(SOCIAL) Time to Change Your Facebook Look

3-1-2012

I had previously given you a heads-up regarding Facebook Timelines for Brands.  This is where company Pages, such as the ones for your radio stations, will be switched over to look more like the Timelines that users have on their personal pages.

Well it?s happened.

No need to panic.  Nothing will change until you tell it to.  But you can go to this Facebook link and start immediately previewing what your station Page will look like once converted.  From here, you can start curating and crafting content for your Timeline.  Then, once you?re ready, you can click the ?Publish? button and go live with the new look whenever you want to.  But if you haven?t done that by March 30, the switch will be made automatically and your old brand Page will go bye-bye for good.

To make myself even more useful, here?s a Facebook tutorial video that will walk you through most of what you need to know.  Beyond the mechanics, there are a few things you should know about this latest Facebook change:

-Imagery is more important than ever.  Pinterest is reminding us just how catchy visually appealing things are, be it still photos or video.  The new Timeline is set up to capitalize on multimedia.  If you aren?t really gearing up and cranking out multimedia content, you stand to miss out.

-The Timeline is chronological.  So now you can tell your history and convey the legacy of your stations so listeners will know you better, appreciate you, and have a tighter bond with those stations.  It doesn?t hurt for potential advertisers to know you either.

-The Timeline is more ?friend-centric.?  A lot of brand Pages are being unfriended because there is no organic interactivity going on between the fans and the brand.  They?re just being used as marketing or selling tools.  BAD mistake.  Prominent friend activity, regularly refreshed and above the fold, gives people a reason to come back.

-This is probably my favorite things and should be crazy exciting to you.  You can now message your fans, and they can message you!  This has enormous potential for any brand wanting to use their Page to conduct superior customer service.

-My second favorite thing is that tabs will now be optimized for mobile, meaning the content will look good on smartphones and tablets.  With 40% of Facebook users accessing the site via mobile, it was getting a little crazy for your station?s content to look bad to all those users. 

One final note, while the new Timeline for Brands offers up some exciting opportunities and is definitely an improvement over the current brand Pages, it?s important to remember that you?re a dead duck if you?re not showing up in fans News Feeds.  So yeah, make your new Page look great, but keep the focus of all your social marketing efforts on creating content that?s powerful, relatable, compelling, and engaging enough to slay the EdgeRank dragon and show up where users far and away spend the bulk of their time, the News Feed.

Mike Stiles is a brand content specialist with the social marketing tech platform, Vitrue. Check out his monologue blog, The Stiles Files & follow him @mikestiles

Links

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com

Timelines for Brands: https://www.facebook.com/about/pages

Facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/about/pages

Facebook tutorial video: http://www.learnfacebookpages.com

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com

40% of Facebook users: http://www.vitrue.com/are-you-eating-mobile-marketings-dust/

EdgeRank: http://edgerankchecker.com/

Vitrue: www.vitrue.com

Stiles Files: www.mikestiles.com/stilesfiles

Stiles Twitter: www.twitter.com/mikestiles

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