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Huge News! – Facebook Business Pages – Mandatory Changes and New Features

On March 30 all Business pages on Facebook will automatically be changing over to the NEW timeline format. What does this mean for your business? How can you prepare for it to make sure your page is set up correctly and ready to go?

We have known for a month that there were some big changes coming to business or ‘fan’ pages. Noone knew what the changes were going to be apart from Facebook themselves! The only thing we did know was that they would be changing to a timeline format similar to the timeline on your personal page that was introduced recently.

If you don’t set your business page up correctly on the new timeline format your page will look very incomplete come March 30. Additionally, visitors will be able to see back through all your history of posts.

The good news is you can start to make the changes now so when March 30 comes you are prepared. If your new timeline page is ready and looking schmick – you can publish it right now and don’t need to wait for the automatic changeover.

As of last night, when you log in to your business page you now have the option to “preview” your timeline and make all the changes you need to get it ready for the March 30 deadline.

The other new features Facebook announced at its Facebook Marketing Conference last night in the US are:

The Good

  • A fan of your business page can now private message you. This is good news as any customer services issues or more private matters no longer have to be discussed on your public wall.

DE-message

  • “Offers” will be released in the next few weeks which allows you to easily have special offers for customers on your Facebook page that they can redeem in store or online. This is good news because they are easier to use and will replace the older “deals” that Facebook tried last year.
  • You can now change you page name if you need to (previously this was only available to pages with less than 100 fans).

The Bad

  • Customised welcome or landing pages are gone. This is bad news for pages because it was marketing best practice to send people to these pages to encourage them to like your page. This can now only be done when running Facebook advertising. http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/29/death-of-the-facebook-default-landing-tab/
  • Be sure to check out Facebook’s new guidelines for cover images here. http://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php
  • The new position of the like button is much less obvious than it used to be. It has moved from next to your page title at the top to underneath your cover image. This is bad news because it will more than likely result in less people liking your page.

The old “Like” position

WMFY-Like

The new “Like” position

Coke-Like

The 9 steps to prepare your business’s Facebook page for the March 30 deadline

  1. Design and upload a cover image that will showcase your business and wow your customers. 851px x 315 px is the size you need.
  2. Choose a profile picture which will show up in the bottom left of your cover image and also on every post you make on other pages. This picture is best suited to be your brand or logo. Design it 180px x 180px but it will be resized to 32×32 when you post on other pages.
  3. Sort your applications and views and set a thumbnail image for these – 111px wide x 74px high
  4. Prepare a post to “pin” to the top of your page encouraging people to like your page.
  5. Create some milestone photos (843px x 403 px) to show the milestones of your company and post them with an explanation, back-dating the date of the post. Milestones can be when your company was created, when you moved offices, etc.
  6. Sort through your old posts and hide the boring ones and highlight the best ones to show on your timeline.
  7. Remember the timeline format is more visual than the old format so photos and images are key!

Take a look another example of what large companies have done with their new timeline pages:

Old-spice

For more resources take a look at:

http://www.learnfacebookpages.com/

http://www.facebook.com/about/pages

http://www.facebook.com/help/pages/new-design

http://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php

Need some help?

If you would like some help to prepare your page, please give me a call on 0407 001326.

Bundaberg Workshops on the New Facebook Business Page Changes

We will be running workshops to help businesses prepare for the new changes in the next few weeks. Please fill out the form below if you would like to be notified by email when the dates for these workshops are set. – Dan