Whether they like it or not, businesses and organizations have been switched over to the new Timeline format of Facebook.
The change, which took effect last week, makes room for a large cover photo and changes the format of the page’s News Feed.
With the official rollout came a bug: the images that appeared on some pages weren’t the ones assigned by their author. According to Tony Bradley of PC World, the images displayed on his page didn’t even belong to him.
The bug has apparently been removed as Timeline becomes compulsory for all organization fan pages.
Some notable differences include space for a cover photo, which Facebook recommends be 851 by 315 pixels for optimum quality. This photo can be an advertisement, a staff photo, or whatever the company chooses.
Companies can also now categorize their posts differently. “Starring” a post makes it double the size of a normal post and thus widens the individual Timeline. “Pinning” a post makes it stick to the top of the Timeline for seven days, making it the most visible item even as a company makes new posts.
Simply Measured, a Seattle-based analytics firm, studied 15 popular companies’ new Facebook pages to see if Timeline is living up to its promise of improving customer interactions.
According to their study, these brands saw a 46 percent increase in engagement per post.
In the same post on Entrepreneur.com, the author says that brands that embraced multimedia fared the best. They recommend using more photos and videos.
Just like private Facebook users, companies will have to adjust to the new format.
Unlike private users, how well they adjust could determine the future of the company’s social media marketing.
