Nine things you need to know about Facebook’s new Timeline

Facebook upgraded to the new Timeline format as of March 30. If you rely on Facebook, here are nine things you need to know:

1. Your custom landing tab is no longer available 

The old default landing page tab was a popular feature that has been discontinued.

Previously it was a useful teaser to entice more people to like your page. Some businesses also used it to announce promotional offers to visitors.

This has been replaced by the Cover Photo in the new Timeline format, except there’s some things you can’t include. 

2. Things you can’t include in your Cover Photo 

Facebook forbids you including your website URL, contact details, calls to action, special offers, references to “like” or “share” or anything promoting your company in your Cover Photo.  

Failure to comply could see Facebook delete your page.

This is a big change with severe consequences and it has upset several marketers and business owners.

I personally think it is Facebook’s way of discouraging marketing messages and encouraging connection between real people, so I am in favour of it. 

3. Your profile picture is much smaller 

It now appears as a smaller icon embedded within your Cover Photo and it is still the icon that appears when your updates appear in a news feed.

4. You can now message from your “business page” 

Now you can send and receive messages from your company’s business page. Previously you could only do this using your personal profile. 

It’s good because people can reach out and message the business without personally knowing someone in the company.

And this is brilliant for customer service because some conversations can be dealt with privately rather than on the public wall. 

5. Your business wall has changed 

Your business wall is now known as the Timeline. And while people can post comments on your business page, it is no longer as prominent as it used to be.

Comments from fans now appear in a section called Recent Posts by Others. 

6. You can feature content more prominently 

Facebook now lets you choose what content you feature on the top of your page. Photos will appear first, but after that you simply “pin” your favourite photos, blog posts, videos or apps to the top of your timeline.  

Click the pencil to make that feature wider or click the pin to add it the top, but this will only keep it there for seven days.

7. You can now backdate and feature important company milestones

Administrators can now add business milestones retrospectively, for example you can add a milestone for the year your company was founded.

This feature also allows milestones to be more prominently displayed in a full width format.

8. You can still do location based “check-ins”

This popular feature still allows your Facebook fans to check-in to your page and also to see who else has checked in.

9. Your admin panel makes managing your page easy 

All the notifications you receive now appear in the admin panel which is right up the top of your page when you are logged in.

However, no one can see this except for your fellow Facebook administrators. You can also see your page analytics much more easily with the insights feature. 

I’m interested to hear what you think of the Facebook Timeline upgrades.