7 best practices that small businesses can follow to leverage on facebook's timeline
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7 Best Practices that
Small Businesses Can
Follow to Leverage on Facebook's
Timeline
After Facebook automatically converted business fan pages to
Timeline design, many are having a hard time adapting to such a
change. If you are one of those who aren’t happy with the shift, it is
important that you do not waste your time complaining.
After all, Timeline is here to stay and you won’t be able to do
anything about it except to take advantage of what it has to offer.
You may not know it , but Facebook Timeline actually
brings more branding opportunity for your business.
It doesn’t matter if you only have little budget allotted for your social media marketing because you can have your own share of your target market for free over at Facebook.
Below are some useful practices you can follow to make a buzz for your business using the features and tools available on Timeline.
Timeline is more visual than the earlier version of Facebook pages, and this is the perfect opportunity for you to get your camera or your
Smartphone to work for you.
Images count, so take the time to snap photos
This will show your fans how your business works from the inside and it is also a human-centric approach
to build awareness about your brand.
In a new eye-tracking study, it has been found that most consumers pay more attention to a brand’s
cover photo than any other posts on the wall.
Make a lasting first impression with your cover and profile photos
This goes to show that since your cover photo is the first thing that people get to see when they visit your page, you need to channel your creative juices and make a high resolution cover photo that captures the real essence of your brand to make an excellent first
impression.
Change the cover photo as often as you like, but make sure that you do
not tout promotions, contact details, pricing discounts and
purchasing information as all these are against Facebook’s guidelines.
Of course, do not forget the traditional profile photo that is situated in the lower left hand
corner of your cover photo. This is the perfect spot where you can
place your company’s logo. Such a thumbnail image will define your brand since it will accompany all
the comments and posts you make.
Timeline may seem like all things chronological, but this isn’t actually the case. You can now draw more attention to one of your posts by
highlighting it.
Pin or Highlight key information like you would on your cork board
Simply choose the star icon on the right corner at the top of any of
your post and this will automatically be updated across
the width of your page.
Meanwhile, if you would like to extend the life of your post for
seven more days, you can do so by pinning it. For example, if you have
a contest going on and your post about it is being pushed back by
newer posts,
simply hover to the right corner of that post and choose the “Pin to
Top” option underneath the pencil icon. When you do pin a post, it
becomes larger and it becomes the first item in your Timeline, staying
there for a week.
Functioning like a scrapbook, though in a digital format,
Timeline is the most ideal platform to tell your business’s story.
Give due credit to your businesses milestones
Hence, in order to let your fans know the most important events in
your business, take the time to compile a list of the key days of
your enterprise such as when it was established and product launches
just to name a few.
Don’t forget to include photos. Milestones make it possible for consumers to know more about your business accomplishments and they are a great feature to subtly market your product or
service.
Just below your cover photo are the applications that get more visibility
compared to your posts. You can organize these applications to make your page less
cluttered and you can even take advantage of other custom-built apps on
Facebook to customize your page.
Organize and customize your applications
Analytics wise, Facebook provides you with all the help you need to
track the metrics around your content. By carefully analyzing the
trends on the way how users engage with your posts,
Take cue from your insights
you will better understand which ones generate more attention and if
your efforts are yielding better results. So, take advantage of the insights wisely to improve your
content.
You have to understand that all of your Facebook marketing efforts will go
down the drain if you do not give time to engage with your fans. Bear in mind that communication is always the key to keep people coming back to your
page.
Give love and engage with thy fans
Therefore, create posts that will grab the attention of your visitors.
Interesting questions can trigger conversations and responding back to
your fans’ queries is a great way to send them the message that you are listening to what they have to say.
Likewise, you might want to run contests, show off the photos of your
fans, or send a shout out to them to let them feel how much you value their
loyalty.
As you can see, you can make Facebook Timeline your best friend when it comes to building buzz about
your brand. All it takes is for you to make use of the available tools and take the time to make engaging and
compelling content hat worthy to liked and shared.