Facebook Rolls Out Timeline for Pages, Changes to Ads

Facebook has begun rolling out Timeline to brand pages

As you’ve likely heard, yesterday Facebook made good on its expected announcement of Timeline Pages for Brands at its first FMC / Facebook Marketing Conference in New York. After rolling out Timeline for all users over the last few months (and with many early adopters making the jump last fall), it was only a matter of time until we saw the Timeline format extended to brand pages.

Facebook Timeline reformats what we know as the Wall into a chronological story of posts and events, beginning with a page’s creation (or the brand’s founding date should they choose to include it) and ending with the most recent post—or whatever “story” the brand chooses to highlight by “Pinning” to the top of its timeline. (Hmm…pinning…where have I heard that lately…?)

Read on for the big changes in a nutshell (albeit a big nutshell…):

• Cover Photo: Businesses and organizations now have an opportunity to express themselves with an 851 x 315 pixel photo at the top of their page. Facebook has made it quite clear that this photo’s purpose is NOT to advertise with a call to action or contact info. It is meant to be a photo.
• Profile Picture: This is the photo that shows up in users’ newsfeeds. Facebook now intends this to be your brand logo, urging you to be creative with your Cover Photo.
• Larger stories and photos: Each post, now called “Stories,” is presented in a much larger format, alternating on the left and right sides of the Timeline, just as on personal pages. This creates a much nicer presentation for photos and stories.
• Pinning and Feature Stories: Stories are not only given a nicer presentation, but pages can now curate what content they’d like to highlight. Each story can be “Featured,” which spreads it across the full width of the Timeline, or “Pinned” to the top, where it will stay as the feature story for 7 days.  (This could be the new default tab solution—read on…)
• Hide and Change Date: Taking that control one step further (but still short of editing a story’s actual content) is the ability to Hide those posts that now feel less engaging or important. You can also change the date of a post to move it up or down in your page’s Timeline—thus altering the space/time continuum.
• Friend Activity: By default, all activity from those who “Like” the page is displayed at the top of the Timeline, and shows users what their friends have Liked, shared, or commented on. This feature can be turned off in the new Admin Panel, but I’m not sure why you’d want to do that, when the entire point of Timeline is to highlight your brands’ engagement with its fans and present it as a conversation.
• Admin Panel: All pages now get a slick admin panel that lives at the top of their page and can be revealed or hidden for instant access to a snapshot view of notifications of fan interaction, messages (we’ll get to that), new Likes and Insights.
• Activity Log: Drill down one step further into the Admin Panel, and you’ll find the familiar Edit Page options (with some small tweaks) and the new Activity Log, which presents Page Admins with a snapshot of all of their activity, with easy access to highlighting and hiding posts.
• Messages: Users can now send messages directly to a brand through its page. Got a beef with a brand? You no longer have to post it publicly for the world to see, but can now gripe in private. Ahem…messages is one more step to engage Page owners with their users.

Stories can be "Pinned" to the top of Timeline for 7 days

Those are the broad strokes, which I couldn’t help but digging into further than planned, but also of note are some of the advertising and promotion implications that Timeline means for brands. Namely, third-party tabs and apps can no longer be set as default landing pages, which have long been the primary means of incentivizing users to Like a page. That doesn’t mean those apps are now broken, but they can no longer be set as the default landing page for non-users.

Further changes to Facebook Ads place even more emphasis on page content. Any “Story” on a page’s Timeline can be turned into an ad. No more writing separate copy for a dedicated ad. Which means a brand can experiment by posting content to its wall to let users tell them what stories are the most effective with their interaction—and thus worth turning into an ad.

Page Admins have until March 30th to make the jump, or it will happen automatically.

For a full rundown of Timeline’s changes and features, take a look at Facebook’s official Guide (PDF) and about page.

We’ll be posting further on this hot topic in the coming days, with detailed and practical tips on how to make the most of your brand Timeline.

Have you checked out your Facebook Page’s Timeline? What do you think of the changes? Let us know in the comments and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn.

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Ryan Swearingen is Managing Editor of the Blog Network at Magnet Media and co-founder/editor of Stated Magazine.

Tagged as: Facebook, Facebook Timeline, Social Media Marketing