Mark Your Calendars: New Facebook Timeline for Brands to Launch Wednesday (We Think)

PR Daily is reporting that tomorrow, March 1, is the likely launch date for Facebook’s Timeline for brand pages. 

Love it or hate it, the Facebook Timeline is the new reality of our interactions on the social media behemoth. While we don’t have all the answers as to what this launch means for brands, it seems safe to assume that marketers’ number one priority will be determining how the timeline layout impacts the look and feel of a page. From there, social media teams should plan to act quickly to create an aesthetic that capitalizes on the personal emotions that are supposed to be evoked by the layout of the timeline—talk about a huge amount of branding real estate to capitalize on!

PR Daily, Mashable and other reports also indicate that new “Gestures” could be launched to take interactions one (or many) steps beyond “liking” something online. From a social media metrics standpoint, this would expand how marketers can/need to think about customer engagement strategies—similar to how we all needed to graduate beyond fan and follower numbers several years ago as the true measure of social media program value evolved.

If I were you, I’d block some time on your calendar to coordinate with your social media team or PR agency to review all of Facebook’s brand announcements later this week in order to be as proactive as you can. We’ll be eagerly awaiting official details here at GFM, and we’ll post updates as we receive them!

~Alexis Anderson