How Facebook’s Timeline for Pages Affects Businesses

Facebook’s constant evolution ensures that there are always lots of changes rolling out on the social network. On February 29, at Facebook’s breakout marketing conference, fMC, many changes were announced.  How do these latest changes affect businesses? Let’s take a look.

1. Timeline does away with “landing pages” or “fangates” that encourage visitors to “like” a page – sort of.  This really had some folks freaking out when it was announced. However, you can still send people to your landing page via Facebook ads or from your website.

2.  Cover photo – The new cover photo is a large area of real estate (851 x 315 px) that should be used to tell a story about your company. This is the new landing page and while there are many restrictions regarding what can be included in the cover photo, it’s a place for you to get creative.  To read Facebook’s guidelines for cover photos: click here.

3. Profile picture – The new size for your profile picture is 130 x 125 px and it follows your content around the site. It should be a picture of your logo or some identifiable image that will reflect your company as when it is shown on the news feed it is a 30 x 3o px image so you don’t want to put too much content in that image.  UPDATE 4/16/12: Facebook’s profile images now measure 166 x 160 pixels.
4. Content is still King! Now maybe more than ever, you must post interesting content that your fans will want to share with their friends. Remember that your content should reflect what your fans want to read – it’s not about you! Engagement is the goal and content is the path to the goal. The more your fans share your content on the site, the greater your interaction and engagement will be.

5.  Milestones, Highlights, and Pins – You can now travel back in time and post about company highlights such as when your company was founded or other success stories that you’d like to share with your audience. This is a great way to highlight your company’s accomplishments. Highlights allows you to make a post or image the full, double column width of your page (840 x 403 px). It looks almost like a billboard going across the width of your page. Also, pins allow you to post an important story and pin it to the top of the timeline for seven days so if you have an impotant announcement that you want all visitors to see, this is a great way to accomplish that.

6. Private Messaging – Fans can now send companies a private message. while the page owners can’t initiate a private message, this is a great customer service tool since fans/clients can now send you a private message that will appear only to page admins and the client allowing companies to address customer service issues in private. Note: You’ll still need to be prepared to answer customer service issues in public on the page, but now customers have the option of a private message.

7. Advertising – At first glance, many of the changes Facebook rolled out seem to favor larger businesses because advertising is not only encouraged, but has become the most effective way to ensure that your content shows up in the news feed. However, Facebook ad rates are relatively inexpensive and are a very effective way for smaller businesses to get their message out to the world in a low-cost/cost-effective way.

8. Real-time Insights – Facebook’s on-site analytics has left something to be desired in the past since the typically ran three to four days behind. Real-time insights are rolling out in the next few weeks.

9. Tabs are now called Apps – The name has changed as well as the location. You are able to customize the image that accompanies the app so get creative! Only four apps are visible (without clicking the down arrow) and the Photos and Likes apps can’t be moved, but you have control over which other two show on the page and what image is attached to them. The image size for apps is 111 x 74 px.

10. Larger ‘About’ Section – In the olden days only 90 characters were visible in the About section. Since you aren’t allowed to put your website or a call to action on your cover photo, this is definitely the place you want to display your website url, phone number, and other pertinent information as this is now displayed directly under the cover photo.

11. Admin Panel – This is where new likes, messages, access to Insights and your activity log are shown. This information is vital to admins in order to determine how your page is doing and give you insights on what needs to change.

If you have any questions about how Timeline affects YOUR page, post them in the comments and I’ll answer them!

Carole Billingsley (@YouSeekSocial) is a social media consultant and trainer. Combining her social media expertise with her decades of experience in entertainment and education, Carole founded Seek Social Media in 2011. She is known for her ability to make technical and social media topics easy to understand for even the least tech-savvy business owner. Specialty areas: social media, customer experience, digital presence, crisis management.