All Facebook Pages Will Automatically Change to Timeline On March 30th! What You Need To Do Today.

We shared the exciting updates from Facebook regarding the new Timeline capabilities for Fan Pages a few weeks back. It was a voluntary option back then. But, as of tomorrow, all fan Pages will become Timeline.

Publish your new fan Page Timeline by tomorrow, or Facebook will automatically create a default for you.

So now is the time! Go to your Page on Facebook (log in as yourself) and hit Publish Now.

Here’s an example, showing the transition from our old Webtrends Page to our new Timeline:

What You Need To Do

Below is a list of the Timeline features you should incorporate that will help you pump up your Page, and ultimately help boost your fan engagement:

1.	Upload a Cover Photo

The cover photo is a prominent, eye-candy picture that displays on top of your Timeline Page. It can be up to 851px by 315px. Be mindful of Facebook’s policies about your cover photo.Cover photos cannot include:

• Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”.
• Contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your Page’s “About” section.
• References to Facebook features or actions, such as “Like” or “Share” or an arrow pointing from the cover photo to any of these features.
• Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”.
• Covers must not be false, deceptive or misleading, and must not infringe on third parties’ intellectual property

2.

‘Pin’ or ‘Highlight’ your most important or engaging posts, each week Hover over a story (any type of Facebook post: status update, photo, link, video) and ‘pin’ it so it displays at the top of your Timeline. Posts can stay ‘pinned’ for up to 7 days, so make sure to repeat the process every week with different featured posts. You can also click on the star icon on top right corner of a story to ‘Highlight’ a post, which will enlarge that post to the full width of your Timeline.

3.

Select the order of your App icons Photos, Likes, Events and Apps are now found at the top of your Page, directly under the cover photo, showing as App icons that users can click on. You can customize the position of these App icons (Photos is a default App that you cannot move) and display 3 additional Apps of your choice that will be featured here. Users can click on an arrow to browse through your additional Apps, up to a maximum of 12 .

4.	Update your App thumbnails

With Timeline, your App thumbnail is no longer 75×75 pixels but displays as a 111x74px image. You can adjust these images by clicking to ‘Manage’ from the Admin Panel, choose ‘Edit Page’ in the drop-down menu. Under the ‘Apps’ section, click ‘Edit Settings’ for the specific app image you’d like to adjust and it will allow you to change the image, and the name of that App.

5.	Take advantage of the larger App width

The width of the new tabs are 810px by default, and Apps can either be set to 520px or 810px wide on a Page tab now. To take advantage of this full width, publish your App in the WebTrends Social platform using the Advanced Publish flow. Then, make sure to update your App Settings on Facebook by selecting the ‘Wide’ (810px) option in the Developer App (https://developers. facebook.com/apps) under ‘Edit App’. If you have published your Apps with the Easy Publish flow, they will still be displayed with the narrow width of 520px (centered in the Page tab). We will soon update this to 810px wide and notify you prior to the change.
We encourage you to start updating your apps to the full 810px width now!

6.	Manage your Page through the Admin Panel

Use the Admin Panel to view Page Insights and keep track of new activity on your fan Page. Facebook users (whether they are your Page fans or not) can now contact you privately using direct messages. Notifications about new messages will appear right in your Admin Panel. Make sure to respond promptly to your users and keep your community management going!