#32: Ask Amy: "What's new with the Facebook Page Timeline layout?"

This episode of the Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast, is the second Ask Amy episode. This is a new feature that I've added to my podcast. As I mentioned in episode 30, every other week I’m going to be answering your questions all about online marketing, Facebook marketing, Facebook ads, webinars and email marketing.
If you have a question, I likely am going to have an answer for you! All you need to do is go to amyporterfield.com/askamy and leave me a recorded message. Your question just might be the very next one I choose for the show!
Here's the question for this episode:
I'm a huge fan of your podcast and your content. . . My question is I've noticed that the Facebook layout has changed and things have moved around a little bit. Is there anything I need to know about this new layout to help me maximize my impact and exposure on Facebook?
This is a great question, and is very timely since Facebook is rolling out the new Facebook Page layout, and if you don’t have it already, you’ll be getting it soon. If you don’t yet have it and want to see what it looks like, you can check it out on my Facebook Page, http://facebook.com/AmyPorterfield.
Let’s start at the top, and I’ll break it down for you!
Stats Located on the Right In the new layout, to the right of your cover photo, you’ll see the following stats for the week:
New Page likes Overall post reach Unread messages (This will be blank if like me, you don’t use the private message button) Notifications, which includes clicks, likes, shares and comments on each of your posts How to use this information: On a weekly basis, track these numbers in an Excel or Google spreadsheet and pay attention to whether or not you’re making improvements in these various areas.
Tab Management Beneath the cover photo you’ll see tabs. The tabs are like the boxes that were across the top on the old layout. When you click on them, they take you to custom apps inside your Facebook Page.
All of your tabs won’t display across the top, but you can change the order of them to position them. You do this by clicking on the “More” dropdown menu, and clicking on “Manage Tabs” as pictured above.
I wouldn’t spend too much time on tabs, because unless you’re using Facebook ads to drive traffic to the tabs, they don’t convert well because most people never go to your Facebook Page, but instead, likely see the majority of your posts in the newsfeed. If you do want to use tabs, be sure to use ads to drive traffic to them.
Scheduled Posts If you schedule posts directly from your Facebook Page, in the new layout, you’ll see a notification that says, “Scheduled Posts,” the number of posts you have scheduled, and when the next scheduled post will be published.
I love this feature because since I schedule my posts directly on my Facebook Page, I can now easily see where to find the scheduled posts, and can quickly view and edit them.
The About Section It’s important to be strategic with how you use the “About” section of your Facebook Page. As you can see from my example, I put a link to a free webinar, to help grow my email list. Other types of lead magnets such as eBooks, cheat sheets, checklists, and so on work as well.
In addition to that, I also put a link to my website in the About section. One thing to be aware of is that this option is not available if your Page is a local business.
Pages to Watch One of the coolest features about the new layout is found inside of Insights and is called, “Pages to Watch.” This feature provides a great opportunity to see what’s working for other Pages, specifically Pages that also attract your ideal customer. This can give you some great ideas about what you can do to increase the engagement on your own Page.
You’ll find this feature on the Overview tab inside your Facebook Page Insights. Scroll down, and you’ll see an area that says, “Pages to Watch” and from there you can manually add the Facebook Pages that you want to watch.
Top Posts from Pages You Watch
Once you’ve selected some Pages to watch, inside of Insights, on the Posts tab, you’ll be able to see which posts from the previous week were the most engaging, and you can model what they’re doing. For instance, if you see that they’ve asked a question that got a lot of engagement, you can think of a similar type of question to ask your audience, and then pay attention to whether or not you get a rise in engagement as well.
One thing to be aware of is that when you add a Page to watch, the admin of the Facebook Page will get a notification that their Page has been added, but they won’t know who added it.