Facebook timeline for brand pages has been in place for a few weeks now, and some fantastically designed pages have been taking advantage of the new features.

We have already covered the importance of a great ‘cover photo' in a previous blog post (found here), but another feature that can make your page more aesthetically pleasing and also tie in line with your brands colours and style is to customise your tabs. The tabs are much more visible to a user located at the top of your page with a larger image size dedicated to them.

Tab guidelines:

Facebook allows you to have 4 visible tabs when you land on your page,. These tabs will always include the photos tab.(The photos tab can not be re-positioned, or its cover image edited).

For a user to view the rest of your tabs (maximum of 12) they would click the arrow next to them.

The new tab sizes are 111px by 74px as opposed to the old 16px by 16px.

Facebook allows you to have up to four visible tabs once you land on a page and displays the rest of them once a user clicks on the arrow next to them.

The about section will cover the area if you decide to only display 2-3 tab images.

Creating your own graphics:

You can create your own graphics for any tab apart from the standard facebook apps such as photos, notes, events etc.

Your tabs could look something similar to what the designers at Fanta have implemented. Keeping in with the brand colours, and products they offer.

To edit the graphics hover over the image you wish to change and then click on the he pencil icon and then click 'edit setting's so get directed to this menu:

Upload your image and change the custom tab name to match and entice your viewers to click on it.

And that’s it. A really simple way to make your brand page stand-out, fit in with your brand and entice users to use your Apps.

Now it’s your turn, let us know how you get on with updating your Facebook Timeline page and ask any questions you have in the comment box below.

The socialjamm team.
www.socialjamm.com
www.twitter.com/socialjamm

Timeline has now officially rolled out for brand pages and many administrators have still not realised the potential flaws of not having been ready for the switchover. To ensure your brand page is ready for the viewing public and potential customers you should ensure you should implement the following 4 tips.

Revisit your past:

Timeline allows users to easily search through your facebook history, so a post from a year ago was unlikely to be seen by a user on the old version of facebook. The first thing you should do is go through your profile and delete any unwanted posts that do not add any value or anything that does not reperesent your brand as it stands today,

Add important moments of your brands history to your timeline:

Timeline for brand pages is basically the story of your brand, so you should give your viewers key moments (milestones) of your history such as when your business opened, office moves, key expansions etc. This gives a user an insight to how your business has grown and developed through time.

Draw attention to offers, key posts:

Timeline allows you to highlight posts, which means that a post will be full width of your page covering both columns. This works great with graphics, drawing users towards them. A great tip is to match the artwork to your cover image, keeping a continuous theme throughout your page and strengthening your brand. Naturally you want highlighted posts to stand out, so ensure that you do not over use them throughout your page.

Fanta does this extremely well:


Pin special offers:

Similar to the highlighting feature you can also ‘pin’ posts to the top of your page for 7 days. The post will remain at the top of your page regardless of anything g else that you post. This is extremely useful when you are promoting a special offer or alternatively looking to hire new staff!

The socialjamm team.
http://www.socialjamm.com/
www.twitter.com/socialjamm

As you may know Facebook are rolling out the timeline feature for brand pages in the coming weeks, which means that you will need one for your brand page.

One of the main new features is the large photo/image that can be displayed at the top of your brand page, known as the ‘cover photo’

The maximum size for a cover photo is 851 x 399 pixels. Ensure that when you design your cover photo that you leave enough room for your logo image which hovers above your cover photo.

The following images are some of our favourite cover photos from brands already using timeline.