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Timeline For Brand Pages

March 1, 2012 by

This morning Facebook announced changes to their business pages, aligning the layout more closely with the recently released personal timeline. A preview is being offered to page admins so they can organise the creation of artwork and making their page look as good as it did previously.

The key changes are:

  • Cover image – A full width image at the top of your page in which we can place beautiful brand imagery. There is to be no call to action in the cover image.
  • Apps - Can now be 850px wide (it was 540px) meaning we can make the page look significantly ‘nicer’ and more strongly brand led.
  • We have room for just 3 hero tabs – meaning we may have to be more selective in what is featured.
  • Welcome Pages/Fan Gates - Have effectively been removed. All people visiting the page will land on the Timeline with no differentiator between page ‘Likers’ and non-’Likers’.
  • Pinning Posts – We can pin a post to the top of the Timeline (similar to a sticky post in WordPress).

The pages are live today for brands to start experimenting with. We can publish the new timeline whenever we want to, however on the 31st of March it will be mandatory to use the new format.

We’re really excited about this change – with a strong image based interface, the user experience will become even better and we will be able to provide, richer more engaging apps, creative designs and ideas in the Facebook environment.

Coca-Cola were one of Facebook’s roll out partners on this project and have their Timeline live. They’ve used strong imagery in their cover photo and added notable moments in the companies history dating back to its founding in 1886.

coca-cola facebook timeline

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Daniel is the Group Account Director at Young & Shand. Connect with me on Google+.

Mobile: 022 042 6613   Email: daniel.phillips@youngshand.com

This Week In Digital Marketing 13-17 Feb: Facebook’s Timeline is Coming For Brands, Introducing Inbound.org, DuckDuckGo Hits 1 Million Daily Searches

February 17, 2012 by

This week in digital marketing search newcomer DuckDuckGo has its first one million search day, Two prominent internet marketers start Inbound.org, Facebook’s Timeline coming for brands and 7 Facebook Sponsored stories ad tactics to help brands.

Facebook’s Timeline Coming For Brand Pages

Mashable logo

Facebook will begin its roll out of timeline for brands at the end of the month if reports from AdAge are true. Initially only a handful of brands will have beta access. One issue that may pop up is the lack of information above the fold on timeline pages, another pointed out by a Mashable commenter is what is to happen to tabs, a hugely important feature for brands which can hold competitions, games, welcome pages and more. The report believes the announcement will be made at Facebook’s fMC event on the 29th of this month. Read the mashable article here.

Introducing Inbound.org

Inbound.org is a new website from two of the internets most prolific inbound marketers, Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz and Dharmesh Shah of HubSpot. The site’s goal is to provide the best content from inbound marketers on the web, offering content creators a new means of exposure and marketers with new knowledge. The site features a reddit-esque voting system which allows the sites users to determine what content is worthy of being on the front page. Sign ins are currently handled via Twitter, which gives you access to vote and comment on submissions. Read the article here.

DuckDuckGo Has its First Day of One Million Searches

Search Engine Land logo

DuckDuckGo, a search engine you may not have heard of, is experiencing rapid growth in the search market on the back of privacy fears around Google. DuckDuckGo has had its first day of one million searches. This is nothing on the big boys like Google and Yahoo but considering one year ago nearly to the day, they had a mere 176,000 daily searches, their growth becomes quite apparent. You can see thier historical traffic stats here, or read the article here.

7 Facebook Sponsored Story Tactics

All Facebook lolo

AllFacebook have compiled a list with some great uses of the new sponsored stories ads. Promoting a video is ideal with sponsored stories as the user can play the video in the ad itself, increasing views. Sponsored stories can display ads to friends of your fans, these ads show ‘social context’, so the person that sees the ad will be shown ‘John Smith Likes Brand X’ hopefully increasing the like rate. A solution to low engagement is being offered with the ability to include a post in the ad so more users can like/comment on it. Read the rest of the tips here.

On A Lighter Note…

A video showing a fathers rant on his daughters Facebook post went viral this week, as its over the top conclusion made headlines across the web. After a 6 minute rant the man pulls out a .45 calibre hand gun and unleashes a few rounds into his daughters laptop. Check the video out below…

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Sean is a Digital Account Executive at Young & Shand.

Phone: +64 9 282 4680   Mobile: 021 029 35410   Email: sean.lewis@youngshand.com

This Week In Digital Marketing 30-3 Feb: LinkedIn 277% More Effective For Lead Gen, 5 Ways To Take Advantage Of The New YouTube and Facebook Leads In Display Ad Impressions

February 3, 2012 by

This week in digital marketing LinkedIn found to be more the 277% effective in lead gen over Facebook & Twitter, 5 Ways to brand your Youtube channel, Facebook leads in display ad impressions by a significant margin and Google’s latest algorithm update targets pages with too many ads.

LinkedIn 277% More Effective For Lead Generation Than Facebook & Twitter

Hubspot logo

In a study of over 5000 businesses released by HubSpot, LinkedIn was found to have the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.74%. This figure is significantly more than Facebooks’ 0.77% and Twitters’ 0.69%. They provide a few tips for leveraging your business’ social, such as growing you network with quality contacts rather than quantitiy. Post content that is quality and has proven results, use what works best in your network. Finally, keep testing, analyzing your data, and increasing your results! Read the article at HubSpot here.

5 Ways To Brand Your New YouTube Channel

Social media examiner logo

Youtube’s new design brings more than just a new interface, with video and channel customisation key changes in the recent update. These changes introduce a more engaging brand experience on your channel, with some people reporting increased click-through-rates as a result of the changes. 5 tips are provided in the article for branding your channel. Use overlays on your videos to provide people watching your videos a call to action by promoting them. You can prevent other ads from displaying on your videos if you wish, by checking the box: “Prevent ads from showing in my videos on this page”. Send users to the feed tab on your channel, in this view they can see your recent activity and have the ability to comment, the goal is to increase user engagement. Read the full article here.

Facebook Leads In Display Ad Impressions

Mashable logo

Facebook’s share of display advertising impressions has reached 28%, reported ComScore, extending the lead as the top display network. ComScore has regarded Facebook as the leader in display impressions since 2009. Yahoo is some way behind in second place holding an 11% share, with Google, Microsoft, and AOL share sitting at 5% apiece. Read the details at Mashable here.

Google’s Newest Algorithm

Search Engine Watch logo

Google’s latest algorithm update, which Google Engineer Matt Cutts calls, “Page Layout algorithmic improvement” will affect 1 percent of searches globally, targeting websites that have too many ads visible when the user arrives at the page. This update aimed at providing searchers with results that have a better user experience, websites splattered with ads are ugly and their layout is generally poor. Read the article at Search Engine Watch here.

On A Lighter Note…

This cool interactive billboard comes from BMW. Set up in major South African cities, users could interact using their iPads. Check out the video…

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Sean is a Digital Account Executive at Young & Shand.

Phone: +64 9 282 4680   Mobile: 021 029 35410   Email: sean.lewis@youngshand.com

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