Verification

The verification process is meant to provide more insight and security for consumers. Initially, Facebook offered two types of verification badges: a blue badge and a grey badge. The blue badge is mainly for celebrities and public figures, but well-known brands, like Coke, can also feature this verification. The grey badge is for local businesses and corporations and shows that Facebook has confirmed these to come from a genuine company.

What’s Changed?

At the end of October 2019, Facebook announced that it would be changing its verification process, and removing the grey badges. This change has now taken effect, with the grey badge no longer visible on local business pages.

Why is this important?

Having the grey badge beside your business profile gave your business a little more credibility. Now that it’s gone, and with no new verification process announced, you might have to beef up your content and information to give your business that more authentic look. Make sure that your information is correct and up-to-date and that your profile pictures and cover photos feature the correct logo for your business. This will go a long way in providing your consumers credibility that this is the right page for your business.

Post scheduling

Scheduling a post on Facebook has always been featured on the main page posting section. It allowed you to see and schedule the post ahead of time, ensuring that your audience still heard from your business, even if you were out of town or not available.

What’s Changed?

Facebook recently moved the post scheduling options to the publishing tools tab at the top of business pages. Once in this tab, you have to click Scheduled Posts at the left-hand side under Posts to schedule posts for your page.

Why is this important?

While this might not seem like a big deal, it can hinder your business in some ways. By not knowing where to schedule your posts, you could potentially miss out on opportunities to interact with your audience at times that you are unavailable to be there live. You could also fail to publish relevant information on time. If you’re unsure of where to go to schedule your posts, click into the Create Post box on the main page. There’s a link to Publishing Tools at the bottom of the box above the Share Now button.

Mobile Caption Length

When posting to Facebook, the amount of content that you write for your caption fits differently on mobile than desktop. While your caption might be three lines of text on desktop, that could translate to 5 lines of content on mobile.

What’s Changed?

At the beginning of the year, Facebook changed the mobile caption length from 7 lines to 3 lines before the Read More tag. This means that after around 130 characters, or 25 words, your caption will be cut off, and consumers will have to click the tag to read the rest of it. You can see this in the example below of one of Atwill Media’s Facebook posts.

Why is this important?

This update is critical to know when writing captions for your posts. While writing a caption, make sure that the most important information and call-to-actions are featured in the first two or three lines of text. This will help ensure that your message is translating on both desktop and mobile.

Facebook updates are not a new thing. They can be hard to keep up with, but by staying updated with each change, your business will be able to adapt and continue engaging your audience.

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