How Facebook Redesign Creates Opportunities for Your Business
Facebook has raised the bar in how brands should interact in order to be successful with a new Timeline design for pages.
As a pool professional, you are selling the pool experience, not a hole in the ground. What better way to do that than through engaging content and stories on Facebook! Let’s highlight some key changes that just took place last week, and focus on the areas of opportunity for you.
Cover Photo and Profile Picture
Before we dig into the cover photo, we must first disclaim that there are no more Welcome Pages. We cannot create a landing tab application anymore – more on tabs in a minute – everyone will be directed to your Timeline first. This is a big opportunity to grab them through your cover photo and profile image.
Your cover photo can sell the pool experience. You can use a photo of an award-winning pool, a photo of your service staff to personify your brand or show a happy family swimming in a pool to sell family memories to the Pool Mom. You can get even more creative and incorporate the profile picture into the cover photo design like what we did on the Pool Marketing Site Facebook brand page.
Facebook guidelines have pretty strict rules with what’s allowed and not allowed on your cover photo. For more information or to consult with us for your new cover photo and profile picture design, please contact us.
Tab Applications
Before the new design, we could create custom tab applications for you and place them under the profile picture. The new Timeline design has shifted where these tabs are placed to under the cover photo. Up to four tab applications will appear at a time, with the first one always being your photos. This is Facebook’s way to coax you into uploading engaging, shareable photos! You can have up to 12 tab applications, but only the first four will show. Fans can click the small arrow to the right of your apps to see the rest, so make the most of the first three slots! 
You may be wondering, “What will happen to my old tabs?” Your tab application designs will be shifted to the new Timeline format, but they will be the wrong dimensions. The new tab application is much wider (which is good because it’s like more ad space!).
You can still link to these tab applications directly as a workaround for landing pages. When you promote a Facebook contest or e-newsletter signup form, there is a setting to share the tab application web address so you can lead people directly to your content within your brand page. This is important for any of your online advertising efforts and cross-promotions.
Personal Brand Experience
Facebook’s new Timeline design for brand pages is meant to create a more personalized and engaging experience for your fans. When someone lands on your Timeline, below the cover photo and tab applications is a rundown of their friends who have a relationship with your company. This is huge for word of mouth marketing and credibility. This feature will pre-qualify you to the potential fan if they already know their friends like you. This is much more prominent than before to help create a personalized experience on Facebook.
If your fans or their friends are talking about you on Facebook, that will appear beneath the list of common friends. Keep in mind, this can be good and bad comments, but there is significant power in this word of mouth being in all one place, especially from people your potential fans (i.e. leads) know. You can encourage word of mouth marketing within Facebook through incentive campaigns. We’d love to help.
Content is king
Your status updates and photo uploads are much more prominent on this design. You can also “pin” posts to the top of your Timeline for up to seven days, such as specials and weekly promotions. You can “highlight” a post so that it takes up the entire width of your Timeline. This is a great feature if you’re showing off a recent, beautiful pool project.
The more engaging content you post, the more likely you’ll get fan interaction on your page, which will then appear to the friends of your fans. Can you imagine the potential?
Learn how you can grow your fan base here.
About Small Screen Producer
Small Screen Producer is a full service, marketing firm located in Houston, Texas that specializes in online digital media marketing through a 4-step process. Step 1: WE PLAN a custom web presence strategy for your business through website design and development, mobile development, social media account creation and branding. STEP 2: We then POSITION your brand through Pay-Per-Click advertising and search engine optimize tactics that include on-page and off-page SEO that are Google and Bing approved. STEP 3: We then PROMOTE your brand using an Inbound marketing strategy or a content marketing strategy to help you accomplish your marketing goals. We do this through blogging, video production, infographics, call-to-actions, landing pages, and free educational offers. We help you build trust and rapport with your customer base. STEP 4: We then PROTECT your brand’s web presence with a reputation management program that monitors social media and on line reviews. Get started today with a free online marketing assessment of your company’s web presence. Your company deserves it.