Mr Zuckerberg and crew have switched it up once again. On March 2nd, Facebook announced that it's changing all brand pages over to the (in my opinion, rad), timeline format that's been rolling out over personal pages, The planned switch over will happen as of March 31st so there's still a bit of time to get yourself sorted.
At first glance it all looks pretty straight forward and similar to personal timeline. Whack up a header image and hey presto you're all over that timeline business. But there are couple of pretty cool features that are worth knowing about and also some changes to the way we need to handle applications that are worth getting your head around so...
1. Cover pic
Timeline pages now have a nice big 850pixel wide header image. This is not the place for your logo. This is a place to express your brand essence, the most interesting thing, recent piece of work, inspiring surf shot or even picture of a LOLcat as long as it connects with your audience and your brand. Make it personal.
Just as a heads up, it's against Facebook regulations to put call to actions or discounts in your cover pic, this includes the obligatory "Like us" CTA but I think there's a better place for that anyway, which I'll get to in a sec.
2. Profile Pic
The profile pic is the place to be rocking your logo. That way, it'll show up in feeds and the like and you've got a nice little brand lock up of personality driven cover image and logo (But hey, you knew all that anyway). Bang! Done!
3. Applications
NB: Before you switch over check that any third party app tools you're using have updated and are ready to switch over, could potentially be some issues worth ironing out beforehand.
All your old apps are still available although they're handled a little differently. You can showcase up to 12 apps; highlighting four underneath your cover pic. That said, one of these has to be your photos so really it's only three that can get top billing. This new format is much better for highlighting your content than the previous tucked away on the left. The larger thumbnail gives you a bit more than 16 pixels to play with too.
The apps themselves are now rocking the larger page format too, meaning more room for radness, but it also means that your current apps may need tweaking to fit the larger format or will just remain centred in the larger page format.
4. Get your' Highlighters out
I'm loving all the new wide format stuff Facebook have been doing with the photo gallery component and now that has come over to the timeline as well. Highlighting content now gives a particular post more prominence, Got some particularly hot, behind the scenes, product shots from a recent shoot. I'd go wide on them right here.
To highlight a post and go all wide on that gear, click that star icon on the top right of the post. BOOM!
5. Pin to top
Another nice option in the same same vein is the ability to pin a story to the top of your timeline. Hiring? Keep that post up top. Having a sale for three days? Up top! Someone's birthday? You know what to do. Pinned content will sit at the top left of the page for seven days and have a little flag icon to show that it's been pinned. After that it will go back to its regular spot in the timeline. This is where I'm thinking you want to put your prominent call to action messaging. Attached to content makes more sense.
To pin a post to the top of your page, click the little pencil icon that appears on hover and select "Pin to top". Sorted.
6. Milestones
There's a really nice opportunity for brands to get some exposure for their history here, pre-internet history even. If you were Apple, you might want to put up key product launch dates and then actual stats around uptake and units shipped and how you took over the world… you get the idea. It will be interesting to see what people do in this space.
To edit your milestones, click on the timeline running down the middle of the page, select milestone, fill in the details and away you go.
7. Admin A-Go
In page admin is a nice touch, see who's liking what, what's being talked about, and all the insights type stuff. The layout is different but all the old stuff is still there. If you like things the way they were, you'll still be able to see it the old way by clicking edit page from the manage menu item.
There's more, but I think that's enough to get you sorted for now.
The brand space now feels more considered and integrated with the rest of Facebook, allowing for a more seamless brand experience for users. I for one am loving the changes and can't wait to see what forward thinking companies and their agencies do.
Peter Costello
Senior art director
Igloo