5 Things you must do now to get ready for March 30th
If you have a Facebook Page (also known as Fan Pages) for your business, you need to know that Facebook is making changes once again. On March 30th all Pages will be automatically converted to the new Timeline format.
Many businesses have voluntarily made the switch (check out The Baby Boomer Entrepreneur page). This is good news for you if you haven’t because you can see what others have done and use them as a model for your conversion.
Timeline is much more visual and while it takes some getting used to, I think it holds a number of advantages for businesses. If you get started before March 30th you can preview your page in Timeline before you publish it. This gives you a chance to make changes and adjustments.
Create & Upload a Cover Photo
First thing you’ll notice is the Cover photo. It is much larger than what was allowed previously. It needs to be 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels tall. And this should be a high resolution photo. This image is large and you want it to be as clear as possible.
One word of caution about the cover photo: you can’t include blatantly promotional copy, contact info or calls to action. For example, you can’t ask people to Like your page in your cover photo. See the official Facebook guidelines here.
Choose a Profile Photo
Your Profile photo, which becomes the thumbnail beside your posts, is 180 x 180. It can be a photo of your, your logo or something else.
Rearrange Your Apps
Under your cover photo at the right are images of four of the apps you’ve applied to your Facebook page. The first one is always Photos and you can’t change that one. You can rearrange which apps appear. Just hover over the app and a pencil icon appears. Click on it and you can swap places with another icon. What might these icons be? A page where you offer a free report, your YouTube videos, events, your blog etc. You can even change the image that shows for each app. Just make sure the image is 111 pixels x 74 pixels.
Edit the Past
Because Timeline allows people to go through your Facebook history much easier than before, you’ll want to edit what you’ve posted. Because this is your page and not your personal profile, I assume you’ve been professional in your posting. However, when you were first learning how to use Facebook for your business, you may have posted things that you’re not so happy about now. Delete them before you publish the Timeline.
Milestones
When you’re using Facebook as your Page, you’ll see a drop down menu appear at the top of the page. Click on the Milestones button to add major events in your business, even if they happened before you started on Facebook.
Include things you might want people to know about your business – your start date, the day you won an award, when you started selling a new product. These will add some interest to your history and act as promotional items for people who want to look through your history.
If you still have questions or want to know more, please join me for a free Webinar I’m hosting on March 27that 2 p.m. eastern. I’ll walk you through some of these steps as well as showcase some additional features of the new Timeline. Just click here to register.
