Facebook rolled out the timeline for fan pages today. It looks a whole lot like the profile timeline pages. While it will take a little time to get used to, there are major advantages that will help your brand in the longrun. Keep in mind that all pages will automatically roll over to the new layout on March 30. Here’s how you can prepare and test your page.
Profile Image and Cover Photo: As you can see in the photo below, the timeline photo only showcases a portion of the old profile banner. Just like personal profiles, the new profile image should be square and at least 180 pixels wide. For the cover image, choose a great snapshot image for this image because now you can really showcase a gorgeous graphic in the timeline cover photo. Cover photos dimensions are 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels high. Click here for more Facebook cover image guidelines for fan pages.
Highlight Your Apps: Facebook timeline for fan pages changes the position and look of your apps. For instance, if you have a custom tab for your Twitter feed, contest promotion, contact form, etc. these apps will now appear under the cover photo to the right. Facebook allows admins to choose which ones show first so that you can showcase the most important apps first. You can highlight up to 12 apps.
Stories on Your Fan Page Timeline: Facebook gives fan pages a way to bring additional attention to stories in your timeline with the click of a button. When you hover over a story, you will see an option to click a star and a pencil. Clicking on the star will make the story wider and clicking on the pencil will allow you to pin the story to the top of your page, hide it, or delete it.
Facebook timeline for fan pages also gives admin a few really cool, and extremely useful, new features. In the admin panel you can manage comments, likes and insights on one user-friendly page. And perhaps my favorite feature, fans can now send the page private messages although you can choose to disable this feature.You will see alerts of new messages in the admin panel.
Facebook timeline for fan pages admin panel new features and benefits:
Easy to use navigation panel to help you manage your page and easily share it!
Activity log to help you review actions taken by your page each day. This is great for multiple admins!
Request a name change for your page. Facebook now allows you to request a name change for your page. You could previously only change your name if it had under 100 fans. You can access this in the admin panel under the help tab.
Facebook timeline for fan pages with cover photo added.
This is how a story or post looks when you highlight it using the star icon.
Old Facebook Style
New Facebook Timeline for Fan Pages
This is what will replace the old style wall.
Your custom tabs and apps will now be found under the cover photo on the right hand side of the page. You can customize the order and the thumbnail image.
This is an example of what the custom tabs look like when you switch from the old style to Facebook timeline for fan pages. The image dimensions will have to be altered.
This is what the admin panel looks like in Facebook timeline for brand pages. Notice the top right-hand tabs for “manage,” “build audience,” etc.
Facebook rolled out the timeline for fan pages today. It looks a whole lot like the profile timeline pages. While it will take a little time to get used to, there are major advantages that will help your brand in the longrun. Keep in mind that all pages will automatically roll over to the new layout on March 30. Here's how you
