facebook global pages faq
TRANSCRIPT
Global Pages FAQ Updated January 2014
Overview
1. What is Global Pages? 2. Why did Facebook build it? 3. Do brands have to transition to the new
structure? 4. Who is eligible for Global Pages? 5. How do brands set up the Global Pages
structure? Transitioning to Global Pages
1. If a brand has a single Page, how do they transition to Global Pages?
2. If a brand creates new country Pages, can they move content over from any existing Pages?
3. If a brand has separate regional Pages (ex: /brandES, /brandUK), how do they transition to Global Pages?
4. What should a brand expect during the transition?
5. What should brands do with ads during the transition?
6. What if some Pages aren’t ready to transition? Do brands have to transition all their Pages at once?
7. What if a Page wants to transition to Global Pages, but doesn’t want to migrate its existing fans to the best Page for them?
Admins & Insights
1. What happens to Page Insights during the transition?
2. What happens to Page Insights after the transition?
3. What insights do admins see on the main global Page? Country Pages?
4. If a fan switches his/her country Page to a different country, how do Page Insights change?
5. Can admins ban a user from posting on all of its Pages?
6. Do main global Page admins have access to each country Page?
7. Will there be separate Message inboxes for country Pages?
8. Can brands edit countries assigned to regional Pages after they have been assigned by Facebook?
9. Can brands assign multiple countries to a country Page?
10. How can brands tell their country Pages apart if they all have the same Page name?
11. What happens if a brand deletes/unpublishes one of their Pages?
12. What happens to verified Pages? Fan Experience
1. How does Facebook determine a person's location?
2. What happens to a brand's current fans? 3. How do people switch between country
Pages? 4. Can people subscribe to multiple country
Pages to get updates from more than one country in their news feed?
5. When will people get automatically redirected to a Page?
6. How will people see Pages in search? 7. What will fans see Pages in news feed?
Publishing & Page Content
1. Can a brand create a language-‐specific Page or a Page for just a city/state?
2. Will any Page content be removed when a brand transitions to Global Pages?
3. Can a global Page publish a post and have it also posted on all country Pages?
4. How does the Locations feature work with Global Pages?
5. How will check-‐ins work? Ads/Paid Media
1. Do brands need to pause their ads during the transition to Global Pages?
2. Do brands need to pause all their ads during the transition? Or just some of them?
3. How will running ads change after a brand migrates to Global Pages?
4. How do brands run ads that target people in multiple countries?
5. Can country Pages target other country Pages in the same brand family?
6. Can brands directly target foreign fans who have switched to hear from a country Page?
7. How will ads interfaces on Facebook change (when using connection targeting)?
8. If someone (e.g., a PMD, agency or in-‐house marketer) is an admin of a country Page, do they have the permissions to run Page like sponsored stories or ads with connection targeting for the main global Page?
Page Naming and Web Addresses (Vanity URLs)
1. How will Page naming work for brands with different names in different countries? (i.e. Caress/LUX)?
2. Can a country Page keep its regional name qualifier (i.e. [Brand] France, [Brand] Mexico)?
3. Will Facebook support direct translations of brand names?
4. Does each Page get its own Facebook web address?
5. Can more than one Page share the same web address?
6. Will people see the URL for the main global Page or the URL for the country Page in their browser?
BASICS 1. What is Global Pages? Global Pages is a structure that allows brands to create individual local versions of their Page while maintaining the same Page name and global metrics (e.g. likes) across all Pages. When someone navigates to the main global Page, they’ll be redirected to the best country Page for them. This allows people to hear from the best, localized Page so that brands can deliver the right content to the right audience. 2. Why did Facebook build it? In the past, brands adopt one of two solutions to communicate with their fans worldwide: 1) a single Page solution (which unifies all fans to one Page, but doesn't have full geo-‐targeting for all Page features such as the cover photo, profile picture, etc.) or 2) a multi-‐Page solution (each country Page offers full localization, but the audience is fragmented across multiple Pages with different Page names, and don’t feel like they’re part of a global brand community, e.g. global fan count). Global Pages offers the benefits of both prior strategies, allowing brands to create different localized Pages while maintaining a global brand community. 3. Do brands have to transition to the new structure? No, although it is encouraged. Not only will it allow people to easily find and like the best Page for them, this is also an
opportunity to create a fully localized Page experience including a localized cover photo, profile photo, Page name, apps,
timeline, pinned posts, and news feed stories. 4. Who is eligible for Global Pages? Global Pages is available to managed accounts (clients who have a direct relationship with Facebook).
