Facebook Timeline Update
News Feed
The News Feed is focused on engaging Facebook to spread greater awareness of your company. For example, you post a photo or status and a fan would like it, which then appears in their newsfeed for their friends to see, which you would hope their friends would engage in.
Custom Tabs
The content strategy for custom/landing tabs was focused on engaging visitors with a clear call to action. This used to be the option choice to get people liking your page.
Now with Timeline, Facebook allows you more freedom to tell your companies story and build a sense of growth and individualism.
No Default Landing Tabs
With Timeline you no longer have the ability to set a default tab for non-fans. Default tabs in the past were primarily used as a way to increase fan conversion rates on a Page. This is now done with a cover image, highlights, and other ways to make that first impression. Here is a breakdown of the latest features likely to affect your Facebook strategy:
Simplify your Profile Picture
The new profile pictures are 200 x 200 px square. This means it’s impossible to fit a call-to-action (as many companies did on the old format of brand Pages/profile pictures). Even more so in Timeline’s thumbnail which is now a tiny 30px image. You don’t have to include your brand’s name in the profile picture, as the brand’s Timeline name travels anywhere that the profile picture goes. A logo alone will do the trick.
Your Company History
Timeline lets visitors interact with your story from the moment the company was founded/started/ launched, right to the middle, and the modern day. Facebook users can flip through your history in a variety of ways. The main way is via the dated sidebar on the right, so try your best to fill in the gaps in your company history. Milestones are one of the easiest ways to fill in your Timeline.
Create Milestones
Before now, anything posted on a Facebook Page was immediately tagged with the date of when it was posted. Milestones however let you to select the date a post was intended. So, whether you’ve changed headquarters or launched a campaign on TV, or redesigned your logo, you can direct people to it by creating milestones for that chunk of company history.
Highlights and Pins for ‘Look at Me’ Appeal
FB Pages of old Facebook admins could not control how posts were displayed on their Page and visitors could see updates in reverse chronological order or by Facebook’s Edge rank. A confusing system at best.
Pinning a status, photo or video gives admins control on the company story. Focusing on what the company are proud of or need you to know about first and foremost by moving a post story to the top of your Facebook Timeline. When you pin something to the top of your Timeline it stays for seven days, or until you unpin it, so think carefully about what you want to feature at the top each week. Each week, you can feature one post at the top of your Timeline, so it will be one of the first things that your visitors see when they visit your Page. To pin a story at the top of the Timeline, hover over the pencil icon at the top right hand corner of any post and select ‘Pin to Top’.
Timeline now allows you to control feature specific posts on your Timeline through Highlighting or Pinning. Highlighting turns any story, which normally occupies a single column, into a full-width story. This is perfect for large horizontal photos (dimensions for highlighted photos are 846px by 403px).
Recommendations
The test of any decent company is the reviews of its previous and current customers. Where ‘recommendations’ have always been around they are now far more visible in the current Timeline format. Monitor this like a hawk, and encourage people to add theirs so your company has a gleaming social testimonial for all to see.
Offers
Very recently Facebook updated Timeline to include Offers. This allows Admins to offer discounts and through the Status update area. The Offer option appears on the right hand side of the update options. Offers are only available on certain Pages, this may have something to do with the category selected when the Page was set up or the number of fans a page has. This is powerful way of engaging fans, and will help drive new people to your business. It will also get fans talking about your page when offers are shared with friends of fans.
Photos are Gold
Facebook Timeline is much more visual than before and it’s about the company story told over time, rather than what’s happening now. Where possible, it’s best to focus on telling that story through images photos and other visual content. If you are trying to fill in your Timeline and need some inspiration take a look at Relentless Energy Drink, their Timeline is full of interesting, and visual content.
