Our Take on the Facebook Timeline Updates

Planit Agency
March 19, 2012

As the social media world evolves, new opportunities arise. Facebook recently announced major changes to the way brands can interact with and engage fans. At Planit, we can help you capitalize on this tremendous opportunity; whether you are trying to generate leads and sales, position your brand as an industry innovator, or just better service your existing and potential customers. This blog post will highlight some of the more intriguing Facebook Timeline changes.

Visually Engaging Design

The new Facebook Timeline Pages allow for a more visually engaging design. The Cover Photo, a large banner, provides brands with an opportunity to truly make their Facebook Page a more branded experience.

Toyota Facebook Timeline

One thing to keep in mind is that cover photos cannot be promotional. Facebook has strict guidelines as far as what you can use as a cover photo. Facebook wants brands to use this space for branding purposes —not to house promotions or calls-to-action.

Facebook has also added a Milestones feature, which allows page managers to highlight important dates in a company’s history. Coca Cola’s Facebook page does an incredible job of this.

Here are some of our favorite Facebook Timeline Pages:

Old Spice Toyota Starbucks Baltimore, MD Baltimore City Police

Private Messages

One of the more overlooked changes to the Facebook Page is the addition of private messages. In the past, all communication between a brand and a customer on Facebook had to be on the public Wall, unless a customer was directed to an email address or phone number.

Now, customers can privately message brands on Facebook. This means that customer service questions can now be submitted privately. If your company has a Facebook Page but does not have someone actively managing it and monitoring for private messages, you are at risk of angering your customers.

On the flip side, this provides companies with a new way of providing customer service, and can help to cut back on time-consuming customer service phone calls.

Prominence of Apps and Tabs

While Facebook has disabled the ability for marketers to set a default landing page tab that fans see when they visit a page, Facebook Apps are now much more prominent.

Coca Cola Facebook Apps

Through a custom Facebook App, brands can truly make their Facebook Page a home away from home. We can build your brand a Facebook App that works on the new Facebook Timeline! Our Apps can do just about anything; some of the more exciting features we can incorporate into your Facebook page include:

Multimedia such as YouTube videos, photo galleries/slideshows, and even Flash animations Forms for lead generation and email newsletter sign ups Interactive contests and sweepstakes Your company’s Twitter or blog RSS feed Pretty much anything else you can think of!

At Planit, we can turn your Facebook Page into a complete microsite. Need some ideas? We’d love to brainstorm with you and show you what we can do.

Highlighted and Pinned Posts

One of the challenges with the old Facebook Page design was that brands’ posts would often get buried by fan posts and other clutter. Now, brands have the ability to highlight or pin a specific post or set of posts at the top of their Page, so that users don’t miss important messages when they check out a brand page.

Starbucks Pinned Post

This gives brands the ability to more easily promote a specific message or campaign without having to spam or repeat the same message over and over in order to get fans to see it.

New Facebook Ads

Facebook has made a few slight changes to the way Facebook Ads work. Facebook Ads are really amazing; they are highly targeted and very effective. Facebook Ads can be used to grow the number of Likes a page has, to promote a specific status update, or to drive people to a website or landing page.

Facebook has added new “premium” ads, including a unit that displays after a Facebook user logs out of Facebook. The user does not have to be connected to the brand to see their ad.

Bing Logout Ad

Overwhelmed? We can help.

Anyone can upload a pretty picture to use as a cover photo. But do you have a bigger overall strategy for your social media presences? How are you measuring success? We can not only help to design and implement a beautiful and interactive social experience —we can provide you with the analytics that show that what we are doing is working.

Contact us today to get started. We’d love to brainstorm some new ideas for your social strategy.