Facebook Timeline For Pages Is Here

February 29th, 2012 | 2,862 views | 2 Comments »
Posted in Blogging & Social Media, Web Marketing | Tagged Facebook

We’ve been hearing rumors that Facebook would be releasing Timeline for pages soon, and as of today – it’s now available.

If you run a Facebook Page for your business, you can go in to your page now and upgrade to timeline, or wait until the end of March when the upgrade will be done automatically for you. We recommend you go ahead and get familiar with the Timeline layout before this switch is made automatically.

Timeline has already been implemented for many personal profile pages, so you have likely already seen this new look. But if not – the biggest change you will notice is a new “cover” image at the top of the page (that runs the width of the content area), followed by a 2 column layout where your posts, interactions, photos, etc will be shared. Your site visitor can scroll your timeline, or use the quicklinks in the top right to select a month and/or year that they want to view.

Cover Images

There is already a lot of questions about this large cover image that will show up at the top of your Facebook Page. So before you run off and create a new cover graphic promoting your business or pushing a promotion, let’s take a look at the current rules from Facebook regarding these images.

The following was taken directly from the Facebook Help Center:

How should I choose a cover photo for my Page?

Use a unique image that represents your Page. This might be a photo of a popular menu item, album artwork or a picture of people using your product. Be creative and experiment with images your audience responds well to.

Cover images must be at least 399 pixels wide and may not contain:

• Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”
• Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section
• References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features
• Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”

All cover images are public, which means anyone visiting your Page will be able to see the image you choose. Covers must not be false, deceptive or misleading, and must not infringe on third parties’ intellectual property. You may not encourage or incentivize people to upload your cover image to their personal timelines.

So – as it stands right now – you can not use your cover image to promote your business in a blatant way, but you can show images of your location, your products, your people, etc. (Also to note – you cannot do that on your personal profile either — and as an added reminder, make sure you aren’t using your personal profile for business as that has been against Facebook’s terms of use for quite some time now – if you are – setup a Facebook Page instead).

What happened to the Welcome Tab?

If you were running a welcome tab (or fan gate) those will no longer be the default page that is pulled up. Those pages would still be accessible through a tab that would reside under your cover photo. However, there is already a lot of speculation that the “welcome” page is dead. Without your non-fans landing there by default – they are not very likely to actually click that, which some fear will cause a decrease in actual “likes” to fan pages.

If you still want to get people to a specific page other than your timeline – you can pay for a Facebook ad, which once clicked would direct them to a specific app (page) inside Facebook.

New highlight feature.

One of the challenges Page owners face is that if their page is active, important posts used to get pushed down rather quickly, out of view. With the new timeline feature, you can actually pin a post in your timeline, which will extend that post full width of the Facebook content area (rather than keeping it in line with the column it is in). This will mean that as someone reads your page, the posts you’ve highlighted will grab attention more than the regular posts. This will come in handy if you want to promote a photo, maybe a blog post, a poll, essentially any post that you feel needs to be highlighted.

New Message Function.

Visitors to your new timeline page will now also have the ability to send you a message right through Facebook. From your timeline page, they will click the “message” tab which will open a window allowing them send you direct content. This great new feature will allow your fans to initiate a private conversation with you. Please bare in mind, you cannot initiate a conversation with your fans (unless they are you friends).

So now what?

There is still a lot of unanswered questions as to how small businesses will adopt the new layout. This will definitely shift many small business’s marketing plans, so there is some preparation you will want to take. You’ve got just one month from today to familiarize yourself with the new timeline and how this is going to impact your Page, and your fans.

We will bring your more information as soon as we’ve had a chance to get under the hood of the new Pages.

You can get additional information on Facebook Pages here.