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How to Change Your Business Facebook Page’s Timeline App Display

by Annie on March 1, 2012

(UPDATE: I’ve added the image size  for the custom app images to the bottom of the post – 111px x 74px.)

Phew. That was a mouthful.

By now, most folks have had an opportunity to examine their business’s Facebook page in the new Timeline format, at least in preview. Many have gone ahead and taken the plunge.

(I took one of my three pages to Timeline yesterday, and plan to convert the rest over by the end of this weekend.)

And there is a ton of discussion out there already about Timeline in general. I wrote about the basic changes Timeline created here yesterday.

David F. Carr wrote an extensive piece about Timeline changes for The Brainyard’s page at Information Week (with the howlingly funny “Understatement of the Century” headline “Timeline for Facebook Pages Takes Getting Used To”).

And Kristi Hines wrote one of my favorite pieces on the subject at Kikolani (“New Facebook Pages With Timeline Design – Pros and Cons“).

One thing I haven’t seen discussed much is the new arrangement of apps, and the options for customizing this feature on your Timeline.

(Kudos and a big smooshy kiss to Jen Stayrook for inspiring this post!)

Anatomy of the Timeline: Apps and Photos

Here’s a good example of what I’m talking about: the Livestrong page.

In the screenshot above, you can see the full cover photo with the Livestrong logo.

Beneath that, there’s a row that starts with the organization’s “About” info, followed by four images. The one on the far left is the Photos section, the other three are the three apps that the Livestrong page admins have elected to display.

Selecting Your Apps to Display

You get four spaces for apps (which were your former tabs). Visitors to your page will only see four unless they click the little downward-pointing arrow to the right of the far-right app image. That loads the rest.

You can change this up in a lot of ways, all of which start the same way: simply click the down-pointing arrow, then hover your mouse over the image of the app you want to change. A pencil icon will show up. Click it, and a popup menu of options appears.

You can swap positions of apps this way, remove them from your favorites (which takes it off that visible line), or uninstall the app from your page altogether.

You can also “edit settings.” What does that mean? Glad you asked!

Change the App Cover Images On Your Timeline

Take another look at that Livestrong screenshot up there. See how all the images echo the color scheme and style of the cover photo? That’s a fabulous branding technique for Facebook and Timeline’d pages.

But how do you change the default, not-so-attractive and completely-unbranded images? It’s not immediately obvious, is it?

Two words: Edit. Settings.

So, click that downward arrow again, hover your mouse over the app image you want to change, click the pencil icon when it pops up, and then click “Edit Settings.”

What pops up next is this:

From there, if you want to change the default text, simply enter the new name in the “Custom Tab Name” box and click save.

To change the image, simply click the “Change” text link next to Custom Tab Image.

Or if you want to take it off completely, click the “remove” text link.

Your custom image should be designed at 111 px by 74 px!

Stay Tuned

There’s so much more, I know, to discover about Timeline, the new apps structure, and the ways you can use it all to communicate your brand and attract clients and customers.

But I gotta tell you – when I figured out this little business today, the whole “change the app images” thing? I felt a lot better about the whole deal.

It’s a relatively small thing, I guess, in the grand scheme of all things digital-marketing. But a little bit of control in Facebook-land — where it all too often  seems that none of us have any control whatsoever — is a major mood booster, in my book.

How are you guys doing with your Facebook pages’ conversion? Anybody see any awesome examples of good Timelines? Or great ones? Share away in the comments!

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What We Know About Facebook Timeline for Pages

by Annie on February 29, 2012

By now, everybody and their sister knows that Facebook rolled out Timeline for Pages at some point late last night. As I write this, you’ve got through March to get your page Timeline-ready. You can preview the Timeline version of it, before actually publishing it, so you can figure out what needs to be fixed.

Now, for me and my pages, this was no big deal. I’ve been ready for this move for sometime now, and I never added any default landing pages or fan gates to my pages.

But for those of you who did — who (worse) maybe spent good money hiring people like me to make those Pages pretty and compelling?

You’re probably a wee bit pissed off right about now. And this time I can’t blame you.

The Sucky Part of the Timeline Rollout

Full disclosure: I totally heart Timeline.

Whenever I read “Timeline SUCKS” posts on FB, I feel compelled to pipe in with a “Why on earth would you not LOVE Timeline?!” post, with all the reasons why I love it.

This time, however, page owners may have a legitimate gripe.

That gripe: default landing tabs have disappeared. Your fan gates too, possibly. (That’s the “like this page to ____________”  where you fill in the blank with any call to action you might want a prospect to take, such as enter a contest, get/request free white papers, or even see the rest of your FB page content).

So, yes, that sucks. What doesn’t?

The Non-Sucky Parts of Timeline for Pages

Yes, there are a few!

First things first: educate yourself a little bit with this official release from FB on Timeline for Pages.

Tabs Are Bigger

We still have tabs, AND they’re wider than before, now at 810 px. Also? You can still have fan gates, apparently. Just make sure you keep in mind the new dimensions when you’re creating them.

Better Admin Controls in Admin Panel

The new admin panel covers all the salient information you need to know about your Pages.

Your notifications are now spelled out for you, associated with avatar images. You also can see recent “likes” in a separate section, and a graph of Insights.

And see that right-hand section labeled “Messages”? Yeah, about that …

Send and Receive Messages As Page

Self-explanatory, I hope. You’ll see those in the upper-right section of your admin panel.

More Control Over Posts Placement on Page

If you want to stress or call attention to a particular update or post, simply click on the star icon in that post’s area to make it wider. You can also click the pencil icon to move a post to the top of the page, or hide or delete it from your page altogether.

THAT COVER PHOTO!

This deserves caps and the exclamation point. The cover photo is seriously the most cool aspect of Timeline, and it offers businesses a great opportunity to visually stun and communicate the brand.

But you need to know a few things first, before you go rooting around at iStockPhoto.com.  There are a few rules you’ll need to follow, so don’t fire up the Photoshop just yet:

Sizing of Cover Photos: You can use any image up to 850×315 in pixels. Once you upload the photo, you’ll be prompted to drag and reposition the photo for maximum impact, so if part of the image is cut off, this is how you fix that.

What’s Prohibited: The cover photo should be a photo first and foremost, or at least an image.  To that end, Facebook has decided that certain content is inappropriate and off-limits — and yes, I agree with them:

• Price or purchase information (e.g., “10% off” or “Buy at our website.”
• Contact information (e.g., your URL, email address, site location, or anything for which there’s a space in your “About” section)
• References to Facebook features or UI elements (e.g., the “Like” or “Share” features)
• Calls to action (e.g., “Sign up now” or “Share with your friends”)

Image Selection: The cover photo is a great way to express your brand! Don’t just slap any old image up there. Look for images that communicate visually and emotionally with your ideal clients.

Create Milestones to Tell Your Brand’s Story

Another nifty feature of Timeline is the “milestones” option. You can basically add key events in your business’s lifespan to your page’s Timeline, in order to tell your business’s marketing story in a compelling, evocative way.

Got Problems?

Report them to Facebook here. If you’d like to change the name of your page, you can request that here (note: I don’t know whether the rule about being stuck with page names if you have over 100 likes is still in effect or has been abrogated).

What do you think? Love Timeline? Hate it? Fear it? Not sure? What are you doing to make the most of this change? Share in the comments!

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