Facebook have been busy lately with changes to the site across the developer platform, Pages and individual profiles. Here we take you through some of the latest developments that are important for brands and marketers to be aware of. As well as making a lot of changes to apps including insights and developer testing, a new change to the way Pages are displayed in newsfeeds could be important for brands to allow them to grow their Pages organically and attract new fans. Are there other changes you think we should cover? Let us know!
Linking to Pages in Newsfeeds
Facebook have just made a change to the way that Pages are displayed in newsfeeds, when you have more than one friend discussing a particular brand. Even if those friends don’t directly link to the brand, this will show up in the newsfeed with an automatic link to the Page. This is shown as a summary post, stating ‘Lauren Fisher and 3 other friends started discussing Simply Zesty’ for example. The individual posts will be shown below the newsfeed summary. This is good news for brands as it means an extra pointer to your Page when people are discussing you on Facebook. People don’t necessarily use Facebook’s tagging system to tag Pages, so this helps to ensure people find you through the wall.
Consolidate localised Pages
This hasn’t yet launched in full for Facebook, but it’s an important update for people to be aware of. They are introducing a new way for global companies to consolidate their local market Facebook Pages and alert Page visitors to the different local Pages they can visit. The app is still in limited private beta, but you can see this in action on the Regal Entertainment Page. The app works by pulling in the user’s current location, so depending on where you access this, it might not pull in any recommended Pages for you. This is a great solution for larger brands that have to manage their Facebook presence and it offers an incredibly personalised experience for the user, telling you automatically which Pages might be the right ones for you.
Add test users to apps
App developers had a bit of a problem when it came to testing apps, as there wasn’t really any way to keep this completely private, with notifications or news stories feeding back to your wall and potentially alerting people to your app. Facebook have now made this easier by creating test users for apps. These are profiles that are kept completely private and allow you to test your app in full without worrying about information being shared publicly ahead of release. Developers can activate this by navigating to ‘Roles’ within the app interface, then selecting ‘Test Users’ to create a new, private profile to use to test the app.
Improved insights for apps
Facebook have recently improved insights for apps, through a new newsfeed. Within the app insights tab, you will now see a newsfeed that contains a summary of positive and negative posts. This is essential for app developers as it allows you to get realtime feedback on the app, as well as seeing how many times the app itself has been reported as spam. When marketers are experimenting with ever different ways to grow fans and create an app that people will share, it’s important to get realtime feedback that lets you know how people are responding to the concept. This feedback can be accessed automatically through the newsfeed of the app.
New ad API
Facebook have just announced a new API that will suit larger brands and advertisers. The new marketing API programme for developers allows for the development of different marketing apps including optimising ad delivery and management. While the marketing API previously existed in Facebook, this was only open to a handful of approved partners. Now that this has opened up, new marketers can experiment with the API for effective ad management, with the possibility to create tools that allow you to bid effectively for example. This isn’t completely open, as you will need to pass a ‘screening test’ from Facebook, but it has opened it up significantly.
