Last week changed the landscape of Facebook for Business. The introduction of the Timeline for Pages was not unexpected but the extent of the changes has surprised some. As with everything on the ever-changing landscape of social media, we will soon adjust and forget the old ‘Wall’ and the new ‘Timeline’ format will become second nature.
By introducing this new style for business pages, Facebook have done the equivalent of turning a diary into an online magazine with columns and features – all providing great opportunities for branding and storytelling.
If you wish to update your Page yourself, there are a lot of how-to articles available including a nice overview pdf from Facebook. But as with any social media platform the ‘set-up’ is always the easy part, it’s making the page work for your business that takes more time and effort.
So what do these changes mean for all the marketers out there? Broadly speaking Facebook now offers more diverse ways to enhance an authentic brand experience away from a base level of direct promotions and brand messaging.
True to the core values of Facebook, this ‘magazine’ format is designed to present engaging content and story-telling. This reflects the interests of the consumer – essentially people are not on Facebook to be sold to. They are there to engage with ideas and areas of interest and to interact socially – a great opportunity for any business that wants to differentiate themselves by sharing their brand personality and adding value to customer service.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, content is always king. Changing our thinking from the traditional ‘push’ marketing – delivering one-way sales messages to customers – to supplying information, which adds value and creates a relationship of trust with your customers, is the new approach, commonly termed ‘pull‘ marketing.
These Facebook changes underline this change in marketing approach. Businesses need to move with the times if they wish to communicate with their customer base effectively and be noticed on social media platforms.
1. Increased Visual Branding Opportunity – how your Page looks
With the help of a graphic designer and good imagery the new Cover picture, likened to a website banner, gives a company great branding space. Working within the FB restrictions you can represent your brand here, with a simple logo, web banner or clever use of graphical elements and imagery of your branding. This slideshow on mashable.com shows some great examples for inspiration.
If you have existing imagery you just need to ensure that it works in a horizontal banner format (851 x 315 pixels). For some businesses this will not be easy – if you just have square images or photos, plain logos, especially if they are in low resolution, you may find that you would better to get some graphic design input. However, if you have patterns as imagery this may be effective on its own, or with the addition of some wording.
With the old style Facebook your branding space was a welcome page and a side-bar avatar and you had free range of ‘advertising space’ to show and say what you liked there.
Whilst this new style is great opportunity for branding, there are some restrictions to consider (note: these are new):
- No website address or contact information
- No call to action, like Buy Now
- No reference to the words Like or Follow, so no ‘Like our Page’
- No reference to price offers
The Thumbnail avatar is the second piece of visual branding. We can get all very creative and excited about our Cover Pic, but it’s worth remembering that this little 32 x 32 px thumbnail remains the image that people will see most often. So it’s important to ensure that this picture represents your brand and is highly recognisable because it represents your ongoing opportunity to create brand awareness. A simple logo or a product picture or a photo of yourself (if you are your company’s brand) would be most suitable here.
A less obvious branding opportunity is the potential to customize the navigation tabs. The links to your Photos and other Apps (formerly sitting on the left hand sidebar of your Page) are now displayed as navigation buttons just below your Cover Pic. When you first change to Timeline there will be default images inserted here. You can change the order of these buttons and use any appropriate visual or call to action here that best promotes your brand. The process behind changing these images – while not difficult – is not very user-friendly. The how-to can be viewed here (link to come). It’s worth noting that the Photos tab cannot be moved and the image cannot be fixed. I’ve tried many ways to do this but ultimately what appears as this image will be the latest photo uploaded to the Page.
If you have a 3rd party App installed for a Welcome Page or a custom written one, it will no longer work as a ‘landing’ page. This means that when a fan visits your Page they will always default to your Timeline not your welcome page. They can still click on the Welcome tab if they want to, but in all reality very few will actually do this unless you give people a reason to click to do so.
2. Your Business Biography – what you say about your business
This is a good opportunity to review your profile bio – typed in your About section. Many people will have set this up a while ago, when the Page first went live and not looked at it since. It is important to ensure your Profile (the brief summary about your business) is written in the best possible way to accurately reflect your business. It should explain what you do and should also contain your keywords. You have a lot of space here, so use it well.
If you don’t have a well-written Company Biography, now is the time to get one. Surprisingly this often needs to be done by someone outside your business to create a biography that communicates the key messages about your business without getting stuck in too much technical detail. We meet many business owners who find it very difficult to write about themselves and their business in a concise, appealing way – not to mention in a format that contains their keywords, which is essential for Search Engine Optimisation.
The About section has increased space, now up to 170 characters, but here is a big tip – within this space, make sure your paragraph contains your website address, as this will be an active link and this is the only upfront opportunity to display it.
You may need to change your Business Category in order for the website to display. Having said that, if you are business operating from local premises, it may be more important for you to have your address, operating hours and phone number than your website address. Remember, you can include this in the About box regardless of the category chosen.
In addition, if you use the Local Business Category and correctly write in your address, a Map will appear as one of your navigation tabs.
3. Updates – what you say about your business on an ongoing basis
This is just as important as getting the Page set up correctly. What you say and how often you say it is the whole point of social media marketing. The new Timeline format allows you change the dates of past posts (great if you haven’t posted an update for a while), to highlight certain posts (usually ones with an image that look visually appealing) and to also choose one post that you want ‘pinned to the top’ for 7 days (your priority message). You can also tell ‘stories’ by defining key milestones in your company’s history. This is great flexibility and adds to the ‘magazine’ style of your Facebook Page, but remember that it is what you post on a regular basis and how you post (ie. using images, links etc) that is most important, as it is what goes into your fan’s newsfeeds.
So here’s a summary of the main things that you need to do to update your Timeline before 30th March:
- Cover Picture – select and upload
- Thumbnail – select and upload
- Images for Navigation buttons
- Edit your About Section
- Highlight featured post(s)
- Prioritise your important post by posting to the top
- Keep posting!
