5 Things Authors Need to Adjust for the New Facebook Layout
Beginning in early August, Facebook made changes to the page layout for select few businesses as a test. With the test now complete, the layout will be rolled out to all Facebook pages in the coming weeks. While the new design (see below) is a major change, the majority of authors and publishers should be quite happy with the changes.
Here are 5 things you should be looking into to prepare for–or adjust–your new Facebook page:
1) Design Your Cover Photo Without Worrying About Overlap
With the older design, your page’s cover photo was covered by your profile photo, page name, username, call-to-action (CTA) button, Like button, Message button, and more. But with the new design, your cover photo will now be separate from these elements, allowing it to stand on its own. This means you no longer need to design your cover photos around these elements. With the change, the design specs for your Facebook cover photo become 828 pixels wide by 315 pixels tall on desktop browsers and 640 pixels wide by 360 pixels tall on mobile devices.
2) Add a Call to Action Button
While the CTA button was a feature of the older design, many chose not to enable it because they did not know the feature was available or they did not know how to use it. With the new design, the CTA is predominantly displayed. In fact, we’d argue that it is more clear than the page’s Like button. This link can be customized however you like. We recommend linking to your author website so those interested can learn more about you and your titles.
3) Make Sure Your Default Tabs Have Content
With your page tabs now displayed on the left side of the page, they are more accessible to your page visitors, so you’ll want to ensure these are filled out or have content posted. So, if you haven’t completed your About tab, now is the time to do it!
4) Add Custom Tabs
Before the new design was introduced, Facebook would only display 1-2 custom tabs at the top of the page. With tabs being moved to the left side, there is now more room to display tabs that link to pages such your YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram pages. There is also the option to add a “Sign Up” tab so visitors could sign up for your author newsletter should you choose to offer this option.
5) Review Posts from Others
The ability to review posts from others was introduced a while ago. However, by moving posts by visitors farther down the page, this may be a feature you want to look into. Should you choose to enable this feature, anyone who posts to your page will need to have their post approved by you before it shows up. This may be helpful if you anticipate a bad review or poor feedback on your latest work.
Do you like the new Facebook page design?
