Facebook Timeline for Pages – Marketing Tips

Facebook Timeline for business pages was released yesterday and a lot of businesses and organizations are rushing to get their new profiles configured.

There are some important features of Facebook Timeline for Pages that can be used to set your brand ahead of the others.

See also: How to Prepare Your Profile for the Timeline Update

The update allows administrators to more easily view insights about user activity and overall activity on the particular brand page.

The canvas image at the top of the page allows marketers to use creative artwork to reach out to users. The canvas image is 851 pixels by 315 pixels so make sure you find a catchy image to represent your organization.

One previous feature of Facebook Timeline for pages is no longer available in the new format. Marketers can no longer specify a “landing page” for visitors to see first when visiting a Facebook fan page. All users will now land directly on the “wall” of the brand page.

Facebook did however, add another feature to help replace the missing landing page. Administrators can now choose specific status updates and “pin” them to the top of the page.

If you pin a status update, it will remain at the very top of the Timeline profile even if more recent status updates are posted. This is very useful if your organization has an important message that you don’t want your users to miss.

Applications associated with your brand page are no longer listed on the left side of the page but featured at the top of the Timeline profile. Only 4 applications are displayed when a user initially accesses the page so make sure you choose wisely which applications you would like to feature.

Facebook has finally brought private messaging to Facebook Pages. Previously, brands could not message their fans. Marketers would have to use their personal account to send private messages. This issue has been resolved with the Timeline for pages update.

For those of you who have used Timeline for your personal profiles, you know that you can “feature” particular posts. By default, status updates appear in two columns on your Timeline page. This can become overwhelming and it can be easy for users to skip over certain posts without even knowing it.

If you “feature” a status update, that post will then span the width of both columns and will be more likely to be seen by users. Expect to see a lot of brands using this feature regularly to make sure that their users don’t skip over important updates.

It will be interesting to see how social media marketers evolve their strategies as they become more comfortable with Facebook Timeline for business pages.

If you have any other tips that you’ve learned, please post them in the comments section below!