How do the new Facebook Pages Timeline affect you?

Screen Shot from the Information Page on Facebook

It's been a flurry of activity in the LileStyle office where we spent the entire day listening and reading about the new Facebook Timeline for Brand Pages announcement.

Many are asking the same questions we were asking... "What happened to the landing pages?"

Facebook specifically dodged and avoided all questions regarding landing pages, but it is clear that the option is no longer available under the management tab with the new timeline feature. You can have custom tabs (which most landing pages are), but you cannot send new traffic to a specific tab. All new traffic will now go to the default home screen for your page.

So why hasn't Facebook just said, "We dumped this feature.."?

Our assumption is that Facebook has not yet decided to scrap this ability, but will wait to see what kind of feedback they will get once people realize it is not there. So they are remaining tight-lipped, but we also know that there are new features coming that have not made it to the test site as of yet.

Those changes include:

1. Administration levels.

No admin is created equal so they are creating 5 admin levels which would mean that you could avoid the problem of having a disgruntled admin kick everyone off the page and take over. This is great news for anyone with multiple admins on a page.

2. Real-time insights.

Insights currently operate with a several day delay so it may take that long to see how well your posts are doing. With real-time insights, we'll get to see immediately how the post is being engaged with, and we'll be allowed to make edits to the post to create more engagement. This is a great tool that can be used for fine-tuning your message.

So what's new?

Some the the biggest changes that are in place right now:

1. Message feature.

We know that people are trying to figure out how to message their fans. Facebook has brought us ONE step closer by adding a "message" button to the page.  You have the option to not display this feature, but the default is set to be there.  This allows followers to open up a message box to send a message to the page.  It will show up in the admin area for all of the admins to see and respond to right from the interface.

As far as we can tell, this does not mean that the page can just randomly message followers, rather it is a one-way request for conversation that must be initiated by the follower.

2. Custom Cover Creation.

This will be an amazing way to create a more dynamic page because you can change your cover out as often as you like.  Watch the video below to learn how to create and change your cover.

3. Custom Application Icons.

Now you can create custom Application Icons and replace the old ones with something that better ties in the theme of your page.  Take a look at LiveStrong's page and how the application tabs match the cover:

Watch the video below to learn how to change your application tabs.


4.  New Admin Panel.

The admin panel is now streamlined to show you what you want to know at a glance. This is also where you can find the message panel to respond to messages.

How to customize your Page

Watch this informational video where we walk you through the changes and show you how to customize your page: