Facebook announced that every Page has to switch to the new Timeline layout, and there is a deadline. A lot of the brand managers I follow are groaning about it. I get it, forced change is annoying. But I spent the whole weekend on ours and I actually love most of it.
The big change is that cover photo across the top. Suddenly your Page has a face, a proper first impression instead of a boring column of updates. That is a gift if you use it right.
What I tested
I did not want to just slap a logo up there and call it done, so I tried a few things across the Pages I manage:
- A cover that shows what we do, not just our logo, so a first-time visitor instantly gets it
- A pinned post at the top, so the most important thing is not buried under whatever I posted this morning
- Milestones on the timeline, filling in the story of when we started and what we hit along the way
The pinned post is the sleeper feature. I pinned our best-performing article and watched clicks to it climb for days, just because it stopped scrolling out of view.
The part I am still figuring out
The layout now shows off how active and engaged your Page is. A dead Page looks very dead now. That is a little scary, but honestly it is fair. It pushes you to actually show up.
My takeaway after two days of fiddling: this update rewards Pages that treat Facebook like a place to build a brand, not a place to dump links. Which is where I already wanted to go. So instead of fighting the redesign, I am using it as an excuse to make our Page look like someone actually cares about it. Because someone does.
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