It’s been about two years since Facebook introduced their timelines, and a short while after that, pages were forced to conform. To this day, people still mention that they wish they had their old Facebook page back. Here are a few different tips on how to get the most out of the Facebook Timeline system for business pages.
The UI on the timeline pages makes it impossible to navigate and it’s too cluttered. Even though Facebook is one of the most used social media outlets for marketing, many people don’t have the time to look at the little things to see what they can try to customize. It’s not just about the OCD of making it look clean but it also allows the page to be more streamlined for potential clients. And although there is no ability to completely customize your timeline, there are some tweaks that you can do to help you manage and organize it.
1: ‘It’s cluttered’
You will now see a down arrow tip on your post when you post something on your page. If you can’t see it, hover over the top right part of your post and it should appear. When you click it, it brings you to a drop down menu. Click the star that says highlight.
2: ‘The pictures are cropped awkward and I would prefer to choose the composition.’
When you highlight an image it will cater more towards horizontal photographs. Depending on the shot, your subject may not be in the part that is shown automatically. This is something you can change as well. If click the arrow again it will pop up with an option to ‘reposition photo.’ You can slide the photo up and down to best show the composition of it.
3: ‘It consolidates all my pictures into one post’
If you post more than one photo at a time Facebook will consolidate your images into one post. If you are only posting a couple photos, most likely you will want Facebook to show them both off on your page. If you don’t mind it you can leave it. But if you prefer that they be shown individually you can ungroup the photos.
4: ‘I don’t want it to show when other people post on my page.’
There is a difference between not allowing fans to post on your page and not allowing others to see what is posted on your page from fans. Be it either rude customers, or other photographers ‘stopping by to say hi!’ from their page, some people don’t want them to show. Go to edit page > edit settings > post visibility. You can set it to hide or allow, you can also choose to highlight a box on your main page.
5: ‘I don’t want to have to deal with another inbox.’
People have been annoyed with yet another messaging feature. The nice thing is you don’t have to deal with it. You can also turn this feature off underneath the same edit settings panel as the previous fix. Uncheck “Allow people to contact my Page privately by showing the Message button.”
6: ‘I want to show a promotion in my cover photo.’
Well this is against facebook policy but there is another feature, you can pin something to the top of your page so its the same post for 7 days. Just click the arrow and then pick “pin to top.” It won’t allow you to highlight the photo but it will be the first thing they see when they arrive on your page. We currently have our September travel schedule posted so that if someone new comes to our page, they can see if we are going to be in their area any time soon.
