The word on the street (mainly Business Insider) is that Facebook is set to launch Timeline for Brand pages. Some people are saying this could happen as early as the end of February. At the moment Facebook is busy forcing Timeline on its regular users on a global scale. It appears that the next step is going to be for that same rollout to Brand Pages.
Timeline is essentially a complete redesign of your Facebook page, which turns every status update, photo posted, check-in, and comments into a visually appealing online story of your life. Which of course you can edit out all of the bad stuff if you want to. In essence it tells the story you want to be told.
Image from Mashable.com
The question is how will Facebook Timeline affect Brand Pages, what will having your brand on a timeline do for your online marketing or branding. How will companies be able to use the apps to better sell their products or get new fans.
Personally I think this is a golden idea if the developers and marketers play their cards right. Using the same principal as Spotify, there could be a button on the page of a clothing store that the user could click “saying hey look what I just looked at” and an automatic feed would go out to all of their friends. Of course if you want to view it, then you have to become a fan of their Facebook Page. This same concept could be used when products are purchased or even posted to Pinterest. Of course this could also ruin the page and completely mess up organization as it will be difficult to have tabs, such as competition tabs.
These are some simple ideas that I came up with after thinking about this for about a minute, so I can only imagine what the brilliant minds at Facebook and other brands will come up with. I am asking that anyone who reads this blog post a comment with your own ideas about how Facebook Brand Timeline Pages will change the game. Will it help or hurt social media marketing?
At this point in time a Facebook spokesperson said: “…we believe that consistency in both functionality and appearance increase use of Facebook. We hope to make Pages more consistent with the Timeline in the future, but we have nothing further to share at this time.” Which means they are simply remaining mum on the subject. However there is an invitation only conference on February 29th called Facebook Marketing Conference. Do you think they’ll make the announcement?
