Facebook Timeline For Brands: It’s About Storytelling

February 2004, Facebook, a social networking service and website was born. 8 years later, the new Facebook timeline is launched, a new timeline that will revolutionize the brand marketing world.

Timeline is conducive to larger photographs and videos. What's more, the Timeline user interface is starting to behave more like a website, by offering more control over the look and feel of content. The new format helps brands become more storytellers and extends the reach of those stories to more customers and prospects.

Check out Facebook's introduction for the Timeline brand pages in the video below.

WATCH:

A featured post on Cote d'Azur Tourisme Timeline-enabled Facebook page:

we assisted to a huge stream of pictures, meaningless posts and comments from random people, during the first years of its life, Facebook now offers the possibilities to share so much more than a few photos between peers.

This article focuses on those possibilities for Brands; beyond the fact the new timeline provides an appealing interface, with ergonomic navigation patterns much better than the old, traditional “wall”, it is also a great way to engage and interact differently, deeply with customers. This “new” type of communication is called Storytelling.

Stories will enable customers to discover a brand in another way, to know about its origins, its primary purpose, how it evolved. The history of a brand can sometimes be surprising, like for example Coca Cola which was first invented to cure headaches. This element of surprise will arouse interest from the customer.

However, stories need to be told with the right words and using specific tools, like apps designed to create experience, share stories and allow the customer to interact, to engage with the brand in a new entertaining way.

More than choosing the right words and using the right tools, marketers need to choose the right stories. Not every story is worth telling. A good story will retain customer’s attention, will be amplified when this customer engage with the brand and tell other people about the story. New technologies and the development of mobile marketing enable an even greater reach.

While texts all look the same, pictures are more easily differentiable, they have different shapes, colors, sizes, they will stick to the customer’s mind. A picture will catch their eyes. A picture associated with the right word(s) or text will be remembered.

Last important point, it is crucial to work in a team. Collaboration is the key if an organization wants to tell successful stories, retain and acquire new customers.  A single person cannot plan the message, choose the pictures, design the stories, etc. Several brains working together are always better than one.

Not all the companies are happy about the new format. Some of them are having some problems with their customers because of the switch of Timeline. "I think there is some pain that is going to happen, but you have to look at it from the overall perspective. I think it is a positive for most companies," said Michael Fauscette, an analyst with the research group IDC who follows social networks. In our opinions, the new format gives companies a greater capability to promote their brand, and to really brand their pages and make them stand out.

Ultimately, the new brand pages will force companies to focus more on user engagement as they develop their Facebook strategy. It is not a big deal if a company Facebook page has 50,000 likes or 5,000 likes, what matters is the amount of engagement. The new challenge from the change is that companies will have a tough time forcing people to like their pages, and will have to focus more on engagement. 

Keywords: Facebook, Timeline, Branding, Business using Facebook Timeline, Technology news 

Writes: France, Miki

Resource:
Articlehttp://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/02/29/facebook-timeline-for-brands-its-about-storytelling/
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzPEPfJHfKU
Image: Cote d'Azur Tourisme Facebook Cover Page