First published in the May issue of Nonprofit Business Advisor, available electronically to current subscribers in April.

On March 30, 2012, your organization’s Facebook page automatically switched to a new design. Now is the time—if you have not done so already—to visit your page, review the new layout and utilize those features that put your organization in its best light.

Facebook emailed users ahead of the change to Timeline and provided them with a preview, so many nonprofits have already made the switch to the new profile. The company also set up a step-by-step tutorial that walked page administrators through the new features, including: adding a cover photo, editing the organization’s profile picture, highlighting important content at the top of the page—such as Photos, apps and “Likes”—reviewing the organization’s Timeline, managing the admin page and receiving messages.

But while the swap may appear relatively harmless to Facebook users, Amy Sample Ward, speaker, author, facilitator and membership director at NTEN, said that there are important changes that organizations should be aware of, because the new design can significantly alter how your page engages visitors, where content is posted and the message your page can display.

Whether you have already converted to the Timeline, or you’ve just learned about the switch, Sample Ward suggested these steps to help you make the best of Facebook’s new design:

• Keep users engaged. “We really care about the community posting to our page,” said Sample Ward, “and not just where we’re posting content and hoping that users comment back to us. We want people to come to the NTEN page, post content and have other community members respond to them.” The facilitator said that the new Facebook design aggregates all community content into a side box and primarily features content from the organization. Organizations that have a goal around community engagement will need to think about this change.

“We make sure we go in to ‘Like’ or engage users right away,” Sample Ward said, “so that content can show back up in the newsfeed, since it isn’t given very much prominence on the page.” Be sure to develop a plan or policy so that an administrator goes in regularly to engage users and thank them for posting, she said.

• Put your best boxes forward. If your agency created custom tabs, they will no longer be available, said Sample Ward, and they’ll be replaced with four boxes under the organization’s cover photo and to the right of its profile picture. These boxes should showcase your organization’s most important content, she said. You’ll also need to consider how to rearrange these boxes for any visitor—fan or not. For instance, a page administrator who chooses not add new boxes or rearrange them can leave the “Like” box as a default, said Sample Ward, but any random person—such as a marketer—can look into your organization’s Insights information, including how many people are active on your page. She suggests using photos, videos, programmatic causes, fundraising campaigns—any content critical to your mission—to reorganize those boxes as soon as possible.
• Revisit the past. Unlike personal page users who may want to remove old content, Sample Ward said nonprofits should go back in time to “create a rich historical experience” for the user. Add benchmarks and organizational successes in order to provide a history of the organization, she said. “Go back further than the two years ago when you first joined Facebook,” said Sample Ward. “An advocacy group may want to go in and mark all of the major mileposts or steps it has taken.”
• Add photos to posts. Facebook prioritizes the kind of content that goes into a given user’s newsfeed, and content that has an image link is prioritized above posts with only text or links, said the facilitator. “At NTEN, we regularly update for a conference and we add a photo that says, ‘Here we are getting ready for the conference.’ People engage because they like the photo, and because it’s getting comments, it gets placed back at the top of users’ newsfeeds,” said Sample Ward.
• Develop apps. Applications should represent important content you want your users to access such as presentations, webinar recordings, RSS feeds, blog posts, surveys, and petition applications, the facilitator said. Creative applications might include a custom button on an animal rights organization’s Facebook page for a volunteer that is organizing a picnic. The organization could customize the application so that picnic participants—or those that couldn’t be there but wanted to donate—could go to the nonprofit’s page and help raise funds with the click of the button.
• Manage your admin box. The admin panel offers a snapshot of information and is now at the top of page, said Sample Ward. There, administrators can find information such as recent notifications, comments, and a new message feature that allows users to communicate with the page. “If you’re running a page that gets a lot of engagement, you may have turned off your email notifications a long time ago,” Sample Ward said, “so this is an easier way to quickly see what’s going on or if there’s anything you need to respond to.”
• Follow the rules. Sample Ward said NTEN has fielded questions from page administrators concerning Facebook’s content rules and what you can and cannot place on your Timeline. For instance, the facilitator said you can no longer include URLs or any direct calls to action on the page. This has left many activists confused, wondering exactly what sorts of information they can post. Sample Ward suggested reviewing the Facebook Pages content at www.facebook.com
  /help/pages. “It may appear counterintuitive to the way you may be used to producing content,” Sample Ward said, “but you don’t want to get turned off by Facebook.”

For more information

NTEN is a membership organization of nonprofit professionals who put technology to use for their causes. To learn more, visit www.nten.org/. Amy Sample Ward is dedicated to supporting and educating organizations and changemakers in the use of evolving technologies that cultivate and engage communities and is the membership director at NTEN. To find out more about the changes Facebook has implemented through the new Timeline design, go to www.facebook.com
/help/pages.