If it isn’t everyone’s favorite thing to grumble and groan about – Facebook has rolled out yet another series of changes for your Business Pages. The timeline that many Facebook users have been fighting against – and personally I love –rolled out to all Facebook pages on March 30^th.

So what does this mean for you and your page?

• You can now directly talk to people who “like” the page with Page messages which will appear in your admin panel, as your page.
• After “liking” a person can add you to an interest list – which your current “likes” can go back and do too!
• There is no default tab, all visitors will drop immediately on your timeline page.
• Where did your tabs go? They’re now located in a left hand navigation bar called “Apps.” By default you’ll only see four Apps unless you click to view more, but you can also rearrange.
• All of your Facebook Promotions, any contest or giveaway, needs to be run solely though one of the Apps on Facebook, either a Canvas Page or a Page App.
• You now have a cover page! This means you have a HUGE list of new rules to follow when choosing this. You’re easiest; most Facebook approved option will be to use a high resolution product image with no text. More on this below.

Don’t have any high res images to fit the new width? Why not get a little help from your partner’s at Solid Cactus? Our design team can craft a custom cover image following all of Facebook.com’s guidelines, enforcing your brand and personality. Check out the details of our custom Facebook cover image here.

What are these guidelines?

Facebook is putting a large amount of attention to the Cover Image, as should you. It’s going to be a person’s first impression of your page timeline and brand. Facebook.com’s restrictions say that you CANNOT – repeat cannot or risk having your page shut down – include the following which comes directly from the help facts.

• Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”
• Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section
• References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features
• Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”

• Covers must not be false, deceptive or misleading, and must not infringe on third parties’ intellectual property.
• You may not encourage or incentivize people to upload your cover image to their personal timelines. 

So what can you do with your new page?

Take a look at some great examples for inspiration for what you want, and can do, like Coca Cola or Blair Candy’s Facebook timeline , who had a custom image done by Solid Cactus.

Here’s a quick checklist of what you might want to update for the page:

• Include your cover image. It’s suggested to be at least 399 pixels, but should be 855 pixels X 350 pixels for a pixel perfect fit.
• Update your About Us to include all important information
• Re-order your Apps to show what’s most important to you.
• Go back through your Timeline and add in important events to your company history, such as how you were founded, when you first launched online, when your first sale was, when you had a redesign, etc.

How do you plan to use the new timeline? If you’ve updated your personal page, this shouldn’t be too big of a change, but for those with the old profiles, you may want to plan your changes before putting in a cover page.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2012 at 5:13 pm and is filed under Social Media Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.