Facebook timeline for business:

How to make the new-look profile work for you

Many of us rely on Facebook to keep up to date on certain milestones,like friends’ birthdays, engagement announcements and baby photos. But there’s one milestone you may have missed this month: Facebook’s six-month anniversary of Timeline for businesses.

It’s a big event! Not only has Timeline changed the way a company’s page looks from a design and branding perspective, it’s changed the entire customer experience.

Here are some simple steps to make timeline work for you.

Engagement

 Facebook’s newsfeed now relies on an algorithm to filter the most popular posts to the top, so the best way to ensure your news gets featured in your customers’ newsfeeds is to make sure your content is engaging.The more activity it receives (comments, likes, shares), the more likely your followers will see your updates. The same goes for posts around trending topics (like Christmas or an election, for example).

Cover photo

When Facebook introduced Timeline, the cover photo became the biggest visual distinction from the old format. This time around, Facebook placed a caveat on its brand members: no marketing calls to action, no contact info and no arrows or sketches asking users to “like” you.

• Use the cover photo as way to communicate the personality of your brand, product, CEO or people behind the business.
• Creatively integrate the cover photo with the profile picture like the fun examples below.

Milestones

Milestones are Facebook’s way of helping brands organise the chaos. Rather than ordering activity on a page in chronological order, milestones let you pull out important historical events for your company.

• Highlight milestones that showcase your brand’s human-interest story, like the original idea or the first team lunch.
• If your brand has a long and rich history, use milestones to demonstrateit (Coca-Cola is a great example of this).
• Use eye-popping graphics to visually tie your milestones together.

Featured content

Showcase special events or topics by using the Pin and Highlight functions. Highlight allows you to show more of a particular photo album or post by displaying the content across the width of the page. For posts you want users to see every time they land on your page, Pin it to the top.

Third-party apps

Third-party apps – think a jobs page, YouTube channel, sweepstakes offeror a blog feed – allow you to extend your page’s offering beyond the Timeline template. The beauty of third-party apps is that their buttons are completely customisable to your brand. It’s a fun way to continue the design theme you create for the cover photo and profile picture.

It can be tough to keep up with social media developments – especially one so major as Facebook’s update this year – but ultimately, the changes are good for brands. The new look allows businesses to be creative and personal with their branding, while the new algorithm helps companies foster a more genuine connection with users.

As a general rule, think of your Facebook page as a peek behind the kimono. It’s a chance to show your company’s fun side. Focus on engagement, not likes, think about delighting your customers and respond to every action. It’s what makes social media “social” after all.