Tips for Facebook’s New Timeline for Pages
For those of you with business Facebook pages, the new timeline format provides some cool new tools for promoting and customizing your page. I recently attended a webinar put on by the helpful nerds of The Nerdery, which provided all sorts of great tools and tips. I recommend that you check out their presentation, but here are a few of the highlights:
The timeline format may seem scattered (which is probably because it is scattered), but it's inspired by designer Nicholas Felton’s Feltron Reports, which are his personal annual reports. If you’re not familiar with them, you should really check them out as they are a thing of beauty, if you find the organization of obsessive compulsive cataloging of one’s life to be beautiful. And much like those reports, the new timeline is highly dependent upon dates and the ability to highlight events.
In order to use some of the handy new features, the first thing you will need to do is create a Start Date. Hover over the thin blue line in the center of your page and your cursor will turn into a plus. Click on the line and you will be given the opportunity to put in some start dates such as when your company was founded, started, created or launched – however you want to say it.
Putting this start date in allows you to post milestones in the past, which can be quite handy. Click on Milestone in the status update box and you can put in something significant like attendance at a major conference, a photo from a customer event, your move into a new location, etc. The picture, much like the top photo will span the whole page and show up in your little mini-timeline in the upper right of the page.
Facebook also now allows you to promote some of your status posts. Clicking on the Star Icon on a post will Highlight it, letting the picture or words span across your page. If this is a picture, it will blow it up and use the full-size image.
Got an event or current special that you want to promote? Click on the Pen Icon on any post and click on Pin to Top and this post will always be listed first on your wall so that visitors won’t miss it. And no, you can’t highlight and pin to the top. Apparently that’s overkill to Facebook.
For more info on the new Facebook Pages timeline format including what to do with your page applications, visit the Nerdery’s blog post Interactive Primer Notes: New Facebook Timeline for Brands and watch their video.