How to Leverage Facebook's Timeline Tool

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Facebook's new "Timeline" profile page will make your brand's
identity on the world's most popular social network that much more
dynamic, enabling you to tell a story about your company's roots and
what matters most to you.

Timeline isn't available for brands quite yet, but it should be soon. We're hearing that brands could get their hands on Timeline by the end of February, even. Until then, here's everything you need to know about using the tool further your brand's presence online.

Cover photo banners

One of Timeline's most visible features is that your page now
includes a giant header image alongside your small conventional
"profile picture."

Using your page-spanning Cover Photo you can advertise new products,
team members or your company logo. The Cover Photo is meant to be a
canvas for any way you want to visually express yourself or your
company's creativity.

"Life events"

Timeline encourages you to plot "life events" on your profile page,
like a wedding, graduation or other accomplishment. Once Timeline
launches for brands, your company will be able to illustrate a visual
history of your business that people can engage with.

These events, which will likely go by a different name once Timeline
for brands launches, will let you highlight crucial moments during
your company's history, past or present.

For example, you might want to create an "event" with an
accompanying picture for when your company broke the 1,000 employee
mark. The picture attached to this event will span the width of the
page. Below the picture is a comment box for people to "like" and make
comments about the picture you've highlighted.

Or, you might create an event for when you launched a new product,
like a new basketball shoe for example. The picture you post of the new
shoe will be very visible to anyone who visits your Timeline.

These events dominate the landscape of your Timeline page as you
scroll down and are obvious bullet points for people that visit your
profile page. They are expanded status updates for all intents and
purposes.

Polls, photos, apps and events on Timeline

Just like with your previous Facebook
brand page, Timeline lets you place interactive content on your page,
including Polls, Events people can RSVP to and photos of your team and
company.

But now, these kinds of content types populate boxes on your Timeline that summarize activity within each respective category.

For example, on the old Facebook profile, you'd have to navigate to
Polls in the left navigation bar of a brand page to interact with
polls. Now, Polls will have their own "tile" and box where users can
interact with your poll, right in the middle of all your status
updates, events and pictures.

Sharing external content on Timeline

One cool Timeline feature is that if you visit a partner's Timeline
page, you can choose to share one of their updates and have their
update appear on your Timeline. In this way, you can intermix internal
and external content on your Timeline.

Not every update on your Timeline need be an update from your team.
You can display your company's diverse interests by posting links and
sharing content from the Timelines of others.

The verdict


Whenever Timeline launches for brands, it will be a great
opportunity for you to engage people in a new, visual way. It'll
definitely be worth your time.