Crazy about all the Facebook changes? Yes, we know. But, this one, is actually good news for your brand. I promise.
While you lick the wounds of that beautiful Landing Tab you just had created for your Facebook Business Page, sit back start imagine the possibilities with me. There are so many ways to keep people on your page once you’re on the timeline, it’s really, totally awesome. Coca-Cola was one of the brands I found is already taking advantage of some of the key new features and benefits.
Let’s begin with what may seem like a bummer. The death of the all-famous Facebook Business landing page. You can stil have something like this, but really why would you when you can actually really encourage more interaction than just a “like”. Your apps/tabs/pages*, which used to be located on the left hand side of your page, under the profile image, are now in boxes, just under your cover photo.
You can have as many as you want, but Facebook will only allow to highlight a few. Whatever your most important apps/pages are, make sure to move those to the most visible position. Leaving the others only visible if the user clicks that little arrow to the right (see image below). They can now be up to 810px wide (as opposed to the old 520px).
Maybe you want to start a contest where customers upload videos or photos of themselves with your product – great! Make a nice tab where they can enter the contest. You may want them to share their stories and photos on your timeline, make a tab to encourage them to do that, with instructions on how to do it! No creative ideas? Make a pretty page for them to join your email list. Because you are, building your list – right? Good.
Just like your personal profile, you’ll want to go through your timeline and add important events. If you have nice images that coincide with the event, that is the ideal. This will not only fill out your timeline, but it will really look appealing to the viewer. For as much as I dislike FB sometimes, Timeline is a very beautiful interface – take advantage of it! Remember you have a couple of options of how to size the images. You may want to make images from very important activity span the 2 columns. In the upper right hand corner of each update/post you can “highlight” and “pin” items, showing the viewer what you really want them see.
The new profile photo is 180px square max. If you have already have a square image that’s awesome, but if you have a horizontal logo, you’ll need to crop it somewhere to create a nice image for your little square. This actually makes a lot more sense than that old horizontal image, since it is the image that everyone will see when you post or share as your page.
Let’s end with the cover photo (btw, the dimensions are 851px wide x 315px high, in case you need ’em). It is important to note that Facebook has some pretty major rules for these, including putting no urls, email addys or “like” encouragement.
I guess it’s FB’s way of trying to “keep it classy”. We’ll see how far that goes! In that regard, I actually agree with FB. Put a really nice image that represents your brand up there. You can go as far as you want: keep it simple with one large photograph or create an image something that says something about your business.
Here are a few local brands near me already looking good:
https://www.facebook.com/BergiesCoffee
https://www.facebook.com/libertymarket
Some national brands:
https://www.facebook.com/Starbucks
https://www.facebook.com/Coca-cola
If you’re not sure how to use anything here is a great guide from the FB to get you going:
FB Page Guide
*Pages, tabs and apps are all used interchangeabley thouroughout this post.
Leave a Reply