Facebook Timeline for Business Pages
February 29th, 2012 Posted in Facebook, Rebecca Roebuck, Social Media 
This morning Facebook launched timelines for business pages! Businesses have until March 30, 2012 to get their page in shape for the new design.
The new design looks like the Facebook profile’s timeline, launched in December, with a new look, the cover photo and easier historical navigation. An overview of new features is below.
Cover images may not contain:
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Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”
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Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section
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References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features
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Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”
Applications and tabs are now displayed below the cover photo, beside about info, with only four visible at once. A drop down menu must be clicked to view the rest of the tabs/apps. The good news is that you can change the order of these to display your most relevant tabs first.
The image displayed in your navigation for custom tabs and applications can now be updated. This allows for a much more appealing visual on your page. To change the image of those tab previews, click on the tab drop down, then click the edit icon in the top corner and edit settings. From there you can select a new tab image. Facebook supports JPG, GIF, or PNG files for the tab image with size limit of 5 MB. If the image is larger than 111×74 pixels, it will be resized and converted. If your upload does not work try a smaller picture.
Applications and tabs also now open in a wider page allowing for more design and content space. The new tab width is 810 pixels. Some tab application tools are already supporting the wider tab option. If you have created a custom tab yourself, check your application settings. There is now a page tab width option and you can choose between narrow (520 pixels) and wide (810 pixels). If you have not updated your page to the new timeline you will want to continue to use the narrow setting.
An admin panel is now easily available at the top of each page. Admins can quickly see new notifications, messages, new likes and insights without having to navigate to a new page.
Fans can now send private messages to pages. Messages are viewed and managed through the new admin panel. This allows businesses to take a conversation off the wall and respond to questions or comments privately. Businesses should still provide a public response to questions or concerns posted on their page wall/timeline. But if the comment requires additional feedback, encourage the fan to send a message so that you can continue the conversation privately.
Pages can choose to highlight certain posts and content. Boxes for recent posts by others and likes are shown at the top of the timeline. To highlight other content on the page, admins can select “pin to top” in the post settings. This will display the post at the top of the timeline so it is visible to page visitors.
Page permissions have a few changes, most notable is the option to monitor posts from fans and the removal of the ability to set a default landing tab. The removal of the default landing tab/page option will be a concern for businesses as they are unable to set the default view of their page for new fans. Many are already commenting about it here. The good news is that custom tabs can still be linked to directly and can still use a fan gate to encourage new visitors to like the page. Highlighting certain posts (pin to top) will be a great way to push a particular message or promotion.
More Facebook page insights are now available to all users. Old Facebook pages only showed total likes and people talking about to non-admin users. By clicking on the Like menu, any user can now see additional insight information. This will be helpful with researching competitors and prospects.
Curious to see the new design in action? Check out these pages that have made the jump:
Tell us, what do you think of the new design? Will you launch now or wait until the end of March?
Tags: facebook, pages, social media, timeline
