You may already be aware that Facebook has come up with a unique feature called Timeline where you can design the cover of your facebook page, decide on the stories to tell here or choose on the apps that you want to share with others. But what you may not be aware is that facebook has made this feature compulsory for all business pages as well and they need to shift to this new layout by March the 30th. As always, people are not so excited about these changes and would like to maintain the status quo but if you look at it objectively, this transition has more positives than negatives. If you decide then you can make these changes to work in your favor.
The most apparent change is in the layout of the business page which is very different from the earlier one. Now you have the option to add a big cover photo on top of the page which can act like a banner. You can use this space to highlight the most important aspect of your business but there are many restrictions on what you can mention or how you can modify it to your advantage. Then there are features like Pinning Posts where you can choose to pin a particular post on the top left hand corner of your page’s timeline where it stays for next seven days and after that it returns to its original place. Other benefit is that you now have the facility of sending private messages to a fan or a prospective client and receive the required details without making them public to the entire world.
The downside of this development is that you no more have the control to divert the visitors to your link to a default landing page of your choice as you could do in the past. Now all visitors will first see your timeline wall and if want them to go a specific page such as to an app which you may have created for a competition or the like, you would have to do so through the use of ads. Although this may be frustrating for a lot of people but facebook is a free platform and this is a way for them to make some money. However you may still use the ‘pin post’ or ‘highlight status update’ features to your advantage and to create a better impact on your fans and visitors.
