Facebook Launches Timeline For Brands: What Does That Mean For Your Business?

Today, Facebook has announced they are completely redesigning brand pages into the Timeline format. This much more aesthetically pleasing design keeps the platform consistent, as the brand pages share the same format as user’s personal profiles.
Let’s go ahead and take a quick look at these changes, starting from the top.



Two Profile Pictures?
With this new design, brands will have two main images to share. The profile picture is now smaller, almost like an icon, while the focus moves towards the much bigger cover image.
Where’s my Like button?
Don’t see the Like button at the top of your page anymore? Don’t panic. It’s been moved to a new location, directly under the new cover image.
Information, Photos, Tabs and More
You’ll notice the tabs are no longer on the left panel. Actually, you’ll notice there is no longer a left panel at all. Instead, the content that was previously housed in that left panel has moved underneath the cover image. This features an about section, as well as sections for your photos, events, Like information, and much more, all of which you can rearrange to whatever you please.
Relax. All your custom tabs are still there and functioning.
The Wall
Perhaps the biggest change of all has been made to the Wall, which is now a true timeline. You can still post statuses, share photos, and ask questions, as well as now share Milestones.
These Milestones are stories centered around specific events in time for your business. For example, you can share a story about the day your business was being founded, or perhaps a story about when your business expanded to its second location. Anything you would like to share about the history of your business is fair game now.
Additionally, the Wall now has four display options:

• Highlights – the de facto view – It focuses on the most engaged with content posted by the brand, whilst housing the most recent Wall posts by fans into a small box on the timeline.
• Posts by Page – shows content posted only by the page
• Posts by Others – shows content posted only by fans
• Friend Activity – this shows content on the page that was either created with or engaged with by a particular user’s friends.

You also now have the option of “Stickying” content for a total of seven days to make sure your audience really gets a chance to see it.
New Admin Features
Located in the top right corner of the page is the new expandable Admin Panel. This panel, when clicked, opens up into a dashboard showing you a running log of most recent Notifications, New Likes, Insights (over the last 30 days), and….Private Messages. Brands now have the ability to send and receive private messages from Fans, an option never before available.
Another previously unavailable feature that has always been a hot button topic is “Request A Name Change”. Upset you put a “The” in the title of your page and were stuck with it? Now you can change it.
When will it happen?
The announcement says it will go into effect March 30th across all brand pages, but if you can’t wait, you can make the change right now. Just go over to your page and follow the steps. Here’s a great example of a hotel embracing the brand timeline already.
What this all means
Facebook says the goal is to make brand pages more engaging and social. To me, this puts a bigger stress on businesses to share content their audience is going to actually interact with. It’s going to be harder and harder to grow your page with self-promotional, one-way marketing messages. Businesses are going to need to take the time to understand their fan base and build out a content strategy that makes their messaging more personal and inviting.
Hopefully this redesign helps brands remember the reason why people are on social networks: they’re there for relationships. And no relationship is more important for a business than the one with their customer.


by Kevin Olivieri,
blog.tigglobal.com