Is Your Law Firm Ready for the Next Change to Facebook?

Once again, Facebook is making some changes to your law firm’s Facebook Page. A number of sections will be removed, including “Mission,” “Company Overview,” “Biography,” “Affiliation,” and “Personal Interests.” This change will take effect on August 1, 2019.

Page Administrators are being prompted to include the information from these sections into other areas, such as “Description.”

You can update your description and make other changes by clicking on Settings in the upper right area of your page, then selecting Page Info from the left sidebar.

In addition to updating your Description with information currently in the Company Overview, you might consider using the “Our Story” space to incorporate information from your company overview. Of course, if you chose to include a Story, you’ll need to be a bit more creative.

Stories are a different type of Newsfeed which are used daily by 500 million accounts on Instagram and 300 million more on Facebook and Messenger. This feature, previously limited to personal profiles, was recently rolled out to business pages. Stories appear at the top of a user’s Facebook Newsfeed on both desktop and the mobile app, which provides a great opportunity to showcase your brand and increase your Facebook engagement.

Stories are visual not text-based, so you can add multiple photos and videos to communicate your message. One drawback is that Stories disappear in 24 hours.

Currently, you can only add a Story from the app, but it’s very easy. Simply scroll down on the home screen to the Your Story section and click on the plus sign. You’ll be prompted to add videos and images and publish.

In all likelihood, the fields that are being removed were not highly read, so it makes some sense for Facebook to remove them as part of a broader effort to streamline Page listings. Doing so presents marketers with a good opportunity to review their Facebook marketing strategy and perhaps begin to use some of the newer features.

Rita Chaires

Director, Web and Online Marketing Services
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com