From March 30, 2012, Facebook is making some pretty dramatic changes to fan pages. If you have been on Facebook recently, you’ll notice that normal profiles were transformed a few months ago into something called the timeline. Now fan pages will be forced to go through a similar transformation.
Naturally, there is a lot of controversy and whining surrounding this change. You would think that internet marketers would be all for change- after all, their entire careers were only made possible by recent innovations. In reality, some marketers don’t like change. They like to learn a system and create predictable money-making processes around it. Sure it is a pain to have to revamp your brand page in order to neatly fit into the Timeline format. Once you have put in the effort, however, you should see the rewards. The new timeline format allows you to communicate some very powerful things to your fans.
The timeline format gives you the opportunity to show the history of your brand as opposed to just talking about it. Seeing is more powerful than discovery, and that includes establishing your company’s history. You can gain an enormous amount of credibility by showing the viewers of your fan page how you have consistently offered tremendous value to customers. When people can visit your fan page and see customers just like them getting the kinds of positive results which they themselves want, and that is very powerful.
Social proof is one of the most powerful ways to influence people, and the new timeline format for your fan page allows you to demonstrate a lot of social proof, especially if you have been on Facebook for a while. Even if you haven’t been on Facebook for a long time, you still have an opportunity to fill out your company’s history. You should immediately begin inserting different important events into your timeline so that the rich history that we talked about a little while ago can be seen. As you go to work filling out your timeline, keep in mind the overall importance of story.
While all of the factors talked about so far in this article are important, it is ultimately more important than anything else for the viewers of the page to be able to see a cohesive story as they go through your timeline. If you insert pictures, videos and testimonials into your timeline, you will create a much richer story that can help the reader of your fan page better connect with your company. They should wish that they were a part of that product launch back in 2009, or that they could have been one of the first to receive that product you released 10 years ago.
Remember, your Facebook Fan Page is all about building up your relationship with your fans and establishing credibility. The new timeline features allow you to do this in completely new and exciting ways! As you make the transition, keep in mind that the bar is set very low right now. Most brands are not doing anything to prepare for this change, so just by taking some kind of action you are way ahead of the curve.
When the timeline transition is fully completed, there will be a lot of scrambling to figure out exactly what approaches are best and which are not. I encourage you to read different blogs to get a sense of what is testing really well and what is not. You are a part of the beginning of a great opportunity, so the more on top things you are, the more you will be able to take advantage of it.
Claire Ward writes for Natural Welsh Water, a supplier of water cooler products and accessories based in the UK.
