Facebook Page Timelines: A Complete Breakdown For Social Media Clients

Naturally, you may have wondered how the changes will affect your business’s Facebook page. As of February 29th, Facebook has been letting page admins manually opt-in and out on the new layout features at will, for testing purposes. Facebook is offering a comprehensive guide to the update, and is actively encouraging brand page administrators to review the new changes before making the switch. Whether or not you like Facebook Timeline, we have good news: If you’re a client of Crest Media, we have all the changes covered, in this post.

But let’s establish something first: As is the case with Timeline for personal Facebook profiles, the new platform may potentially be an attractive design evolution for Facebook brand pages. Plus, there’s the added bonus of multiple storylines and angles for page visitors to draw from, which can make for a far more interesting Facebook business page than before. Who knows: You may even like it better! Now, how do we at Crest Media plan to help you roll with the changes and ensure your business’s brand page has a seamless transition?

To start, one of the most noticeable changes you may have seen is the large banner-like photo (what Facebook Timeline is calling the “Cover Photo”) that will appear at the top of your page’s Wall. What if your current page doesn’t have any large, appropriately proportioned photos for Facebook Timeline to draw from? Not to worry: Crest Media is working on developing custom banners for you as we speak, which will be used for your Facebook Timeline cover photo. Take note: The Facebook Timeline cover photo can be especially powerful for its ability to display logos, products or personalities. And anything that helps you promote your brand is a very good thing.

For existing Social Media development clients of ours, we’re going to be sure that the custom Welcome sections we design for you will continue to have a custom interface and other company-specific content – and now, with Facebook Timeline, they get the benefit of a wider layout. Regrettably, the Welcome app will no longer be the default view for brand pages anymore, but all the applications used on brand pages are now prominently linked to from the Timeline’s “About” section, adjacent to the profile photo. Worried that there won’t be enough good content ideas to maximize the added space? We’re brainstorming on ways to make sure that this application works well to supplement the Timeline with important company information & a contact form, even though it’ll no longer be the first thing your page visitors see.

Before the launch of our client’s Facebook Timelines, we’ll be trying some things out with the Welcome sections, in hopes to make best use of the extra room in ways that may be uniquely configured by a client’s industry, or entirely brand-specific. It’s yet another way we’re looking out for all of our California social media clients from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

Also, we’re still learning whether lead-generating tools such as Facebook “Like gateways” (i.e.: messages & graphics that say something akin to “Like this page to see the wall & interact with us!”) will work with the timeline configuration, given that the default view will now be the Wall/Timeline & not any custom applications. Some marketers are already expressing disapproval of the Timeline as the new configuration hinders brand pages from being able to force page Likes or push automated content posts obtained from applications, external RSS feeds & the like to the forefront. The sensible response to that sentiment, is that Facebook is purposely & actively trying to influence brands NOT to use Facebook as a digital storefront or spam cannon first, and an engagement platform second.

The important takeaway from this change is that if brands focus on speaking in a natural and direct way to their audience on Facebook, their reputations based on their number of “likes” go from being questionably obtained to provably earned & it spreaks at an inerhently greater volume to the depth of the relationship between the firm and thier clients.

Timelines were designed for personal profiles to make Facebook a better medium for people to create their identities, and its a philosophy that the San Francisco area social networking powerhouse wants brands to approch no differently, according to Timeline product manager Sam Lessin.

“Organizations have identities too,” he said earlier this week.

…And our Los Angeles social media firm is here to help you communicate yours.