Facebook Brand Timelines
Posted in General Industry Blogs by Laura Cavanagh on 2nd of March, 2012
The news that many people have been waiting for was announced by Facebook this week. From the 30th March 2012, Facebook Timeline will be systematically rolled out for all brand pages. Brand pages as we know them
(Image - Tech Tricks World)
One noticeable change when you put the new cover photos to one side is the inability to create a customised landing page. Previously, these unique pages could be the first thing that users saw when they visited a page, which was formally a powerful marketing tool used by brands to hint at content which may become available should users choose to login and like the page. This well-known Facebook marketing tactic has been pulled from beneath the feet of many online marketers. Applications inside Facebook will still exist, however their appearance will differ. Users will be required to navigate to the customised pages via a panel underneath the cover photo. With only 3 tabs viewable at a time, page admins will need to select their most important/relevant content.
(Image - http://www.facebook.com/coldplay)
Understandably this could see a knock-on effect in the number of new Facebook likes and contest entrants, which may seem like a downfall for pages, but from a user's perspective it encourages pages to become more focused on telling their brand's story rather than pushing for the hard sell. The removal of default landing pages is bad news for aggressive sellers. New emphasis will need to be placed on the messages that appear at the top of your Timeline, as these may be the first things users see when they land on your Timeline. Page admins will have the ability to ‘pin’ certain content to the top of their Timeline, allowing it to go before any other content. Content can remain pinned for 7 days when it will automatically enter into the Timeline's chronological order, or until another item is pinned. It’s not just the front end that has changed. Facebook administrators now have a new admin panel to occupy themselves with. In my opinion, one of the great changes to come from Timeline is the introduction of private messages for brands. The ability for users to communicate with brands in private automatically makes your brand much more approachable, taking your levels of consumer interaction to the next stage. Very few changes made by Facebook go by without a grumble and Timeline is no different. I can’t deny that for many people, Timeline may have thrown a spanner into the works, but the countdown has officially begun and now is the time to be gathering content and populating your timeline. Get creative with your cover photo