By Rebecca Chappell, Account ExecutiveAs you may have heard, like Facebook Profiles, Facebook Pages will be changing to the new timeline automatically by March 30. This month, do some early spring cleaning and update your personal and company pages to make sure you take advantage of the new Timeline format.
Besides the layout, what else will change? Well, for one thing, you will no longer be able to create a ‘like gate’ a page. Read more in this helpful post from Constant Contact, which we use for our email marketing campaigns.
This change is a bit of a bummer if you’ve invested a lot of time in a good ‘like gate’ which was a powerful way to help ensure more people ‘liked’ your page. (They would have to like it in order to receive a coupon, enter a contest or benefit from some similar incentive.)
So why does Facebook keep changing things? (Seeing as these changes are a big ‘make work’ project for its users.) They do it for the same reasons car companies offer a new model every year or consumer electronics devices become obsolete the moment you buy them. It keeps its users engaged and keeps its brand fresh and product ahead of the competing social media networks.
Here are a few examples of brands that have already made the switch.
This new timeline layout requires a completely new way of thinking about Facebook business pages.
Here's a great article with a rundown on the new change that suggests now "brands should be translating their key messages into visual images…"
No longer is Facebook allowing us to build a mini website within our page. Now it's all about the visuals.
All the content that you want to feature on your business page is going to have to be formatted as some kind of a status update, link to an external blog post or webpage, or image.
The good news is that the Facebook Timeline approach will allow companies more opportunities to drive their fans to their website or blog for longer form information or background, rather than keeping all of the information in Facebook’s ‘walled garden.’ This also means less duplication or redundant content between what’s on Facebook and what’s on your company’s other sites and profiles.
It also forces businesses on Facebook to be far more social. They will need to behave like humans, in other words, and share and post frequently in order to make their Timeline effective.
What do you think? Are you inconvenienced, excited, or worried about this change?
Contact Rebecca: rchappell@wrightoncomm.com
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