5. How do brands set up the Global Pages structure? Brands can complete the Global Pages spreadsheet and send it to their account manager. Facebook’s Pages team will create the structure on their behalf. After the initial structure is setup, the client can manage it through our self-‐serve tools. They can add new country Pages and edit countries through the interface.
TRANSTIONING TO GLOBAL PAGES 1. If a brand has a single Page, how do they transition to Global Pages? If a brand currently has a single Page, they should manually create new Pages for local markets one at a time, as it makes sense
for their business. We recommend creating one to two regional Pages to get familiarized with the Global Pages before
transitioning all markets to the new structure. For example, if their top markets are the UK and France, we recommend that they
create separate Pages for each of those markets. If clients partner with Preferred Marketing Developers (PMDs), the PMDs can
also help them create the new localized Pages. 2. If a brand creates new country Pages, can they move content over from any existing Pages?
Unfortunately, no. Admins can, however, work with third-‐party developers to have them re-‐post key content from the current
Page onto relevant new Pages. Admins will also have to reinstall Pages apps to the new Pages, but this should be a fairly quick
process.
Note that no old content will be deleted from existing Pages (unless the brand decides to delete any old Pages during transition).
3. If a brand has separate regional Pages (ex: /brandES, /brandUK), how do they transition to Global Pages?
If a brand has separate Pages for each region, they will now be able to consolidate them in the Global Pages structure to 1)
remove country qualifiers from the Page name, 2) roll up all stats such as like across all Pages to one global metric, 3) ensure that
new visitors are landing on the localized version of their Page, and 4) allow them to promote just one Facebook web address
across all of their off-‐Facebook marketing assets. 4. What should a brand expect during the transition? During the transition, brands can expect about 500k fans to move each day. If the brand is moving two million fans, for example, it will take about four days for the transition to be completed. While fans are moving, expect that insights change rapidly (including drastic fluctuations in likes and unlikes). 5. What should brands do with ads during the transition? We highly recommend that brands pause their media during the transition. When fans are transitioning, social context can be disturbed, delivery/performance can be affected, and advertising prices can fluctuate. If a client chooses to run media during the transition, we can ask an engineer to run an ads migration script on all country Pages so that the campaigns don’t break. However, brands may still see less optimal ads performance while fans are in the process of migrating. 6. What if some Pages aren’t ready to transition? Do brands have to transition all their Pages at once?
We recommend starting with 1-‐2 Pages before transitioning all of them to give brands the opportunity to experience the new
structure. This will allow admins time to fully understand how to manage their Pages in the new structure. 7. What if a Page wants to transition to Global Pages, but doesn’t want to migrate its existing fans to the best Page for them?
We have built a feature that allows a brand to move to Global Pages, but keeps fans mapped to their pre-‐existing Pages. We
strongly discourage admins from using this feature (one of the main benefits of Global Pages is redirecting users to the best Page
for them), but it is an option if a brand very strongly wants it.
ADMINS & INSIGHTS 1. What happens to Page Insights during the transition? During the transition, fans are moving from one Page to another and insights (likes, unlikes, reach, etc.) will change rapidly. 2. What happens to Page Insights after the transition? After the transition, expect insights to be inaccurate for another week. After that, insights will reflect the Pages in their Global Pages structure. The insights are not retroactive, however. This means that if a brand transitioned to Global Pages in June 2013, the admin viewing their current insights will see the same insights they would have seen in April 2013. Both main and country Pages will have their own Insights. The admin of the main global Page can see insights about the fans aggregated across all their Pages. Insights for country Pages show metrics that pertain to that country Page. For example, if a Page only has fans from France, they’ll only be able see Insights about those fans. The global Page, however, will have aggregated insights about all fans across all
their Pages. If demographic data for fans by country is important to a brand, we recommend creating a regional Page for every country they'd like detailed insights for. 3. What insights do admins see on the main global Page? Country Pages? Admins of the main global Page will see aggregated insights across all the Pages in the Global Pages structure. That means that
metrics like Page likes, post reach, and engagement reflect the aggregated global audience. Admins of the main global Page will
not see detailed country-‐specific information. If it’s important for a brand to see country-‐specific insights for a market, we
recommend building a separate Page for every country/region for which brands want Insights. For example, if a brand wants US-‐
specific Insights, we recommend creating a US-‐specific region Page. The global Page can be used as the default experience for
customers for whom there is not a better country Page.
