Here’s What Facebook’s Timeline Looks Like for a Local Business

Filed in Small Biz Marketing, Social Media by Matt McGee on February 29, 2012

Facebook is making a bunch of new and important announcements today as part of its first fMC marketing conference, and with so many small and local business relying on Facebook to find and reach customers, this stuff is important.

One of the main announcements today is the launch of Facebook’s Timeline for Pages — i.e., businesses and organization with a Facebook Page will now have the same Timeline interface that regular users have. And during one of the smaller breakout sessions at fMC, Facebook showed an example of a Timeline-based Page for a local business using the facility where Facebook’s event is happening.

facebook-page-timeline-local

That’s the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and you can see the page itself right now.

The page shows the business’s address, phone and hours right below the logo, along with how the business has categorized itself in Facebook’s system. The address links to a Bing map, just like the larger “Map” icon and link does to the right.

In the lower right on the screenshot above is friend activity related to the business. It shows which friends have “liked” the business, which friends have checked-in to the business, photos they’ve uploaded, etc. It shows how the business is related to the user viewing the page. (You might not see this if you visit the live page, unless you have friends connected to the museum.)

I think the new Timeline-based Page offers a much more visually compelling experience, and gives businesses the chance to have a “history” on Facebook just like normal users do. But it also eliminates custom tab landing pages, which have always been recommended as a great way to increase engagement, “likes” and so forth. So there are some pros and cons. I’ll be interested to watch how local businesses adapt to the new Facebook Pages with Timeline.

Your turn: What are your thoughts on the new Pages? Whether you’re a local business owner or a marketer, comments are open.

Comments (12)

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  1. I see on the timeline that it has above the “about” text, address, number, and other info clearly on the timeline.
    How is this done as it my admin it clearly doesn’t show how this is done.

  2. Took some doing to figure out that the ideal size for the cover image is 850 x 315 pixels. Its not posted in the Facebook documentation.

  3. I know that, what i mean, is the bit below the logo. It starts off with – Education and has the address, number and opening times below. How do you do that? Not even facebook tutorials tell you that and it virtually tells you everything else. It would be cool to know how its done. http://www.learnfacebookpages.com/

  4. Matt McGee says:

    Steven – I would assume it’s grabbing that info right from the business/account profile, isn’t it? When I preview my wife’s Facebook timeline page, it already has the street address and phone number in there.

  5. Is that personal or business. It’s not grabbing it from my business one.

    • Matt McGee says:

      Steven – this is all referring to Pages for businesses, not personal profiles. Your URL is a UK domain, so you might have a different experience at this point. I don’t know.

  6. As a marketer, one of the great things about the business pages was that you could easily see how many people like the page. Now the only thing that I can tell (only from the picture) is that you can only see how many friends like the page.

    If I had the decision, I would choose to display the amount of total “likes” or “fans” a page has clearly to leverage the power of social proof.

    • Matt McGee says:

      David – whether or not the Likes number shows up is up to the Page owner, I think. Pretty sure they can rearrange which four things show up by default below the big photo. Like, on the museum’s page, you have to click the little “3” on the far right to see the three other widgets that are hidden. One of those is “Likes.” if you then click the “Likes” text link, you’ll actually see more stats than before.

      Hope that makes sense. Hard to explain.

  7. John says:

    Steven – you need to click ‘Manage’ then ‘Edit Page’ then ‘Basic Information’ – and that box picks up whatever is written in the ‘About’ box (directly below ‘Founded’ and above ‘Company Overview’)

  8. Hello Matt, yes i’m agree with u.As a small business owner i use facebook like others.Recently facebook launches new timeline but i didn’t like it although its better than before.
    If it changes something like what you told than I think its friendly for small business. Anyway hope Mark will change it recently.