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If you haven’t been converted to the new Business Page layout for Facebook, you soon will. While it may seem that we just recently underwent a major change, the “timeline for business pages” rollout was over 2 years ago. As with most Facebook changes the design is taken from the personal profile page, then is slightly tweaked to fit the additional features for business.

Let’s take a look at some of the many changes in the new Timeline For Business Pages

NAVIGATION

An improvement has been made in the navigation to various administrator functions for the page. Rather than take up a lot of real estate for notifications and statistics, the admin panel has been condensed into FOUR tabs across the top.

• PAGE – your business page
• ACTIVITY – Comments, likes, new likes, and messages. Be sure to check here often or you may miss interaction or private message to your business page.
• INSIGHTS – Access to the full analytics, metrics and history of your page performance
• SETTINGS – Central place to make edits to your page, how content is displayed, admin roles, app visibility, security and more.

A quick week at a glance activity bar has been placed to the right of the Cover Photo. Hovering over each of the status reports will display more information.

IMAGE SIZING

While the dimensions for the Cover Photo (851×315) and the Profile Picture (180×180) stay the same, the profile picture was moved up into the display of the cover photo more. If you have created custom imagery for your cover and profile pic, you may need to adjust the images to display properly again.

• Cover Photo (851×315)
• Profile Picture (180×180 – but displays as 160×160)
• Timeline Photos (504×504) – Recommended upload size is 1200×1200
• Mobile Photos (618×618)
• Shared Links
  • Newsfeed: 470x246px If image is smaller than this size, it will render as a square thumbnail
  • Timeline: 484x252px
  • Mobile: 560×292

PAGE DISPLAY

The biggest changes to timeline is the elimination of the dual columned status update display (THANK GOODNESS). Now as users scroll there is a single feed of updates. All content like reviews, map, posts by others on your wall, photos, upcoming page events, mentions of your business page and third party apps / contests have been moved to the left side with status updates having more real estate on the right.

HIGHLIGHTING IMAGES – With the movement to a single column display the feature to highlight a status update or image across both sides of the timeline is no longer available. Old status updates and milestone events have been sized to fit into a single column.

THIRD PARTY APPS – If you have created or used apps from third parties like WOOBOX or SHORTSTACK, the prominence of their display under the cover photo is no longer available. Links to these apps can be arranged as links below the cover photo but all your apps now live on the left side of the page in their own area under the ABOUT section.

ADS MANAGER

The ads manager and promote page options are now located under Build Audience.

FEATURES THAT MAY HAVE GONE AWAY

Occasionally I would use the feature “Use Facebook As BUSINESS NAME” and comment on other business page status updates. This was a good way to get brand awareness and increased visibility for your page. At this point, I am not able to find this feature on the new business page layout. If you find it, please let me know.

Overall I think the general look and feel is a definite improvement. It may take a few days to get used to the placement of content but you will quickly find it to be more streamlined and user friendly. What do you think of the new layout?

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