I have heard many varying opinions on Facebook’s new Timeline. But like it or not, it is here to stay. Facebook is now rolling out their new Timeline for Business (“Like”) pages. If you take them up on their early upgrade, you will not be able to go back to the current version, so take some time, take the tour, get your new banner ready before you make the change.
The new banner size is 815 X 315 so your current 270 X 720 will not work. Make sure that your profile picture, which is what will show in the news feed when you post is something specific to your brand. The positive side to this is if you do what we do and create custom banners for your clients for special sales and promotions, you won’t have to worry about your logo always being in the thumbnail. A lot of business forget to adjust the thumbnail now, which doesn’t promote the entire branding concept.
The other down side to this is the loss of the ability to customize welcome pages or landing pages for fans that may are not already on your page. Remember the “like” banners on those custom pages?
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A thing of the past.
What will be interesting to see in the upcoming months is the adjustments these companies make to accommodate this change. Even though I am reading many blogs out there that are indicating this not a very business friendly move on Facebook’s part, I think we all need to reserve our opinion until the next latest and greatest tweak that the net genesis’ come up with. Who knows, it could rival sliced bread.
Individuals will also be able to message a page directly now. A new feature that you can turn on or off as the administrator of a page. This really is an independent decision based on the page. And keep in mind, the more interaction you have on your wall, the more popular your page is in Facebook and the more likelihood it will be viewed. So be careful with this option, it may be best to have your page members continue to post their questions.
I am also curious as to if or how this will impact the Facebook news feeds that are embedded on websites. I will be keeping a close eye on this and trust for now, the beta testers have figured out exactly how to keep this seamless and not require a new script on the web page.
The deadline is March 30th and one thing I would highly recommend is that you change your page over yourself. Don’t wait for the automatic update that Facebook will do.
TagLine Media Group is a full service advertising agency located in Tucson, Arizona. We specialize in Website Design, Branding and Public Relations.