For the past few weeks I have received numerous calls and e-mails on the topic of Facebook Brand Pages & the Timeline roll-out. There have been many discussions with Facebook, with those in the industry and internally looking past the roll out and how strategies will need to be adjusted based on the new direction.
All of the feedback pointed to the fMC or Facebook Marketing Conference on the 29th as the location to unveil Timeline centric brand pages. And with official outlets now reporting what we have known for a while now, such as Mashable’s post today, Timeline brand pages will be announced on leap year.
Since the roll-out of Timeline for general users, it was not an “if” but a “when” will brands have access to Timeline and what does this mean for a current brands strategy. What will happen to custom landing tabs? How will Timeline impact brand engagement and what about my custom apps?
There will be a phase of growing pains as brands transition and I will take a wait and see approach and follow up with a post shortly after the official roll-out as to not drive additional speculation, but there will be some potential changes that will definitely require a new approach in terms of user flow, especially if you deploy tactics that map paid elements to custom tabs to drive a specific user action.
You can see evidence of the shift toward Timeline support in some of the changes that are already rolling out on the self-service ad platform as well as the recent introduction of Timeline based apps and the desire to incorporate new verbs into users newsfeeds as well as expand the footprint of frictionless 3rd party services into Facebook.
Even before we had a date we had begun sharpening our pencils and reviewing current strategies to ensure that the new direction continues to support brand goals & objectives. I am definitely looking forward to the announcements on the 29th.
You can livestream the fMC event directly from their site.
Follow Tom Edwards @BlackFin360
