In early March this year,
Facebook announced that at the end of the month all "pages" that
are used mainly for company/ business promotion will go to the new "Timeline" form. What brought about this change and how
companies cope with it?
On notification of changes in the corporate website, Facebook immediately responded to a minimal number of firms. Although the timeline was known already to the personal profiles, Facebook also gave companies the opportunity to try a new look. The "dry run" company rather remained calm in March. Representatives of some companies, however, became more interested in what each will bring change.
Main photo and hidden bookmarks
The actual change is not only what essential at first sight. In fact, it is a substantial change in design and operation of pages on Facebook . Most noticeable is
the new course in the graphic. In
the upper part appeared broad picture, which aims to attract the attention of
Facebook users and to present the company an impressive manner. While the announcement itself rushed in advance, with limited initial content of
photographs in Facebook Timeline, Facebook took his time and because of this, the most active firms that responded to the announced changes immediately prepared their own Timeline twice.
And what are the restrictions mentioned? In a particular way, it is prohibited to place this image into contact information (including address,
company website) and various calls to action, discounts, price notifications or
arguments, why become a fan of this page etc. Facebook tightening this of the rules and made it clear that the initial photo should be just
a visual complement and not for advertising space.
An ideal home photo, a character study or company Logo; the picture is only appropriate to add the motto. Very popular graphic procedure is
also visually connect home with profile photo image .
As the biggest problem turned out to change the tabs that were previously sorted in the left menu. Now in the space below the main photo
shows only four and a list of all tabs you need. This, however, users may not be
motivated unless the site administrators do not get from a special reason in any page
paper on the wall.
Great new form of a bad site is also impossible to set one of the
tabs as input ("landing tab"). Previously, the company implemented
its own input tabs that were intended to convince users of Facebook to become
fans of their site. This goal now
can not use bookmarks effectively implemented and the old landing page, no
choice but to drop, or rework for an entirely different purpose. Companies now have the opportunity to convince
users in a limited space "info box" that appears under the main photo.
Wall is now chronicle in the company pages
The new look changed the functionality of the wall
itself. Facebook calls companies in this step to create their site to chronicle. By
adding significant events in the life of the company, however, began only with a
minor part of them. For example,
Vodafone added only nine posts that are placed on the timeline
until the founding of their Facebook page.
A very creative way of presenting selected Škoda Auto, which added
to the timeline of events from a number of its long history. It can be assumed that the time axis
will contribute to the website to make it to the fans of the company spent a
long time . But this can prove to future studies
and measurements.
Most sites also visited not to take advantage of "pinning" a
contribution to the top of the chronology and thereby
disrupt the timeline. Similarly,
the stretch selected contributions
on the entire surface of both the column wall is now rarely used as a marketing tool which can alert fans
to important company information.
An important factor for the effectiveness of marketing at Facebook
are constantly refined statistics sites, called Reporting. Now
you can have a very easy way to evaluate the overall success of the company's
activities on the wall of Facebook page. Even
i can easily evaluate the success of individual
contributions like Fanta, Skoda, Vodafone etc.
A completely new feature is the ability to send private message to site
administrators through facebook post. It turns out that
this company is in our opinion a very useful function of fear and a fifth of them have banned it .
Overall Timeline came as positive, because the fans brings greater motivation to return to
the page and
following not only through the company posts but also the "news feed" (news on
the home page). But it seems that
many companies do few necessary changes that is
too short for those in a monthly period. Users still find a huge
number of pages, which do not contain photographs or home.
Google+ is in the footsteps of Facebook
Big surprise, Google+ prepared to change its appearance without
prior notice. Here, however, changes have less impact on what companies
must have to do. In fact Google+ only changed design and added graphics to present the initial image as Facebook. But Google+ left the choices and location of the images; you can have five photos, as
it already had many corporate sites before.
About this change of Google+ is said to be a direct response to Facebook. Its functionality is very similar and strong
sense of inspiration is literally at every step. This claim can be supported by current
and changing visage of corporate sites that again a little more closely the
form of Facebook. Companies that can facilitate the work - they can easily
be visually present in the same
style in both of these social networks .
Google+ is still very
little used by the companies in non-english countries, which is a shame. The presence on this network can
provide us a significant competitive
advantage while
the opportunity to fill your page relevant content that will be increasingly
essential for success in the search engine
company Google .
If
you work in a company that whose Facebook page still has not modified into a new
form, or you are not based on Google+ page, do not hesitate to try it. Bring added value to your permanent long time customers
and keep your company brand potential. It is a pity not to say that Marketing and PR
in social networks is a powerful weapon.
