Around 50% of Facebook use is now via mobile phones. A percentage that significant means small business owners and fan page admins need to be very aware of how their fan pages look on a smart phone, and consider the differences between how users consume Facebook updates on their computers vs their phones.

New Facebook Mobile News Feed

The image below shows the new News Feed look available with the most recent Facebook App update. The default view is your overall News Feed, and you have the option to expand your choices to target only the type of updates you are most interested in seeing.

Clicking once on the up/down arrow icon expands the menu to show a “Photos” option and a down arrow to see more. It’s important to note that viewing “Photos” only shows you photos posted by your Friends, and not Fan Pages that you follow.

You’ll need to click one more time to reveal the full set of menu options.

Users clicking on “All Friends” will get to see a News Feed filled purely with their Friends’ updates and not fan page news. Mobile users having the option to filter out all fan page updates is never good for a brand.

Clicking on the “Following” option displays updates from all the pages you follow. On one hand, this is great because it’s only fan page updates being shown to you. On the other hand, a user needs to click 3 times in order to see only updates from the fan pages they follow.

From a general usability standpoint…the more clicks required, the less likely people are to use that feature. So, it’s unlikely anywhere close to that 50% are opting to consume their News Feeds this way.

New Facebook Fan Page Mobile Site

The goal of Facebook’s mobile redesign of its fan pages is to make it as easy as possible for users to find the information they most want. For a brick and mortar business, this means displaying a profile photo, cover photo, and the option to Like/Unlike, check-in, call, view on a map and see ratings of the business. Although it has always been important to fully populate the About and Description fields of your fan page, this new design reinforces the importance of having a correct business address and phone number on your fan page. Nothing is more frustrating than a customer clicking the “Call” button and not reaching that business.

Beneath the map, users will find the number of Likes, count of people who checked-in and recent Recommendations of the business.

Beneath that, a user will find photos tagged by people with that business’ location.

A user will need to scroll past all of these fan page sections to read the most recent status update.

So, What’s the Take-Away Here?

Actually, there are a few.

• Make sure you have complete, correct information about your business on your fan page.
• With so many users accessing Facebook on their phones, using photos can make the difference between someone stopping their thumb scroll motion or not.
• However, using photos with all your fan page updates doesn’t mean those updates will become part of the “Photos” News Feed view.

Will this change your Facebook content strategy? What percentage of the time do you access Facebook on your phone?