Facebook Page Reviews and Discussions

An Honest Update on the Newest Facebook Page Changes

On October 31, 2011, Facebook disabled two features on Pages: the Reviews tab and the Discussions tab. Personally, the Discussions tab never did much for me. The action is on the Wall, we all know that. But Reviews? Those are super important, not only for the credibility of the business but also for the prospects who want to know what previous clients or customers of a particular company had to say – in their own words. And as another blogger so aptly put it “I don’t think ‘Recommend’ is the best description for this, because you are basically giving a review, which could even be negative.” He’s right.

And now we have what Facebook deems a better, more engaging solution called Recommendations. I’m not sure about that, but I do know that (a) it’s harder to find on the right hand side of the Page (when all of the other tabs are located on the left), and (b) all of the previous content has vanished into cyberspace.

Facebook issued this notice shortly before making the change:

“We’ve found that the best way to encourage conversation and feedback is through posts and comments on your Wall, so we’re removing the Reviews and Discussions tabs for now. We’re working on tools to help you moderate, filter and manage content in one powerful place. Stay tuned.

You won’t be able to access your reviews and discussions once they’re removed, so please save this content if you’d like to keep it for future reference.”

If you didn’t get the memo, as was the case with most Facebook Page owners, you’ll have to reconnect with as many customers and clients as possible, and ask them to write a Recommendation (again).

 

Recommendation on facebook.com/Liqui.Site

Now, for the worst part. You can no longer comment on your own Recommendations as your business. If you select the option to “Use Facebook as [Your Business]”, the Recommendations are automatically made invisible to you as the administrator. So, if you want to comment at all, you must first personally “Friend” your customer or client. That’s right, you’re forced to connect and comment as you, under your personal profile! To me, this is the biggest oversight in Facebook history. We’re hoping they change this one – and fast! What do you think?

As the Page admin, you still have the ability to either hide Recommendations or report inappropriate or abusive comments. But don’t get too excited about either of those because hiding comments only hides them from your front Page; Users can click to see all of the Recommendations you’ve hidden. Plus, Facebook has been known to ignore reports of inappropriate comments.

Of course, a better way to handle this – on Facebook’s part – would have been to simply move Reviews over to the Recommendations section, since they basically work the same way. No harm, no foul.

But these are the changes, for better or worse. Now, it’s up to us to garner new Recommendations, think of fun and engaging ways to build our brand awareness, and keep up with every drastic change at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Google – to name a few.

We’re here to help you help navigate these social waters.