If you have a business page on Facebook get ready, Facebook is about to change the look again. For those of you who don’t have a Facebook business page, that’s a whole other topic. Facebook business pages will adopt the same timeline format currently used for personal pages. Implementing the new business page timeline is voluntary for now, but Facebook will automatically publish all business pages in the new format on March 30th, 2012. The Right Mind Marketing Page has already been migrated. Click here to explore our page.

Following are 12 things you need to know about the new Facebook Timeline before March 30th:

1. The first thing you will notice is a large image at the top of your business page. Facebook calls this the Cover Photo. The cover photo is a welcome change as it places a more identifiable brand presence front and center.
2. Keep the Cover photo or change it often. Cover photo size should be 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall. Smaller images will be stretched. Facebook will not allow images that are less than 400 pixels wide, regardless of height. Tip: Make a template this size in your image editor so you don’t have to start from scratch every time you change the image.
3. Facebook says they will not allow you to put promotions, special offers or incentives to like your page in the cover photo.
4. You can pin a post to the top of the timeline for up to 7 days. Great for special offers, announcements or polls.
5. Your Timeline Profile Picture remains the same as in the past. Use it for your logo. The Timeline Profile Picture size must be at least 32x32px but no more than 180x180px.
6. Posts can be hidden from the timeline.
7. Posts can also be “highlighted”. This will stretch the post across the width of the timeline.
8. If you have WordPress or Twitter set-up to automatically post to your Facebook Timeline this will work as it did in the past.
9. Photos and apps are located directly below the the cover photo. It’s placement is now more obvious, but the apps are now hidden with in a drop down. The old 5 tiles of latest images is gone replaced by a single image representing your photos
10. Friend engagement is consolidated in a prominent area directly above the timeline for easy viewing by the page admin.
11. The Facebook Timeline has a new admin panel displaying a quick overview of page insights, new “likes” and messages to the admin. Each of these metrics can be expanded to analyze page activity closely.
12. Admin Messages are now private and can be responded to privately.

A screenshot of the current Facebook Business Page. This will be discontinued March 30th, 2012

Facebook Page After:

This is a screenshot of the new Facebook Page. As you can see the new layout is in the same timeline format used for the personal pages.

Initial thoughts – The new Facebook business pages breathe a bit of fresh air into the stale page design Facebook has been slowly updating. Branding and promotion leap ahead of the previous layout. Unfortunately, the new page design is too similar to personal pages. The new pages should have obvious differentiation from personal pages, so a visitor immediately knows they are not on a personal page. Let us know what you think about the new page layout in the comments below.