Admins of the main Page can view each Page and their like count from the Global Pages dashboard, from the “More…” drop-‐
down in the Page settings menu. Or, replace the example Page ID with the brand’s Page ID in this URL:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/edit_page/?id=1234567891011&tab=global_brand
Admins of the country Pages will see insights for that specific Page. For example, if a brand has a country Page for people in
France, the admin of that country Page will see Page likes, post reach, and engagement reflect the people connected to that
specific Page.
4. If a fan switches his/her country Page to a different country, how do Insights change? The fan will be reflected in the Insights for the Page that they hear from. So, if a user in the US chooses to hear from the Mexico
Page, the Mexico Page will reflect that in its Insights.
5. Can admins ban a user from posting on all of its Pages? Banning a user from a country Page or the main global Page will only ban them from that particular Page. In order to ban a user
from posting on all Pages, brands will have to ban them from each of their Pages. Alternatively, brands can work with a third
party developer to ban a user from all of its country Pages. 6. Do main global Page admins have access to each country Page? No. There will be no special permissions granted with Global Pages. If admins would like permission to a particular Page in the
brand Page family, they'll have to request it from the current admins of that Page. Learn more about admin permission levels
here. 7. Will there be separate Message inboxes for country Pages, or just one main global inbox? Every Page will have its own individual Messages inbox. 8. Can brands edit countries assigned to regional Pages after they have been assigned by Facebook? Yes. Go to Edit Page > Update Info > More > Global Pages. Here, admins with Manager privileges will be able to reassign
countries to different Pages.
9. Can brands assign multiple countries to a country Page? For example, can they create a North America Page and redirect
users from the US, Canada, and Mexico to it? Yes. Brands can assign as many countries as they would like to a regional Page.
10. How can brands tell their country Pages apart if they all have the same Page name?
In several places in the user interface (for example, when creating an ad, using Facebook as a Page, or adding an app to a Page)
we’ve added parentheses and the country codes for the biggest countries to a Page’s name to help admins of multiple Pages tell
them apart. For example, an admin of the French and German Facebook Marketing Pages would see them listed as “Facebook
Marketing (FR)” and “Facebook Marketing (DE)” in the user interface. No users see those country codes.
11. What happens if a brand deletes/unpublishes one of their Pages?
If a brand deletes one of the country Pages in the Global Pages structure, the fans of that Page will move to the global main
Page. For example, if the brand wants to delete their Page for Japan, an admin of the main global Page needs to remove Japan
beside the Japan Page. Then, the admin of the Japan Page can delete that Page. Note that deletions are permanent, so the brand
should be sure they need to do this.
12. What happens to verified Pages?
If a brand qualifies for verification (a blue check mark), then all the Pages in a Global Pages structure will be verified.
FAN EXPERIENCE 1. How does Facebook determine a person’s location? We determine a person’s location information through a combination of inputs, such as current IP address. You can find more
information in the Help Center here. If we're unable to determine where someone is we’ll redirect them to the main global Page.
2. What happens to a brand's current fans? For example, if a fan is connected to Brand UK before Global Pages, but lives in the
US when the transition is completed, will they be connected to the US or UK Page? There are two options available to brands and we recommend that brands choose to migrate their fans to the best Page for
them. In this case, fans across all country Pages will be transitioned to hear from the Page that is assigned to the country they
are currently in. This means that like counts will change slightly as fans who may have been counted more than one time are
counted once, and they may be reassigned to a new country. Possible scenarios
• Person living in France liked a country specific Page for the brand (e.g. /brandfrance) No change. The person will continue to hear from the country Page for France
• Person living in France liked a main Page for the brand (e.g. /brand) The person will hear from the country Page for France, if available. Otherwise, they will hear from the global Page
(/brand) • Person living in France liked a country Page from a different country (e.g. /brandmexico)
The person will be transitioned to hear from the country Page for France In the event that a fan hears from the incorrect regional Page (due to an inaccurate geo-‐predication), fans will be able to change
their regional Page using the region switcher available from the gear menu in the Page’s cover. Alternatively, if it's necessary, Pages will have the option to retain the current mapping of their fans so that no migration takes
place, however we strongly discourage this option, as it defeats the purpose of several of the key benefits of transitioning to
Global Pages.
