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

With over 175 million twitter users it can be hard getting people to follow you,half of the battle if getting people to your page, the other half is keeping them interested and getting them to follow you. A great way to gain instant interest (and hopefully a follow) from viewer of your page is to design and implement a custom twitter background.

A custom twitter background allows you to:

1. Stand out from the crowd:

A custom Twitter design separates you from every other standard twitter background.

2. Strengthen your brand:

It can tie in with and strengthen your brand, as long as you use the same brand colours and logo. This means that viewers will find it instantly recognisable with your other branded marketing materials.

3. Add more contact information:

You can take advantage of the extra space available to you to include contact information which you couldn’t fit into the 160 characters twitter limits you to in your bio. (see this post to optimise your bio http://socialjamm.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/how-to-optimise-your-twitter-bio-to.html)

4.Market Social Media and Blogs:

You can also use the space to market your other social media channels such as linkedin / Facebook / Youtube / Pinterest or your Blog if you have one, driving more traffic to those sites too.

5.Promote a Special offer:

The space can also be used to promote a specific offer that you are offering, a good call to action can entice people to buy your products or visit certain websites etc

6.Show off Your Personality:

Using images is one of the best ways to convey your personality, and this is an opportunity to let your personality to shine through.

The following 2 profiles have been designed by myself for my own profile @tim_eem and @socialjamm:

We will show you how to design a custom twitter brackground in our next post. So take these reasons and brainstorm what you would like to include on yours!

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