It was announced that as of March 30th Facebook will change the layout of the brand page and convert it to the timeline format that has been offered to personal pages for some time now. This format is a reverse chronological timeline from present day to your brands joining of Facebook. What this means to brand pages, is that the default landing page is no longer available. Instead , there is a cover photo. The cover photo is the first thing users now see when they visit your brand page. They are also visible to the public; making this your first chance to engage the viewer. Facebook requires cover photos to have no visual aids, such as price or purchase info, contact info, calls to action, or references to Facebook features for example "Likes" or Share (no arrows pointing).
The next change in appearance is the new tabs location. It will now be located next to your photo's tab which is locked in place. The remaining places can be filled with customized tabs and calls to action. There is a total of eight tabs and five of them are customizable.
The news-feed is now in story format in a reverse chronological timeline. The brand pages' engagement story begins promoting specific posts to the top of the timeline by highlighting them, posting content across both columns. Each update or post provides you with this option if you scroll over the top right of the post. The remaining content on your timeline are all of your previous status updates. You can allow your joining of Facebook to be your "beginning," or you can fill in the information to allow users to see all the way back to the founding of your company. Updates can be added to the timeline to a specific place in time, called milestones. These timeline milestones give the complete history of your brand in an interactive format. These new changes provide users the chance to engage with your company's present day activities as well as your company's history, and that is where the value lies.
Eric Wilson is special projects director at The New England Real Estate Journal, Norwell, Mass.