Just as we thought we had everything (everything?) under control in the social media arena, Facebook released a new format for brand pages last month called Timeline. The feature was actually introduced last year but, before 30th March 2012, activating Timeline on brand pages was voluntary. And like with so many FB features - not so voluntary anymore.

Anyhow, like everyone else we're working hard to make our page look its best, so we updated it last week (just before this mandatory Makeover kicked in). Visit EUROBYTE on Facebook to see an example of how these new FB pages now look like. And if you "like it", you'll be our hero :)

Use these new features to your marketing advantage by featuring an attractive, focused cover photo that your guests will see as soon as they go to your page. Ideal photo size is 850 x 315 pixels. And be sure to read Facebook’s guidelines, as cover photos can't contain any of the following:

• price or purchase info (e.g. "save 20%")
• contact details
• any reference to user interface elements (e.g. "like us")
• calls to action (e.g. "call us now")

We, of course, didn't (initially) read the guidelines (who needs those anyway?), so we had to go back and change the cover photo to exclude a call to action; it's a temporary fix with a Happy Easter message and we'll need to think of something else next week. So much for not doing our homework :)

Apart from cover photos, there are quite a few (other) new features that you can use to make your business page more attractive and more interesting such as pinning a post to the top of your Timeline (no matter how old the post is), communicating with a fan/client directly (not for everyone to see), etc.

Happy Optimising!