Facebook Timeline: What it can do for your growing business

As all marketers and many in small businesses know, Facebook has made some changes recently to their page layout. As a marketer, it is our job to stay on top of emerging trends and changes with social media platforms. I have made it a habit of my own to participate and attend any webinar or event that discusses the new Timeline introduced by Facebook for business pages. I wrote a blog recently detailing the various features of the new page – information came from my monthly Social Media Breakfast Waterloo session. This time, I attended a webinar from Hubspot with guest speaker Chris Luo of Facebook. Chris went over the pros of what a Timeline will do for your business, both large and small. In an effort to pass on what I’ve learned, I’ve highlighted points from Chris’ presentation:

• Timeline is an empty canvas. It is meant to provide companies with more room to be creative and to allow their pages to be more interactive. The cover photo for instance allows consumers to learn more about a brand beyond just a logo

Side note: Your Profile Picture should be your logo, your Cover Photo should be an image that captures the essence and/or showcases your product service.

• Add milestones into your timelines to define key moments at your company. These could include: Funding, publications, hires, office moves, etc. I would start by adding the time your company was founded and include a brief recap of how it all began
• Pin important stories to the top of your timeline. Did a customer give you a rave review? The timeline feature allows you to pin these types of stories (or customer testimonials) to the top of your page
• Analytics and Administration panels are there to help. Just like you use Google Analytics to extract information about your website traffic, the new Facebook analytics will provide you with similar functionalities. Remember, your analytics will be visible to everyone
• You can now interact over personal messaging. Now, when you want to take a conversation that is occurring over your timeline a little more private, you can use the private messaging feature to do so.
• Customize which messages you want to cover the most real estate on your page. As mentioned in my previous blog you can adjust the size of posts to the full width of your Facebook page

Great Question asked at the end: Is it okay to change your Cover Photo often?

Answer: Yes! Take advantage of this feature and use it to update your page. However, don’t go overboard by changing the picture multiple times or even every day. Use your own discretion but make sure it’s up long enough to catch enough attention.

If you have any questions as to how you can get your Facebook page started or how you can adapt your page to the new changes, feel free to reach out to me. Visit our website for more information about VA Partners.