If someone is a fan of multiple Pages for the same brand, they will be subscribed to the Page they liked most recently. For
example, if the person lives in the US, and subscribed to the France, Germany and Spain Pages in that order, then they will stay
subscribed to the most recent Page (Spain). 3. How do people switch between country Pages? People can manually specify which Page they’d like to hear from using "Switch Region..." option located in the gear menu in the
cover. If they switch their region, we’ll remember it next time when they visit that Page, but switching to another region will only
apply to the Page they've switched, not to future Pages. 4. Can people subscribe to multiple country Pages to get updates from more than one country in their news feed? No. We recognize that some power users may want to connect to multiple regions, but at this feature is not available at this
time. 5. When will people get automatically redirected to a Page? Redirects occur when people navigate to the main global URL, but would be best suited by a country Page. For example, when a
person from France navigates to /brand, they'll automatically redirect to /brandfrance. However, when people navigate directly
to a country Page URL, they'll go directly to the country Page regardless of what region they belong. For example, when a person
from France navigates to /brandmexico, they'll go directly to the country Page for Mexico. 6. How will people see Pages in search? Search will show one result for the brand in his/her region including the localized profile picture thumbnail and Page name. 7. What will fans see in news feed? Fans will see only posts from the Page they belong to. If a fan wants to hear from a different country Page, they can use the
region switcher located in the gear icon underneath their cover photo.
PUBLISHING & PAGE CONTENT 1. Can a brand create a language-‐specific Page or a Page for just a city/state? No. Global Pages works at a country level, so if brands would like to reach a specific customer base, they'll have to publish from
the appropriate country Page and then use additional geo-‐targeting. For example, for a country like Canada where people speak
both English and French, we recommend creating a country Page for Canada and add language targeting to each post. To publish
to someone in a particular city/state like Montreal, we'd recommend publishing from the Canadian Page and targeting users in
Montreal. 2. Will any Page content be removed when a brand transitions to Global Pages? No. Unless the brand chooses to delete a Page, we will not delete or remove any historical content when they transition to the
new model. However, if they have a single Page model and have created new regional Pages, we will not migrate content to the
new Page. Content will stay on the main Global Page and will remain geo/language targeted. Admins can work with a third party
marketing developer or manually input the content into their new Pages. 3. Can a global Page publish a post and have it also posted on all country Pages?
No. Currently posts from the global Page will not be replicated to all country Pages. People connected to the global Page will see
posts from the global Page, and people connected to a country Page will see posts from that country Page. For important
messages brands want all of their audiences to hear, they should translate into the best local language for them and post it to
their country Page. Admins can also re-‐share posts from one Page to another. Engagement stats (i.e. likes and comments) between re-‐shares will
remain separate from each other. Finally, through the Pages API brands can work with a PMD to have them auto-‐post
untranslated content to all Pages, but we strongly encourage that messages that are important to all fans be translated into their
local language to provide the best, localized experience. 4. How does the Locations feature work with Global Pages? All location Pages will be mapped to the main global Page, and will be viewable from the Locations app tab on country Pages. 5. How will check-‐ins work? If the country Page has an address (which we don't expect will happen in many cases), check-‐ins will only roll-‐up to that country
Page. If there are many individual Places tied to the country Page through Locations, check-‐ins will roll-‐up and appear for all of
those places combined, as they did before.
ADS / PAID MEDIA 1. Do brands need to pause their ads during the transition to Global Pages? Yes, see “What should brands do with ads during the transition?” above. We highly recommend that brands pause the ads associated with their Page during the transition (Page Like ads, Promoted Posts, Promoted Page Likes, etc.). When fans are transitioning, social context can be disturbed, delivery/performance can be affected, and advertising prices can fluctuate. If a client chooses to run media during the transition, we can ask an engineer to run an ads migration script on all country Pages so that the campaigns don’t break. However, brands may still see less optimal ads performance while fans are in the process of migrating. Advertisers do not need to rebuild their ads to ensure the conversion spec reflects the new object ID; when we migrate a brand’s Pages to Global Pages, we’ll handle this automatically on our end.
2. Do brands need to pause all their ads? Or just some of them?
Ads that are not associated with the Page at all are not impacted by the move to Global Pages. If a brand is running a campaign
for ads that link to their website or to their mobile app, for example, they don’t need to pause their campaigns.
