Facebook announced some pretty big changes for Pages last week. We’ve looked at what’s coming up and we REALLY love the focus on engagement, with a dedicated News Feed, Q&A format and the removal of the Like button.

No More Like Button

This is a massive change, but one we are very much looking forward to. Facebook now considers the Followers of a page the primary metric, meaning the audience will need to be engaging with the page, not clicking “Like” once. In our view, this gives a much clearer indication of how a content strategy is working, what topics the audience is interested in and how healthy the audience is from a sentiment standpoint.

This will take some adjustment, especially for brands that see “Likes” as important, but we feel that this is an opportunity to start measuring engagement, topics and sentiment to be prepared for the change.

Dedicated News Feed

Changes to the News Feed reinforce this focus on engagement, with the Page being able to participate in conversations. Your page will be a public figure, able to interact and engage with the audience, as well as find other Pages, Groups or content to consume and share.

Your Page will have a lot more visibility, with interactions from the Page, such as comments or replies, pushed towards the top of the comments section, and the audience will be able to engage with and follow the Page from the comments section, too.

Q&A

Facebook now provides a Q&A format. When a Page answers audience questions on a topic, the answer becomes swipeable content that can be browsed. This is a great opportunity to gather common questions asked and develop a strategy for quick responses. If you’re using Social Studio, this will develop your Standard Engagement Responses strategy, speeding up you response time.

We’re excited to see how these changes affect how brands report and develop content for their audiences. The focus on audience engagement is definitely a positive sign. Although some brands may see a downturn in engagement initially, our take is that this will lead to better content and better audience outcomes.