasn’t speci!cally covered it, we’re expecting that administrators will be able to post questions directly to their Pages.

The section of Facebook’s website dedicated to the new feature (http://www.facebook.com/questions) is promising the new feature’s release within the next few weeks.

LIKING OTHER PAGESThe Page feature previously known as “Favorite Pages” will now be known as “Likes” of the Page. Historically we’ve seen parent brands use this section for its subsidiaries, national chains use it for their local stores and brands use it to recognized their partners. While the feature remains generally the same, it will be given slightly more primacy in the upgraded Page layout.


ADMINISTRATOR SETTINGSAdministrators will now be able to identify themselves on the Page as the curators of the Page and link to their personal Facebook Pro!le Pages. While we think this approach is extraordinarily useful to small businesses, whose owners and employees are an integral part of the brand, we advise against it for bigger brands that don’t already use a human as the central focus of their social media presences. Adding an administrator’s personal pro!le to the Page is an invitation to engage with that individual personally, instead of as a representative of a brand.

Administrators will also be able to choose a setting identi!ed as ‘Use Facebook as Page,’ instead of using Facebook through the lens of a user’s personal Pro!le Page. We expect this newly clari!ed setting to allow administrators to differentiate more effectively between work and play. The other exciting side effect of this change is that brands (using their Page identity) can now post on other Pages. For instance, if a company is sending a team to its local 5K charity run, it can announce that on the charity’s Page in the brand’s voice.


Released January 26, 2011 to February 8, 2011

ADVERTISING OFFERINGS


SPONSORED STORIESAdvertisers now purchase dynamic premium ad units that leverage user-generated ‘stories,’ or content (including check-ins, posts or application use) within their advertisements. Essentially, this new ad unit allows brands about which users are already talking to amplify those conversations by increasing the visibility of users’ activities on Facebook.

A 2010 study conducted by Nielsen and Facebook established that pre-existing ad units featuring social context perform better than those that don’t. We expect this new offering to take that concept to the next level. We know that opinions of friends, family and online strangers are the most trusted form of advertising. These ad units will — in a paid context — amplify that most effective form of advertising: earned media.


ADS FOR TABSIn the past, social ad units have been available on a limited basis: they had to link to a general Page, an Event, a Group or an Application. Previously, only traditional display ads (without social context) were available for Tabs.

Facebook has now added the capability to advertise speci!c Tabs with social ad units. Being able to drive traf!c to more targeted locations, while maintaining social context, will bene!t advertisers’ ability to create a "uid journey for audiences.


PHOTO ALBUMS WITH ADSFacebook is rolling out an update to the way users view photos. Now, when users view photo albums, they experience the album in a lightbox context that puts more focus on the photographs, comments and, of course, advertising. With the new update, advertisers purchasing ads through Facebook will see their ads in one more place—the lower right-hand corner of these photo albums.

| 2011 CES SOCIAL REPORT oxfordcommunications.com16

OXFORD COMMUNICATIONSWe are the full-service marketing, creative and communications agency that issues one call to our clients and employees alike: Be Brilliant.

BEN GROSSMANCommunications Strategisto: 609.397.4242 x174e: [email protected]

CHRISTOPHER STEMBOROWSKIAssociate Communications Strategisto: 609.397.4242 x172e: [email protected]

That call echoes through our agency’s work that ranges the full gamut of integrated services, including account planning, social media, interactive, public relations and media. Ultimately, our services are built to leverage a combination of online and of"ine initiatives that generate in"uence when, where and how it matters to consumers most.

Oxford has a track record of bringing category re-de!ning work to brands in a diverse set of industries, ranging from fashion retail, to consumer electronics, to quick service restaurants, to healthcare organizations. As a result, we are proud to have worked with some of the biggest names in the industries we work in, like Audiovox Corporation, Bombardier, Prime Retail and Brother International, as well as many other dominant regional and niche players.

GET SOCIAL WITH US, WON’T YOU?

For more information, please contact a member of the Communications team:

JORDYN HAASAssociate Communications Strategisto: 609.397.4242 x154e: [email protected]

A Report on Facebook Pages UpgradesFebruary 2011

LIKE CHANGE?

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A Report on Facebook Pages Upgrades February 2011

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