Facebook Page Timeline Design: Migrate Now

A few weeks ago, administrators of brand Facebook Pages were notified that they would be migrated to the new “Timeline” design on March 30. With Facebook still garnering over 63% of the visits to social networking sites (reference), it is important to provide users visiting your Facebook Page with a good impression of your company.

To ensure your brand’s Page looks good when migrated, you may want to initiate the process yourself instead of waiting for Facebook to automatically convert your Page.

To get started, click the “Preview” button.

If you haven’t read about the impending changes, I recommend you take the tour by clicking on the “Start Tour” button.

The most notable visual change is that now the top portion of your screen will be dominated by a “cover photo”. Facebook has some specific ideas about what should and should not be included in this cover photo.

The next step is to adjust your profile picture, commonly called an avatar. This is the thumbnail picture that appears next to everything posted by your Page.

The new Timeline design is the standard landing page. You can still have other apps, but users will have to specifically click on those buttons, or you can send fans direct links to pages you want them to see first. Unfortunately, that cool app that you have been using as your landing page will now be relegated to position 2 on your list of apps, because Facebook has decided that Photos are always in the first position.

With the new Timeline design you now have the ability to keep a status you deem important at the top of your Page by “pinning” it for a week and make stories or pictures that you feel are more important larger by “starring” those items.

The admin panel is now your default landing page as the Page’s administrator. When the admin panel is displayed, your brand’s Page is shown below the admin panel. You can hide/show the admin panel at the top of your page by clicking on the ‘hide’ or ‘admin panel’ buttons.

Lastly, Facebook has added direct messaging with this version.

As with every Facebook reincarnation, there will be new functionality that users adore and new functionality that users will complain about mightily. Regardless of your opinion, if you want to take advantage of Facebook’s huge market share, you will need to jump on the band wagon and update your Page.

Following is our newly designed Facebook Page. What do you think?