New Facebook promotional features

As the biggest network online, with nearly 1 in 7 people on the planet as members, changes to Facebook are big news in every industry. When the changes are as sweeping and notable as those that occurred this week at the first ever Facebook fMC event, it’s easy to get lost in the wave of articles, opinion pieces, and analyses that inevitably come.

The three big changes all focus on Facebook Pages, the longstanding home to brands on the social network:

• Timeline: the recently revamped design for individual Facebook profile pages, are coming to all brand Pages on the site, with a 30 day ‘curation’ period to allow brands (and marketers) to prepare
• Reach Generator: a new feature, will allow brands to pay for a guaranteed 75% of their fans to see their content each month, in each individual’s news feed, and;
• Several new ad units: announced as part of the Premium on Facebook offering, making ads from posted Page content, and incorporating them in the news feed, right-hand homepage mini-feed, log-out pages, and for the first time, on mobile devices.

Timeline

While we’ve already covered what Facebook Timeline means for individuals back in September, for brands, there’s a great opportunity to really explain the process behind the product names. In a pharma context, Timeline can walk us through the individuals, discoveries, and hard work that go into creating a treatment that helps people.

If you own a brand page, you need to consider how your page will display in Timeline. Consider the following approach:

• Choose a cover image that complements your logo and profile image.
• Review previous activity on your account, deleting any posts, comments, or images that you feel no longer reflect the visible brand history you want to present.
• Add the key dates and information to your Timeline. For example, founding of the company, when current executives took their roles at the company, the day products were discovered, or became publicly available, etc.
• Familiarize yourself with Timeline’s versions of the standard Facebook moderation tools, including pinned posts, starred posts, and the ability to hide posts.

For other details about Facebook pages, check out the guide produced by Facebook.

Reach Generator

If you qualify, you can purchase an extra bump to your Facebook results, with a guarantee of reaching 75% of them, by using a new service called Reach Generator. This service uses sponsored stories to ensure that the brand’s message gets in front of its fans.

Premium on Facebook

Premium is also called “Premium Ads” as per the document leaked last week. This service gives preferred access to more areas including:

• Right column: the current ads area
• News feed on page: as expected
• News feed on mobile: the first confirmed access to mobile
• Logout page: unclear benefit, does anyone log out of Facebook?

Ads breaking into mobile is potentially the biggest news of all – with 44% of Facebook’s user base visiting from mobile devices, finding a way to engage users in brand experiences on tablets and smartphones has to be a top priority for the leading social network.