Facebook, Facebook, Facebook! That’s all we seem to have heard the last week or so. However, the social media company’s changes have left many of us out of ‘the know’ when it comes to two things: privacy and company pages. Fortunately, we’ll go through the essentials to ensure you get a good idea of what to look out for and what to expect.
Privacy
Facebook’s new Timeline and the enhanced sharing feature can seem a little scary; the potential level of privacy however can be tiny or huge depending on settings in place. As we all know by now the Timeline allows people to share what they read, listen to and watch through the use of the Timeline.
Unlike with previous Facebook changes, Timeline’s privacy settings can be easily accessed and are quite transparent. Facebook’s new privacy settings allow you to hide the things you were looking at with a few clicks and prevent them showing up on your Timeline. So, for those requesting an app with the lyrics of Glee songs through Facebook, you can make it private so it won’t appear on your timeline and not worry about the deeply deserved embarrassing consequences of such behavior!
Facebook Apps also offer very apparent ‘opt out’ buttons and mechanisms, so there is no way that you will end up straddled with something you don’t want. You can even go to your settings page and allow which groups of people you wish to show the app and associated activity to, choosing from public; friends of friends and networks; friends and networks; friends of friends; friends; specific people; or just yourself. Similar to Google+ 
Company Pages
The Timeline feature will also make a huge difference to the way company pages are branded on the site. The site’s layout is radically different and this will no doubt have the social media marketers looking for ways to figure out how to make the most of the changes. The new feature offers a wide array of choices for designers to make and will mean that companies now have to ensure that consistency of style and functionality on the page both co-operate with each other.
Brands will also have to ensure that they have something interesting to say to make sure they get in the ‘Top Stories’ of users pages. The new feature to allow interesting stories to be bumped up or knocked down with a click of the top right of a story will mean engagement will need to be central to the company’s posts.
Vica versa if a person goes for a run, or trains and comes back and posts it on Facebook, this could be seen as a huge chance for a sports company or brand to engage with that person through Facebook and add something social to your post and become part of your Timeline. The opportunities for social media marketing are big!
Facebook has become more democratic to an extent, this new method is a long way away from ‘likes’ and the previously more banal less interactive marketing before F8.
So now the new look Facebook has been running for a while, what does everyone think? We love to hear your opinions via the comments section. If anyone still needs to get the new look profile, follow the instructions in our blog post.
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