Guest Blog by Danny Bermant of Brainstorm Digital.
There are only two weeks to go until the Facebook Timeline changeover happens. This means that your branded Facebook page will completely change in appearance. Make sure you don’t get caught out. Here Brainstorm Digital’s Danny Bermant shares the seven key things you need to know.
Bye bye landing pages.
Up till now you were able to automatically send new visitors to a customised page with a special offer. From March 30th, you will no longer be able to do this. All visitors will automatically be taken to your Timeline.
Instead of five thumbnail photos, you will have one large photo at the top of your page.
You will need find a landscape image that illustrates what your business is about. It could be an image of your staff, or it could be an image of your products. The ideal dimensions for this are 851 by 315 pixels. The thumbnail image that sits beside status updates is 180 x 180 pixels. If you want to find some good images for your Facebook account, go to http://www.fotolia.com. (see visuals). Images sell for as little as £1.
The section that used to be buried in the “Info” tab on your company page is now front and centre along its very top, so make sure you fill it in!
Keep it short and to the point; think mission statement rather than an entire company biography. Ensure you have a completed profile. Missing information looks unprofessional. E.g. If it’s a company page, make sure you fill in: About, Overview, Missions, Products / Services, website address etc…
Control how your posts are displayed.
With Timeline, you can pin a post to the top of your Facebook page for up to seven days to highlight popular or relevant content. You can also change post dates, which will help you prioritise up posts that you want to keep at the top of the page. e.g. An ongoing event or promotion.
You can “star” a post to feature it more prominently, increasing the size of the post to take up the full width of your Facebook page.
This is great if you want to post YouTube videos. But this means you want to use higher res photos that end up on your Facebook page; you’ll need them sized at a minimum width of 851 pixels so they can be featured as a “starred” post without pixelating.
You can add company milestones.
You’ll be able to create company milestones on your Timeline, which gives you an easy way to promote key events in your company history to Facebook. You can also feature events such as client briefings or product launches.
You can control posts on the activity log:
This admin panel lets you hide and reveal posts, “star” posts to feature them, and change post dates. For example you may have a repeating event. Rather than advertise the same event as a new post, you can resurrect an existing post.
The new Facebook layout may be harder to customise but on the plus side it’s far more visual, enabling you to post large images and videos far more prominently. For Facebook audiences, photos and video say a lot more than reams and reams of text, so I think that ultimately, Timeline will be a change for the better.
Danny Bermant is Director of Brainstorm Digital an online marketing agency that trains businesses how to profit from social media. Brainstorm Digital are members of Branduin Business Support Limited.
© Danny Bermant, Brainstorm Digital Ltd, March 2012
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