On March 30, 2012, all Facebook fan pages will follow in the footsteps of most personal profiles and enter the Timeline format phase.
According to Facebook, they believe it will help brand your page,
highlight “what matters,” and allow you to manage everything in one
place. The new format will include the ability to set a large cover
photo, which appears at the top of the page. It also allows you to set
milestones, which defines your key moments in time that may have
happened off of Facebook.
Here is Facebook’s advice on how to engage people with your new
Timeline page format:
- “Share updates, questions, photos, links and other
content on your Page regularly. - “Post at least a few times a week so people who like you see
your stories in their news feeds, and visitors to your Page always see
something new. - “Make sure people notice your most important content by
pinning posts to the top of your Page or starring them so they’re bigger. - “When people engage with you, make sure to respond so they know you’re listening.”
One of the new features is “pinning posts.” Pinned posts are page posts that admins have chosen to display prominently at the top of their Page. A pinned post always appears in the top left of a Page’s timeline and has a flag in its top-right corner. A post a Page admin pins to the top of their Page will remain there for 7 days. After that, it’ll return to the date it was posted on the Page’s timeline. Posts from people who like a Page are not eligible to be pinned posts. Page admins can only pin posts created by the Page.
You will also be able to “star” posts to make them appear larger on your page. You can highlight any post on your Page by starring it.
This allows you to highlight the posts you think are important. When you star a post, it expands to widescreen.
Although there have been many grumbles from people on Facebook about yet another format change, at Social Sonar, we believe Timeline will be beneficial for business fan pages.
Have you experienced Timeline with your personal or business profile page? How do you think it will affect fan pages?
