Now that all Facebook Pages for brands have been moved over to the Timeline format, if you haven’t optimized your Timeline you’re missing out. Some business owners have stubbornly avoided making changes on the basis that they never wanted to be moved over to Timeline, but now that it’s a done deal, you may as well make the most of all the features that are now available.
First of all, make sure you understand the difference between your cover photo and your profile photo. For the cover photo (the long banner one), you’ll want something that is instantly recognizable, something strongly associated with your brand, perhaps an official brand graphic or something similar. Your profile photo (the square one) can then either be a photo of you (if appropriate), or another brand graphic that works well with with your cover photo.
Secondly, take some time to add some Milestones into your Timeline. Milestones can be any kind of event that happened on a particular date, and they don’t necessarily have to be directly related to your company. For example, if your business is homemade cupcakes, you could add Milestones regarding important dates in the history of cupcakes – this adds value to your Facebook page and makes it interesting for visitors.
Next, you’ll want to set up a hierarchy for your Timeline content. Although the way Timeline works may be confusing at first, once you get the hang of it you can really make sure that the right information is standing out.
The first way you can make content stand out is Highlights. Highlights work almost like regular posts, except they go across both columns rather than just one, making them more visible. Also, visitors to your page can choose to filter the content by highlights, so you might want to strategize by highlighting only certain types of posts (like videos or links to your blog posts).
You can also draw attention to a particular post by pinning it. Pinning a post “sticks” it to the top of your Timeline for a week. This is great if you’re running weekly specials, contests, or any other kind of time-sensitive information that you want all your visitors to see. After seven days, the post starts traveling down the page like any other post, but you can always put another one up to replace it.
Despite all the initial complaints from businesses, Timeline actually works really well for business marketing. If you haven’t made the effort yet to customize your new page, now’s a great time!
