Facebook Timeline for Brands: It’s Crunch Time

Don't be nervous. Change is good.

That should be the Facebook brand statement.

Just when you get used to things, the mother of all social media platforms changes things up.  No change in recent history has given more marketing folks heartburn as the coming change of Facebook Brands Pages to the Facebook Timeline format.

The change is official in just a few days (March 30) and Jim Belosic does a great job of helping marketing folks face this reality in this blog post on PR Daily.

We at THP and HDS have been spending lots of time getting clients ready for this change as well.  In addition, I've been asked to speak to a PRSARVA group about those changes in April (don't worry I'll cover Pinterest too).   For some reason I hear seats are going fast so you may want to register here.

I agree with all of Jim's points but folks really need to focus on:

• The use of the cover photo as a means to show your brand without being too "promotional."
• The increasing importance of custom apps and what they can do to improve the virality of your page.
• The need to use timeline to tell a creative story and move the conversation forward.
• The importance of pinning your posts and milestones.

Later this week in this space, we'll be making a Timeline for Brands "cheat sheet" of sorts available, so look for that by Friday.

Don't want to give away too many spoilers on my talk but the bottom line is you have about a week….are you ready?