20 Mar It’s Time for Timeline to Hit Brand Pages

Rolling out in small waves since September, Facebook’s Timeline profile format is finally available for brand pages.

While many of the features are the same as the consumer version, Timeline for business pages also adds features not previously available to brands.

Instead of posted content having a chronologically short shelf life, companies can now star posts to expand their appearance to widescreen or pin posts to appear in the top-left area for seven days. There is even a “milestone” feature, which is comprised of widescreen content boxes with photos and text that can detail specific points in a brand’s history.

Of course if your company posts frequent, engaging content, Timeline will benefit you greatly. However, keep in mind that it will show all the historical activity – both positive and negative. If you have any type of damaging conversation or content you may be forced to rehash it over and over.

We love the new friend activity feature that shows Facebook friends’ interactions with the page, such as when a friend links to a page in Facebook post.

Even the stats are enhanced. In addition to the standard number of likes and people talking about the page, you can now also see a detailed demographic breakdown with vital information such as age ranges, weekly popularity for the page, and top cities driving the most traffic.

Like it or not, Facebook will automatically update pages to the new format on March 30. We suggest you do it early and start familiarizing yourself with the new format. Kudos if your personal profile has already been converted; this should be an easy transition for your business page. But if it you’re not sure how to best format Timeline or are confused by its functionality, let Idea Associates help you make the best of Facebook’s ever evolving marketing strategies so your brand is successful on the social web.