Facebook's Redesign & Creator Studio App

A year after its announcement, Facebook is finally rolling out a redesign of the desktop version of their site - complete with dark mode. The new design, while significantly different from the current one, closely mimics the look of Facebook's mobile app so users shouldn't have trouble navigating the platform.

Users will notice more blank space in the makeover, although it isn't clear yet if changes to cover image sizes will occur to fill some of that space or not. Here are the biggest differences that page admins should expect:

Facebook Live Producer

Stream settings for launching a Facebook Live broadcast have moved from the Publishing Tools tab to the main page feed. Once users click on "Create Live" above the "Create Post" box, the new Facebook Live Producer platform will open.

According to Facebook, “users can manage live broadcasts, scheduling and other settings in the left-hand column. Critical functions such as Source Details and Stream Health, plus interactive features like Polls, are located in the top navigation bar. A small stream preview is available in the bottom right-hand corner; while users can simply scroll up to access a larger stream preview.”

Live Producer can also be accessed from: facebook.com/live/producer.

New Group Features

With the updated look, Facebook Groups are getting a handful of new features that are specific to the individual group type. Bloomberg News noted that members in health-related groups can ask group admins to post on their behalf to better protect their privacy. Groups with a focus on gaming are getting a group chat feature.

Creator Studio App

As a companion to the new Facebook desktop site, mobile users can now also download the Creator Studio app. With this app, users can:

• Access insights

• Manage post content

• View notifications

• Communicate with their audience

• Switch between Pages

Users will still need to use Creator Studio on their computer to create a posts or initiate messages, although Facebook has indicated that this essential feature is in the works. For now, we recommend sticking with the official Pages app.

Introducing & Setting Up Facebook Pay

This week, Facebook rolled out its long-awaited Facebook Pay tool to all users in the United States. The feature will facilitate on-platform payments, providing an easy and secure way for people to buy products on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.

For now, Facebook Pay is limited in its use for fundraisers, in-game purchases, event tickets, person-to-person payments on Messenger, and purchases from select pages and businesses on Facebook Marketplace. If your page qualifies to accept Facebook Pay, you’ll receive a prompt asking you to link a bank or PayPal account to receive payments. Facebook will collect these bank transfers and credit card payments with a 2.5% fee.

Users can easily start using Facebook Pay by following a few easy steps:

1.) Go to “Settings” > “Facebook Pay” on the Facebook app or website

2.) Add a payment method

3.) The next time a payment is made, select Facebook Pay 

When customers make a purchase via Facebook Pay, your page will be responsible for providing real-time support via Messenger chat. These interactions will impact your page’s Customer Satisfaction Score, where unsatisfactory responses could lead to more expensive ads that reach fewer people. Read our full explanation of Facebook Customer Satisfaction Scores here.

Want To Target Your Facebook Followers? You Can't.

Facebook has removed the ability to target page fans with ads. Now, only people who recently engaged with your page can be targeted through paid advertising. Paired with platform's algorithmic approach to organic reach distribution, this means that it is essentially no longer possible to reach your entire page following.

While that may sound disturbing, the change will positively affect how custom and lookalike audiences are generated. Instead of building an audience similar to your current connections, audiences will be made up of relevant, engaged users.

The move furthers Facebook's strategic message that marketers should focus on meaningful engagement as opposed to follower counts.

Facebook Implements a Problematic Content Plan: Remove, Reduce, Inform

Scammers, fake news creators, and suggestive content creators will have a range of new Facebook features to deal with in the coming weeks. With attempts to remove contentious content from the site, reduce the reach of those that aren’t taken down, and inform audiences when they’ve encountered such material all in the works, we’re breaking the action items below.

Holding Groups Accountable

As Facebook users and brands shift their conversations away from the news feed and into niche groups, the company is attempting to thwart the spread of offensive, divisive, and inaccurate content that may get shared – even privately. In a blog post, Facebook claims that an unnamed technology allows them to, “proactively detect many types of violating content posted in groups before anyone reports them and sometimes before few people, if any, even see them.”

What group administrators and moderators should know is that they will now be held accountable for posts that violate the platform’s Community Standards. When member posts contain violations, Facebook will look at who approved the content for Group visibility and could remove the entire group if they believe the admins have acted recklessly.

To help keep track of these violations, a new Group Quality feature for admins (similar to the Page Quality tab that was introduced earlier this year) will provide an overview of flagged content and false news found in the group. A group with multiple violations, or one that shares links to malicious or false news websites, will have their reach downgraded.

In addition to these new features, members will soon be able to remove all of their posts and comments from a group should they choose to leave it.

Penalizing Fringe Link Sharing

For years, fringe publishers have been using shocking, divisive, and partisan headlines to provoke engagement on Facebook. Now, articles from those sites will begin to see a decrease in reach as the platform stifles their influence on the news feed.

The new ranking signal, known as Click-Gap, “looks for domains with a disproportionate number of outbound Facebook clicks compared to their place in the web graph. This can be a sign that the domain is succeeding on news feed in a way that doesn’t reflect the authority they’ve built outside it and is producing low-quality content.” In short, the algorithm will now cross-check the performance of links both on and off Facebook in order to determine if its hosting website is reputable.

Moderating Risky Instagram Content

Even if your photo and video content doesn’t unequivocally violate Instagram’s Community Guidelines, that doesn’t mean it’s safe. Posts that the platform finds inappropriate (including sexually or violently suggestive content) will now be excluded from Explore and hashtag search pages.  

Bringing Verification to Messenger

As Messenger use increases, Facebook will begin displaying Verified Badges on conversations with brand pages that have earned the checkmark. The move hopes to help users avoid scammers that use fake accounts to pretend to be someone they are not.

Once those fake accounts are identified, users will be able to easily block them through an updated block option and list of settings that will help them control whether people “such as friends of your friends, people with your phone number or people who follow you on Instagram” can reach users via Messenger at all.

Facebook Removes Ad Relevance Scores

Since 2015, Facebook has provided advertisers with a metric meant to provide insight into how appropriate a given target audience finds the ads they’re being delivered. On April 30th, the Ad Relevance Score, calculated by measuring positive ad interactions compared with negative feedback like hiding or reporting an ad, is being replaced with three new measurements. 

Quality Ranking: How your ad’s perceived quality compared with ads competing for the same audience.

Engagement Rate Ranking: How your ad’s expected engagement rate compared with ads competing for the same audience.

Conversion Rate Ranking: How your ad’s expected conversion rate compared with ads that had the same optimization goal and competed for the same audience.

Unlike the Relevance Score (where higher scores resulted in lower delivery costs), the new metrics will not impact an ad’s delivery performance and are only meant to help marketers review and create ads.

More specific campaign metrics are also being swapped out over the coming months.  

Offers Saved and Cost Per Offers Saved will become Post Saves.

Messaging Replies and Cost Per Messaging Reply will become New Messaging Connections and Messaging Conversations Stated.

Mobile App Purchase Return on Ad Spend and Web Purchase Return on Ad Spend will be condensed into one Purchase Return on Ad Spend data point.

To discuss how these new metrics can improve your company’s ads and save those valuable marketing dollars, contact Deph Digital.