New Facebook Timeline for Pages – Top 10 Changes for Event Organisers

The new Facebook Timeline creates endless opportunities to refresh your social media strategy.

Read below the top 10 changes for event organisers and how you can benefit from these changes with just a bit of initial work.

Timeline form
The new Facebook fan pages are separated into two main columns by a dividing line which represents the passage of time. To activate your Timeline for your event page, please visit the Timeline for Pages preview manager and select to add Timeline to your pages. You can upgrade anytime until 30th March 2012, at which time new Timeline will automatically become publicly visible for all of your event pages.

Timeline Format
The new Timeline format presents a great opportunity for a much improved brand presence on Facebook. Visually, it’s a huge improvement over the old Facebook fan pages. Get started and use the new opportunities Timelines offers for your event!

Cover photo
The new cover photo offers you a much better opportunity to present your event. At 851 x 315 pixels the cover photo symbolises what your event is all about. But be careful: Don’t use your cover photo for advertising. Covers may not contain price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”. Check the Facebook help centre for information how to choose your cover photo.

About section
The “about section” shows a description of your event or your contact info. Your fans can click through the link to view a map and other basic info. Make sure to fill out a short and catchy description about your event!

Milestones
Adding milestones to your Timeline is really interesting – especially for events. It’s an easy way to present your event’s history from the beginning to today. Milestones can also help to stimulate conversations and discussions. Milestones can be the organisation of your first event as well as top acts that performed on your festival or the first article that was ever published about your event.

Clear navigation bar
There is no left-side menu any more, instead, rectangular panels underneath the cover photo.  Attention: Only three tab panels are viewable at any given time. For this reason, the top three tabs have to be chosen really carefully because that is what visitors see when they visit your page. So take care that you move your ticket tab to the first three!

Tab logos
The tab logos are customisable now. If you have your ticketshop integrated into your Facebook fan page you can now create your own ticket icon and upload it instead of the default ticketscript logo.

Messages
The new Timeline allows fans to send direct, private messages to your fan page. On the one hand thats a huge improve for your interactivity, on the other hand a new “customer service channel“ has been automatically created where you need to answer fans questions. So take care with answering your messages in a timely manner!

Top spots
Top news (for example a post about your headliner) can be fixed for one week. Just click on “edit or remove“ and choose “pin to top“. Your top spot will be identified by a small orange flag.

Real time analytics
Facebook plans to introduce analytics about real-time activities. That will for the first time give administrators visibility about real-time activities on their fan page. The addition to “pages insights” is expected to roll out over the next few weeks.