Changes to Facebook Business Pages Arriving August 1st
Facebook has recently outlined a new business page update in which users will see the removal of certain page information sections. Beginning on August 1st, users will no longer see the following sections: Mission, Company Overview, Biography, Affiliation, and Personal Interests.
To ensure no content is lost, Facebook is urging companies to integrate the information in those fields into alternative sections. But, in all honesty, this information is most likely already in various Facebook sections.
When small businesses have important pieces of information to share, such as a mission statement or biography, they tend to place it anywhere and everywhere.
Eliminating Repetitive Information
When it comes down to it, “Mission”, “Company Overview”, and “Biography” are all variants of the same information. For example, businesses may deem it necessary to put the mission statement into the company overview, or the date of foundation in both the company overview and biography.
Prior to these changes, Facebook most likely began to notice that companies were copying and pasting information between these three sections or tweaking the language slightly to fit each field.
We understand how appealing additional content is seeing that more content means more data for Facebook to collect and categorize. But, this duplication serves to generate more harm than good for Facebook optimization.
Reiterating information negatively effects Page quality and decreases user understanding of your company. Rather than stating variant versions of the same company story, Pages should include one single company biography that gives users a clear vision of the company.
In order to combat repetitive information, Facebook is removing these sections in an effort to streamline company Page listings.
More data is not the answer, so Facebook has decided to reduce any unnecessary data collection that may create tracking or targeting issues.
If a business page is using a variety of descriptions, it will be increasingly hard for Facebook to identify relevant users or match people with the correct information.
In addition to repetitive information, this new business update serves to rid Pages of useless information. In most cases, “Affiliation” and “Personal Interests” do not contribute any real information to company pages.
Affiliations are meant to showcase the titles or categories that align with your business, but more often than not, they provide vague descriptions of your business. These vague descriptors serve no purpose to Facebook users or Facebook itself, in which case – the removal of this element begins to make sense.
On the other hand, the removal of “Personal Interests” is a business no-brainer. No business should have “personal” interests. Besides possibly volunteering or community involvement, businesses should not have any interests whatsoever. There is nothing more confusing for a user than scanning through a company’s Facebook page, only to discover they are interested in sports and knitting.
If you would like more information about Facebook marketing, want to learn more about these upcoming changes, or other digital marketing services, contact Pink Dog Digital at (410) 696-3305, email us at info@pinkdogdigital.com, or visit us on the web at www.pinkdogdigital.com.