I was writing a post on Facebook yesterday, when I got a message from Facebook saying that they were changing the pages function, so I took that as a sign from Zuckerberg, and here we are!

When Facebook rolled out the update before Christmas to personal profiles, they also attempted to upgrade Pages, but it literally crashed Facebook. After about an hour, FB came back, but the pages were back to how they were before. Fast forward a few weeks, and it looks like they have worked out all the major bugs, and are now offering upgrades on the Pages function.

First off, Pages will now look like the new profiles, with a line of photos across the top. If it’s your profile page, these willl be photos that you are tagged in. If it’s a page, they will just be the most recent photos you have uploaded to the page. Again, like the personal pages, navigation links are on the left. Basically, Facebook is trying to make everything look the same across the board. You can choose what posts you want people to see when they come to your page: either by your page (you) or everyone (whoever you’ve been intereacting with).

For me, the coolest part about this upgrade is that it allows you interact with the rest of Facebook as your page. I have some clients who don’t have personal FB profiles, they just have a page. Those folks could ONLY interact with their fans on their own page in the past. Now, you can go forth into FB and interact with other people’s pages, which I think is really cool. This new upgrade  also allows you to:

• Get notifications when fans interact with your page or posts
• See activity from the pages you like in your news feed
• Like other pages and feature them on your page

The other cool thing, is that now you can post to your page as yourself, if you have a personal profile. This means that I can interact with people as Rebecca Coleman on my Art of the Biz Page, which is also a cool feature.

And speaking of interacting with people as Rebecca Coleman on my Art of the Biz Page…

You might remember a few months back, I wrote this post: Why I’m Ditching My Facebook Page. I was honestly ready to delete my Facebook Page. Don’t get me wrong–I’m not anti-FB Page. I use them for lots of my clients, and they are really great for busineses. For me, however, I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing. You see, my business is so tied to who I am, that people ask me all the time to be my friend, whether I know them or not. They read my blog, and they want to connect with me, so I get friend requests all the time from perfect strangers. Because of my son, I don’t like to be friends with people I don’t know, so I got a page, but it just didn’t seem to work. People were still requesting to be my friend all the time.

You can listen to a conversational podcast I had with Harriet Fancott and John McLachlan this week on this topic of public versus private here.

So I’ve not ditched my page. I’ve made adjustments, by creating a list on Facebook that consists of people I don’t know very well, and they only get limited access to my profile. And I am renewing my commitment to my Facebook page. I am posting there again, several times per week, in addition to my blog posts. And people are starting to respond, so I feel like it is offering some value, and I don’t want to take that away.

So now you’re all up to date on Facebook! Go forth and post!