The Web Authority

Wow, it took me days to figure this out and I don’t consider myself a Facebook newbie at all. On business pages the new tabs are not tabs at all, here’s the lowdown. Underneath your cover photo are several text links that are spread out across the width of the page. Everyone gets a maximum of five links but you can change the order of some of the links. By clicking the down button on the very last image above the last link you can open an additional field that will show more apps and tab options.

Although Facebook calls these links tabs, they certainly are not. Remember when Facebook business pages first came out and you had real tabs at the top of your page? That was not so long ago and I liked the real tabs much better than this nearly hidden set up.  In fact, if you don’t have your own business page and just had a personal profile, you would never ever even think to open the list up or dig around to uncover these hidden pages.

When you do happen to click one of these five text links under the cover photo, you are taken to a mini website backend that is now a part of every business page. This hidden section is navigated by a drop down menu on the top left just to the left of the page’s name. Man, talk about hidden! All your apps and pages are stored in this drop down. This is the new place where your welcome page, promotion, notes, events, and the new like page now reside. See how long it takes you to find them when you migrate your own business page to the new timeline!

Based on what I see and how long it took me to figure this out, I would consider that these hidden pages will get very little if any real traffic. You can however link to many of these hidden pages if you create a Facebook advertising ad. It will be very interesting to see if big brands start to develop these hidden pages and how they will be using them. For now the new business page layout and Facebook page changes have simply caused serious grumbling and complaining in my industry.

I will reserve judgment on my end how I like these new changes, until I see if I get more or less interaction from fans. I like the visual appeal of the new timeline, but think that many of the changes will force business owners to move into Twitter and Google+ and abandon Facebook in the long run. Sorry Facebook, but I just don’t think that any business in reality is going to sit down and fill up the timeline from business inception to now and that fans will even care to read about that company history in the long run.

I have migrated my two Facebook business pages early to the timeline this past weekend and wanted to share some of my tips that I have figured out while I was using the new look. Remember as you read this blog post, all business pages will all be forced into the new timeline layout as of the end of March 2012.

Here’s what I have learned:

• Don’t try to create a complex graphic or use a screen shot of our website banner. Use one large high definition image that tries to convey visually who and what you are. In my case we are located near Washington DC and so I am using a image I took recently of the Capital building. I did try my website banner and I did try a composite image, both looked too busy.
• Clicking the star at the top right of an update will stretch either the image or text update across your whole page. Facebook will leave the bigger post up for 7 days. You can do this in several places on your page to break up your layout. Actually what I did was to design my layout look by using images and text to give a pleasing break to the typical two columns. This means that the new timeline is a much more visual statement than the old wall. Make sure to only load high definition images as when Facebook expands the image if you highlight it, low resolution images will look bad.
• When you are logged in as a business page entity you cannot post to anyone fan or otherwise walls as a business entity. In fact when you are logged in as a business, you cannot even see a fans wall, you will only be able to see the timeline. That means that all interaction is back on your own timeline. Business pages in fact don’t have a wall anymore, just the timeline.

As a result, our services for Facebook have been changed. We may add additional services later, but for now we have streamlined our offerings to cover what we feel will work for business during this change. My personal feeling is that the action for Facebook for businesses will now be in the advertising arena. For many business owners the cost to keep a Facebook business page updated with photos, video, favorite posts, and other apps will simply be too costly and time consuming.