Hours before the kick-off of the Facebook Marketing Conference (#fMC) in New York, Facebook has decided to start rolling out the much awaited Facebook Timeline layout for pages.Here is a short article to help you make your page transition into the Timeline era smoothly. It is worth updating your page now, because come March 30, Timeline will be on all pages, ready or not.
How to turn it on
Go to the page you administer and on the top you should see a message from Facebook telling you that Timeline is available for your page now. Exciting! Hit preview to see how your page will look. Click publish and you have a timeline page too.
Design a good cover image+profile pic combination
One of the most visually striking features of the Timeline design (apart from the timeline itself) will be the large cover image, that every fan will see when they land on your page.
The web has been ripe with ideas how to amuse your friends with funny and clever cover and profile pic combinations, such as this one. There is no reason why your page shouldn't do the same – timeline gives your brand the opportunity to communicate visually and be funny. The new profile pic size remains 180px in width and max 540px in lenght. But note that he width will be resized to fit 125×125 px square cutout of the profile image. The cover image should be 851 x 315 pixels.
Beware of the sizes
the timeline itself- around which are your posts organized- works differently than the old layout. When it comes to displaying pictures the timeline will show either a small pic 400 x 400 pixles or let you blow it up (feature on timeline) to a bigger size of 800 x 400 pixels.
Make sure you optimalize your pictures before posting them. Figure out, whether you will want them to be shown in the small or featured size and resize them accordingly.
Tell your story on Timeline
The one truly new thing that timeline will let you do is to tell the story of your brand on your page. Timeline is organized by years and lets you add content in the past as well.
think about the milestones that your brand reached and document them on your timeline. New branches? New product lines? New directors? However you want to tell the story of your brand, timeline will let you.
Tabs, overhauled
The navigation of Facebook pages is completely changed with the new Timeline layout, affecting the way users see tabs a lot. This is probably one of our leas favourite changes, due to the fact that it makes navigation tad unclear.
Tabs are not displayed on the left side like we're used to. They are now featured next to the profile pic. Only four of them are initially visible, to view all you have to click and expand. This navigation is not ideal, that is a fact.
Due to the fact that branded pages usually have multiple tabs with apps and house rules or contents going on, not having them initially visibles definately a drawback.Once you are in the tab, however, there is an improvement. The tab witdh has increased from 510px to 810px, which gives brands more space for content on tabs. As of now, timeline tab will display the 510px tab and just leave the edges blank.
We know that our designers are quite excited about the possibilities this brings. The navigation when you are in the tab is a useful drop-down menu on the top, which is neat and useful and lets you easily navigate between tabs.
Cute as a Message button
After a round of testing and a couple of dissapearig acts, the Messsage Button is now a feature of your page. It is featured prominently next to the page name, along with other actions such as Share, making it easer for the fans to interact with your brand.
Info from Facebook
Here are Product Guidelines about Timeline for Pages from Facebook every online marketer should read. Any more info or tips we will have will be shared here.
Facebook Timeline for Pages Product Guide
We will keep you posted about all the changes we discover and with some useful tips.
