As many Facebook page owners have already seen, it’s been announced that pages are changing their look. Timeline is being integrated, something we’ve only seen with user profiles before.

There are pros and cons with any kind of change, but all pages will be moving over to adopt Timeline on March 30, 2012. So we recommend embracing the new changes and integrating your page early on so you can start to get a feel for how it works. We’ve played around with Timeline for pages and have some great tips for you on how to adapt your page.

Cover Photo

The most substantial change is the addition of a cover photo, which gives you a ton of real estate to play with at the top of your page, with a max size of 851 pixels by 315 pixels. There are some rules to follow, which restrict you from selling anything in your photo or telling people to like your page, but they are really just guiding you to make your cover photo more visual. A few tips:

• Make it interesting and visually rich
• Make it descriptive about who your company is (without being overly wordy)
• Add a tagline or a small amount of text if necessary
• Add pictures of products, services, employees, etc.

This won’t replace your default landing tab (which is no longer included with pages unfortunately), but it is the next best thing. It will be the first thing new users see when they land on your page so it’s a great opportunity to describe to your users who you are. So make sure to keep it short, but powerful and descriptive. Show some personality and add color and design to your page.

Profile Image

The cover photo sits at the top of your profile and is followed up with the profile image. The profile image works in the same way as before, although it’s shown in a much smaller size, 125 pixels by 125 pixels. A few recommendations:

• Make sure it fits in well with your cover photo since it will cover part of it.
• Also make sure these aren’t repetitive.
• Use an image (like your logo) that will work well at the top of your page at a small size and will still look nice in your feed.

Featured Tabs

The new page structure allows for 4 featured tabs, and makes them more prominent than before, which is great. Many people are concerned about losing their default landing tab, but this feature allows you to keep the tab and place it prominently so people can still view it.

You can choose 4 tabs to feature, and they are placed below your cover photo and profile image. If one of these is a custom tab, make sure to include an image with it so that it looks nice and keeps that polished look to your page. Some other ideas:

• Choose 4 tabs that your users will enjoy most
• Take off any tabs that aren’t relevant
• Make sure to pay attention to the order of your tabs, anything beyond 4 will go in the dropdown on the right and be less prominent

Highlighted Posts

Another great new thing about the new structure is highlighted posts and pinned posts, which can help you feature more important posts on your page for your users. Click the star next to a post to make it a highlighted post. This will expand the post to take up the full width of your page, making it more prominent and telling users that it’s more important to read. Click the pencil icon and choose Pin to Top, which keeps the post at the top for a week. Experiment with these handy features to increase interaction and make your profile more interesting.

Overall, we’re pretty excited about the new changes. Anything that helps you make your social media profiles more visual is a good thing in our book. It may take some getting used to, so that’s why we recommend you don’t wait until March 30th. Get started planning and acquainting yourself with the new structure today. By the time March 30th rolls around, you’ll be a Facebook Timeline pro.

What’s your favorite part of the new Facebook page structure?

*If your company needs any help getting started with this change, get in touch with Snoack Studios, we would love to help out!