3. How will running ads change after a brand migrates to Global Pages? There are only a few key changes to how brands should run ads after transitioning to Global Pages. The key difference is that
when advertisers want to use connection targeting (connections, friends of connections or exclusion targeting), they can no
longer target users connected to directly to a country page, but instead will need to target the main global Page and include
relevant geo-‐targeting. This means that brands can no longer target people subscribed to a given country Page, but instead must target all fans of a
global brand from a specific geographical location (e.g., the United States). For example, before Global Pages, a brand used to
target everyone connected to /brandmexico. Now, when running any connection targeting, they'll instead target those who are
connected to /brand, who live in Mexico. Learn more about connection targeting here. 4. How do brands run ads that target people in multiple countries? They should advertise to the main global Page, and then target as many countries as they would like -‐-‐ no different from how
they do it today. 5. Can country Pages target other Pages in the same brand family? Not exactly. Country Pages can target fans of the brand family in any country, but they can't target people subscribed to a given
Page. For example, if someone is an admin of the US page, but wants to target French fans, they can target people connected to
the brand family who live in France. 6. Can brands directly target foreign fans who have switched to hear from a country Page? No, Pages won't be able to target them as a separate group. For example, a Page can target all fans of the brand who live in
Mexico. However, they won't be able to target fans of /brandmexico who live in other countries.
7. How will ads interfaces on Facebook change (when using connection targeting)?
• Ad create tool: We’ll show admins all Pages that they currently admin, including adding a country identifier to the end
of each Page name to make it easier to identify them (e.g., “Facebook Marketing (FR)”). If an admin targets that
country Page, we’ll immediately remap that targeting to the main global Page (and will reflect that in the interface).
See above, “How will running ads change if a brand migrates to Global Pages?” for more information about how
connection targeting changes.
• Ads Manager: We will show the main global Page in the Ads Manager, with the geo-‐specific targeting.
• Power Editor: If an advertiser accidentally targets a country Page (instead of the main global Page) we’ll still show the
country Page name (including the country identifier) in the ad create tool. When the ads are uploaded, we’ll re-‐map
the connection targeting from the country Page ID to the main global Page ID. (This is evident when you export.) The
ad itself will show the global Page name, the profile picture for the country Page, and will not include the country
identifiers (which are internal to admins only).
8. If someone (e.g., a PMD, agency or in-‐house marketer) is an admin of a country Page, do they have the permissions to run
Page like sponsored stories or ads with connection targeting for the main page?
Yes. All admins of country pages in the Global Pages structure have targeting permissions for the main Page.
PAGE NAMING and WEB ADDRESSES (Vanity URLs) 1. How will Page naming work for brands with different names in different countries? (i.e. Caress/LUX)? We support multiple Page names for different brand names that represent the same entity. For example, a country Page for the
UK named Coke Light can be linked with the main Diet Coke brand. However, different tag lines/campaigns will not be supported
-‐-‐ only direct translations of the Page's name or different brands for the exact same product.
No matter what brand name a person enters, they’ll be redirected to the best Page for them. So, if a user in the US types in
“Coke Light,” the Coke Light Page will appear in the typeahead, but the person will be redirected to the Diet Coke Page in the US.
They can use the switcher to navigate to the UK Page if they want to see that Page instead.
2. Can a country Page keep its regional name qualifier (i.e. [Brand] France, [Brand] Mexico)? No. To keep create a global brand community and streamline the user experience, we will not permit regional qualifiers in the
Page name. 3. Will Facebook support direct translations of brand names? Yes, we will support a straight translation of the product name, provided that the brand gives us the desired translation. For
example, American Express can be translated to アメリカン・エキスプレス 4. Does each Page get its own Facebook web address (vanity URL)? Yes, each Page can have a unique Facebook web address for each country Page as well as for the main global Page. When people navigate to the main global Page's web address, they'll be redirected to the appropriate Page. When people
navigate to a country web address, they'll go directly to the country Page, regardless of whatever country/region they are located in.
5. Can more than one Page share the same web address (vanity URL)? No, each Page should have a unique web address. 6. Will people see the URL for the main global Page or the URL for the country Page in their browser? They’ll see the URL for the country Page. For example, if they're viewing the Japan Page, they’ll see facebook.com/brandJP
instead of facebook.com/brand in their browser.