The things you need to know about Timeline for your Brand Pages, by 7billion

1. FACEBOOK TIMELINE
FOR BRANDS
MARKETER´S GUIDE

2. Contents
1. What is Timeline and Why Is It Important?
2. Key Features
3. Key Benefits
4. What Should I Do Now?
5. Examples of Timeline Pages

3. What Is Timeline and
Why Is It Important?
What
Facebook Timeline for Brands is different in many ways from the
original interface. It is a visually compelling way of engaging and
connecting with your fans emotionally, through your brand’s
milestones and historic background, the stories and highlights of
your brand. It is essentially a storytelling virtual scrapbook that gives
your brand a life that can be worth sharing to your fans.
Why
It is important because it could involve changing your social media
strategy with Facebook, not forgetting, it will be mandatory for every
Brand page by 30th March 2012 to switch to Timeline.

4. Key Features
What Are The New Features To Take Note Of:
1. Cover Photo
Once Timeline is implemented, you will realize that your original landing
page will loose focus. What you need, is to find a brilliant and bold
image as your page’s Cover Photo. It is important to keep it in line with
your brand image and resonate with your fans’ expectations. This will be
visually more attractive and entitles more emotional engagement to your
fans.
Note: Facebook explicitly states that “This space is not meant for
promotions, coupons, or advertisements.” The Cover Photo should be
851 x 315px and the inset Profile Picture display is now 125 x 125px.

5. Key Features
1. Cover Photo
e.g. Livestrong

6. Key Features
2. Custom Tabs
Tabs and Apps now appear directly under your Cover Photo with a
maximum of 4 displayed. You can change the order of the tabs and
the image of the tab displayed. Of course, you thus need to put the
most important and crucial apps to your business, strategically under
the cover photo.

7. Key Features
2. Custom Tabs
e.g. Starbucks
e.g. Walmart

8. Key Features
3. Pinned Posts & Highlight
Pin posts: You can now choose to “pin” you most engaging post right
on top of your page. This means these updates will remain at the top
of your wall, for your choice of period of time (up to 7 days).
Tip: How about coming up with a weekly poll? Fan contest? Something
engaging that keeps the fans coming back.
Highlight: If you haven't already experimented with this function, it is
a very smart way of drawing your fans' attention to important posts
updates. It enlarges the width to double the size of a specific post.
Whether it be an image, a video or an offer, you can play around with
it to your advantage. Just “star” it and you can, remove the highlight
anytime as well.

9. Key Features
3. Pinned Post
e.g. Red Bull

10. Key Features
3. Highlight
e.g. Red Bull

11. Key Features
4. Admin Panel – Real Time Insights
One great feature of the new admin is that you can admin your Page
without leaving the Page itself. The administration is displayed above
the Page content.
In addition, Data on impressions, reach, people talking about this,
clicks, video views, negative feedback and more will soon
be available just 5-10 minutes after a post is published rather than
two whole days later. This will teach marketers what content
resonates most with their audiences, and give them the chance to
immediately amplify the reach of a popular post.

12. Key Features
5. Fan Message
Fans are now able to send a message directly to you in private. This
is beneficial if they are negative comments that you can settle and
discuss in private. Of course, there are downsides, like an influx of
messages to your admin panel. This is an optional feature you can
turn off.

13. Key Features
6. Milestones and Life Events
The whole basis of Timeline is storytelling so what better way to do
so, then to showcase your brand's milestones that dates back to
more than a decade ago.

14. Key Features
6. Milestones and Life Events
e.g. Starbucks

15. Key Benefits
1. Creating an Identity
With the new Cover Photo, there many ways for you to make the
best out of it, in line with your brand image and in engaging your
customers. It is 80% more engaging and entitles an emotional
connection with your fans.
2. It’s like Story Telling
Facebook pages take a more storytelling position now rather than
product selling. The new features of highlights, pinned posts,
milestones and friend activity that appears differently on each fan’s
page when they view your page; all these make the pages look
beautiful, interactive where fans won’t feel that they are forced to like
the page before being able to post their views or share their images.
What fans will see, is organic engaging and sincere content
by the brands. This will keep fans coming back.

16. Key Benefits
3. Improved Management and Measurement
With the new admin panel, rather than sending admins to a separate
interface, the new Admin Panel drops down and appears overlaid
over Timeline when clicked. All the info about your reach, number of
“Likes” and demographics of your fans are given in real-time. With
this new feature, you can configure your settings, manage your
posts and content, attending to any urgent negative comment
whenever needed. This gives you great control to your content
management and garner greater insights to what your fans really
want.

17. Key Benefits
4. Increase Fans Engagement
This last and final point is important to all brands because without
them, there is no you. The entire layout from the Cover Photo to the
curation of events in Milestones, provides fans a much greater
emotional engagement to your brand. As long as you know how to
strategically position your posts, create suitable content and pick
visually stunning cover photo and profile photos that resonate with
your brand, with Timeline, you can improve your fans engagement.

18. What Should I Do Now?
You have up till 30th March 2012 before your Page automatically
changes to the new Timeline layout and you may just have to end up
making changes to your original Facebook strategy.
Hence, here are some first steps you can take before you roll out
Timeline for your brand.

19. What Should I Do Now?
1. Choose your Cover Photo (and maybe a new profile photo) that
you think is not only visually appealing, but something that is
engaging and relatable to your brand image.
2. Manage your Tabs Content. Decide which tabs should be kept
on display directly below your cover photo. There is more space now
for your apps when fans click it, so review your current tabs and see
how you can best execute them, and decide which thumbnail images
you wish to place on each tab.
3. Pinned posts and Highlights. It would be good going through
which posts will be worth pinning and highlighting.
4. Admin Panel. It will be good going through the new features and
you can choose how different admins see different things on the
insights.

20. What Should I Do Now?
5. Fan message inbox. Decide if you want fans to be messaging
privately to your page, these messages will be directed to your
admin. You probably need to respond effectively and quickly should
there be influx of messages. So, do decide if this is a viable option
for you. (if you’re a local or big business)

21. Conclusion
It’s not too late to act so do not worry!
Timeline is something we should thank for and embrace. We believe
Timeline has the same underlying message as before it was
introduced; that Pages are ultimately for building communities of
people who are engaged in conversations and sharing stories.

22. Examples
Cover Photos – Coca Cola

23. Examples
Cover Photos – American Museum of Natural History

24. Examples
Cover Photos – Walmart

25. Examples
Cover Photos – Verizon Wireless

26. Examples
Cover Photos – Macy’s

27. Examples
Cover Photos – Subway (very good cover)

28. Examples
Milestones – Ben & Jerry’s

29. Examples
Milestones – Subway

30. Examples
Pinned Posts – Verizon Wireless & Starbucks

31. Examples
Pinned Posts – Macy’s
Calling for fans to be part of their Macy’s “story” on their Timeline

32. Examples
Highlights – Toyota USA

33. Examples
Highlights – Starbucks

34. Thank you!
For questions or further information, contact us at info@7billion.se