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Facebook has announced two very important changes to their social media platform which will affect businesses of all kinds. These changes involve, very directly, how people will view your business from a reputation and validation perspective.

Facebook has already begun removing page star & number ratings which were based on your reviews. They have moved, instead, to a recommendation system. Your previous reviews will remain on your page but there will no longer be a star or number rating attributed to them. No big deal, you say? Well actually it is. Your previous reviews do not count for anything in this new system so that means when someone comes to your page if you do not have any reviews based on the new recommendation system they will be met with a message that says you have no recommendations. If your business has been around for a while and “no one recommends it”…. well, that doesn’t look so great for your online reputation. You may be wondering “Can I do anything about this?“. Thankfully the answer is yes 🙂 Simply ask your friends, followers and fans to visit your profile and recommend or re-recommend you. The number rating system will be based on these new recommendations so hopefully your score will shoot back up fairly quickly!

The second change, which is happening as of October 29, 2019, is a removal of the grey verification badge. This badge has been in existence since 2015 and is seen as a way to ensure a business – particularly a physical brick & mortar one, is seen as legitimate. Several of our clients should have these in place at the moment. With a flooded world wide web this has been a great thing for independent businesses, big and small. How will visitors know a business is legitimate? Well this is a little more involved than the rating system. Facebook offers other ways now to verify a business is legitimate. The onslaught of hacking and interference that reportedly went on in our last election cycle has forced Facebook to get more involved in ensuring businesses, as well as individuals running ads, are in fact who they say they are. You will now see a small i – information icon anywhere a business page posts from their website. This has been in place for some time now and other information is also available in the business pages “Page Transparency” section. When you click this icon you will see the verification info Facebook has on the business in question or you will see that this business “does not have a facebook business page”. Unless you’ve gone through quite a few extra steps the chances you have proper transparency information in place are slim to none. How does your business get valid information on this information icon? The short answer is you do this through a Facebook Business Manager account. You can create your own and go through the steps or you can hire a digital marketing expert to do it for you. Should you choose the latter, there are still things you may be required to do such as submit your business license, provide access to your domain name servers, etc. Note that the blue verification badge is not changing at this time but that these entities are also subject to the transparency guidelines.
Here is more information from Facebook:
Helping to Protect the 2020 US Elections
*these changes affect everyone, regardless of whether or not you are involved in election related content.
Best Practices to Improve Page Visibility and Follower Engagement

As always, if you need help navigating any of this or you’d like to start the Facebook page information transparency process please feel free to contact us! We will post any updates we have as they become available.