A few years ago, Facebook angered many small and local businesses by changing their newsfeed algorithms and reducing pages’ organic reach. Many businesses felt that Facebook pulled a bait and switch on them by reducing their organic reach and offering advertising as a solution. Over the past few months, Facebook as signaled that it will be making changes to its pages platform with the goal of supporting small businesses.
Facebook announced one of those changes yesterday with verified badges for Facebook pages. The badges are grey check marks next to the business name. The badges will help people “find the right and authentic accounts” for local businesses. Verified pages will also rank higher in search results on Facebook.
Facebook’s reasoning is that there are inevitably duplicates and multiple entries for the same business. For example, let’s say you started a page when you weren’t sure what Facebook pages really were seven years ago but then started another one with a more social media savvy employee just a few years ago. Technically both pages still exist and someone searching for you could end up on your old page. The verified pages will help reduce the chances of that happening.
Over the past month, Facebook boosted prominence of call to action buttons like Contact Us, Send Message or Call Now and created new Shop and Service sections that allow businesses to display their products. They also introduced the Buy button, allowing small businesses to sell directly on Facebook using a Buy button.
Facebook updated a Help Center entry on how a local business page owner could get the verified check mark. Follow the instructions below
- Click Settings at the top of your Page
- From General, click Page Verification
- Click Verify this Page, then click Get Started
- Enter a publicly listed phone number for your business, your country and your language
- Click Call Me Now to allow Facebook to call you with verification code
- Enter the 4-digit verification code and click continue
The verified page is only available for non-local page owners and users. Celebrities, public figures, news outlets and other media and entertainment organizations have a blue checkmark to verify.
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