fMC Launches Facebook Timeline for Brands and Premium Ads
Facebook continues to push the envelope in consumer targeting and recently announced a number of innovative features and upgrades that can impact your business for the better. The new timeline layout with expanded imagery and opportunities for premium content will be applied on March 31, 2012. These changes will influence paid, owned and earned media. Below is a breakdown of these changes and what each means for you.
1. Timeline is much more visually appealing and gives us an opportunity to create a branded environment
2. Content is still most important part of Facebook
3. Enhanced advertising programs including the first ever mobile ads
NEW LAYOUT
The new Facebook Brand Timelines will look similar to the Timeline layout that users have been integrating over the last few months. The page will now be separated into two columns. With these updates come a few new features that Brand Pages have not had access to in the past:
Highlighted posts or stories: When a page creates a post that has importance over other posts on the page (contest, new openings, promotion, etc), we can now feature that in a few different ways.
* We can keep priority content as the top post for up to 7 days. Even when we create new content, this post will not move down. These posts will have an orange flag in the upper right hand corner.
* We can highlight a post across both columns.
* Add historic information as a Milestone that will also take up both columns
New branded image sizes
*Cover image: 851px wide by 315px high
*Profile image (brand logo): 180px by 180px
Messaging: One huge addition to the Brand Timeline is the ability for pages to receive messages directly from their fans, creating a new customer service channel. Brands can only respond to messages, not create them.
User posted content: The most recent user-submitted posts will be consolidated at the top of the page. Users can only view a few posts at a time and we can continue to control what is shown and what is hidden.
Friend engagement: When a user goes to a Facebook Brand page, one of the first things they will see in the timeline is how many of their friends like the page. It will also show all posts to the page a users friend has made.
VIEWS AND APPS
Pages will no longer be able to set tabs and applications as the default landing page. The reason behind this change is for brands to utilize their wall with strong, branded messaging. Alongside the branded messaging will be the user’s friend activity.
* You can have endless apps, but only 3 will be featured at a time (photos will always be the first icon).
* You will need to review any current tabs to make sure the copy is relevant.
* With the upgraded layout the tab and applications will now live in a larger space. Instead of the 520px limitation, brands can now create imagery 810px wide.
* Application icons (the dimensions are 111×74)
NEW AD ANNOUNCEMENTS
Premium Ads are an effective way for a brand to create ads from their page posts (photo, status, video, question, event or link). These ads put the brand’s voice on the user’s news feed. For fans and their friends, it will expand to show how friends are connected to the brand alongside the message, all in one. This social context appears at no additional cost.
Premium Ads that start from a brand page are flexible, simple and social. They create a seamless experience across interactions on your Page, in your media, and in the News Feeds of people and their friends.
Premium ads are now available and will now be shown in multiple ways:
* Ads appearing on the right-hand side of user homepage (same)
* Ads appearing within a user’s News Feed (both desktop and mobile): A user will not see more than 1 newsfeed ad per day
* Ads to promote Offers: these are free and allows brands to share discounts and promotions to their current fans within Facebook.
* Ads appearing when user’s logout (launching in the coming months)
What’s the difference between these Premium ads and the current Marketplace ads we are currently running, you may ask? These Premium ads are modeled on an impression and reach based model rather than on a cost-per-click model.
Reach Generator: This is a new tool designed to let brands reach all their fans. The average post by a brand page reaches about 16% of the page’s fans for various reasons. Reach Generator lets advertisers reach the other 86% by rerunning status updates as ads aimed at those fans. Fans will see the brand message as a sponsored story on the right-hand side of their homepage or in their news feed on desktop or mobile.
The theme throughout all of these upgrades is engaging and visually appealing content. The News feed section on Facebook is still the most powerful tool a brand page has to engage with their fans, whether the fan is viewing Facebook on a desktop or a mobile device.
Fans and consumers aren’t visiting a brand’s page every day, so the content that we share needs to catch their attention. Continuing to create exciting, relevant and brand related content in our strategies is going to be our most powerful tool moving forward.
-Robin
(Image: Facebook)