The new Facebook page redesign actually holds a lot of promise for artists, bands, and brands who are using Facebook to promote their products, services or simply themselves. Here is why:
- Tab-Based Design: The new design allows you to use applications as Tabs. Although most Facebook applications don't support pages, some do. For those that do, you an add the application (if it supports pages AND supports Facebook application tabs). A new product (from Metablocks) called the Tab Manager for Facebook allows users to bring in dynamic or static content (such as RSS or XML feed, pictures/images and Flash, content from another web page or link, or static cut-and-paste content) or even content from a web or enterprise content management system (ECM/CMS) such as Drupal and Wordpress, or a Vignette, Documentum or Alfresco solution. If you are interested in beta testing the Metablocks Tab Manager for Facebook, let us know. Will share more about the the Tab Content Manager tomorrow.
- Ability to Set a Default Tab: This feature is key! Users have the ability to set the default tab for their Facebook fan page to any of the available tabs. You can also remove (except for the Wall and Info tabs) and reposition any of your tabs!
- A Better Wall: Posts on the new wall are more dynamic and seem more active and the new design allows updates to your Facebook page to have better news feed distribution - this means information can more quickly get to page fans (increasing traffic to your page). Admins can also allow fans to to post to their page Wall, a very cool feature - plus users can filter posts to show only the posts by the Admin or by fans.
- Forget Boxes: Boxes are not so great after the new Facebook page redesign. You can't change the title of the non-intuitive "Boxes" tab . We suggest that if possible you dump boxes in favor of more intuitive content tabs. As I mentioned we have started designing tab-only page-only Facebook applications specifically for fan pages and we expect others to follow.
- Status Updates Comes to Pages: This is a fantastic feature (since status updates make it immediately to fans feeds) but it is very well hidden! Previous reports by folks like InsideFacebook placed it in the wall posting tool but as is the case with the every changing Facebook UI, it has since moved (see below). Probably one of the most powerful Facebook marketing tools in a page administrator's arsenal.
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