Everyone who operates pages for their business on Facebook has recently been subject to the most significant design change in this history of the service, with the very rapid rollout of the Timeline layout. Whilst with profiles we were given months to play with, moan about, and generally decide about the Timeline layout, for pages it was only one month before the alteration was compulsory, and a lot of people were caught on the hop failing to update. At least it’s now easy to spot a dead/orphaned pages when you find one, before you even glance at the content, a missing cover photo is a dead giveaway.
The cover photo is indeed a massively visual and significant change to the appearance of Facebook pages, but unfortunately a lot of people stop there, or get hung up on this big pictorial shopwindow. The changes Facebook introduced with Timeline for pages are multiple and complex, and the business impact is still being evaluated. Here are a few conclusions, drawn from just a few weeks in.
Don’t forget about ‘About’
It is now more important than ever that you complete your ‘About’ section clearly, with an appropriate and snappy couple of sentences. Depending on your business type and the type of page you chose when you created it, some information will default here (such as opening times for local business or shop), but you still have room for a strapline, slogan or call to action. With the restrictions placed on sales messages within the cover photo itself, it’s good to use this space as effectively as possible for your marketing message. And be aware that the space allowed in the edit box is larger than that which may appear when you view your page, write too much and it will truncate – you want to be sure your message is clearly visible without anyone having to click to ‘see more’, so preview and check carefully.
Apps and Tabs
Many Facebook marketers are disgusted at the removal of the default landing tab functionality, in that you now cannot force anyone visiting your page from within Facebook to ‘like’ it in order to unlock content. This has changed the game, and yes it has made like-locking much less of the bluntly effective instrument it once was. You can still have this tab as an app, and you can direct people to it from outside Facebook – you could even buy a specific URL for this, if you want to drive traffic say from your blog or other social sites, ‘Sams-cakes-fans.net’ could be positioned as an attractive route to special offers or discounts for example.
But your total apps are now limited to only four visible – out of a total of twelve you may have altogether – and one of those has to be photos, so essentially you may choose three custom apps to position in this prime screen real estate. It’s a good spot there above the fold, so choose carefully! You can also add any image you create as your app’s picture, to further customise the appearance of your page.
Pin it to win it
Slightly odd move this I felt given Timeline’s emphasis on chronology, but you can choose a single post to ‘pin’ to the top of your page – ie in the most recently-added position – where it will remain for one week. You need to take account of this in your content posting strategy, and as yet you cannot pin a post from a third party posting application such as Hootsuite, only from within the Facebook page itself. After the week is up the pinned post will slip back down where it belongs in the Timeline, and you can pin another. Great for temporary special offers, forthcoming events, or anything of specifically timed relevance, quite a nice touch.
It’s all about you
Interestingly the new layout has focussed pages very much back on to the page administrator’s own posted content, limiting the space allocated to content initiated by fans to a small area at the top of the right column. This area is also dynamic and what people see there depends on the interaction of their friends with your page.
This means that if user generated content is an important part of your page content strategy you need to get more creative with it, for example encouraging them to email you a picture that you will then post as the page as your ‘fan of the week’ or whatever, rather than getting them to post it directly meaning fewer people will ever see it. More hassle for them means less likely to do it, so think about how you can reward this involvement.
It also makes your page more of a destination site than it used to be, increasing the onus on you to keep it updated. Pages are not the place for discussion or community, so much, if ever they were – groups fulfil that role, and there is now greater distinction between the two than there was previously.
Milestones in Time
Remember the main implication of Timeline for profiles, was that everyone started scanning their wedding and baby photos, and locating them back in their Timeline to before they joined (or anyone invented) Facebook? Well, it’s the same for pages. This is good news if your page is new, and you want to create a track record and establish credibility – get the scanner out and dig back through for the polaroids of your launch party 20 years ago, the pics of your new office building you opened whenever, the Christmas party shots that show you looking human and approachable rather than wrecked and idiotic. Tag them with the correct date and populate your Timeline retrospectively – you can go back as far as 1800, apparently, though Casslar tends to work with smaller and less long-established businesses than that.
Remember to tick the ‘do not post to newsfeed’ option if you are banging out a load of these in one sitting, or you may begin to annoy your fans. And if you are trying to create the impression of a detailed and long-established Facebook presence for your page then don’t forget to hide the automatically-generated Milestone ‘Sam’s Cakes Joined Facebook Five Minutes Ago’.
Messages: Public or Private?
Having in recent months substantially nobbled the functionality of messaging fans from pages – remember the days when you could send a broadcast message to everyone that went straight to their inbox? Facebook has reintroduced a facility for one to one dialogue in private between a fan and a page. However, this has to be initiated by them – only then can you reply directly and privately.
This has great potential as a customer service channel, if you can encourage people to use it, and manage the kind of immediacy of response that will be expected from the medium. And whilst you can’t start the dialogue you can suggest it – ask people to message you for more information or a special offer, for example.
Of course they can still post publically to your wall just as before, and you will get alerted about it even if it’s less visible and obvious to other visitors to your page.
So those are some of the less obvious changes to Facebook pages, as a result of the introduction of Timeline. Please let us know in the comments how it’s working out for you, and what the implications are for your business.
