What's a Facebook Timeline?

Slowly but surely Facebook has been turning user's profiles into the new "Timeline" format, which has some banging their heads against their monitor screens and others happily going with the flow.  The bigger question is what does this mean for brands?

Well to start, Timeline will be different for personal pages and brands... Marketers need to rethink their strategy a bit, so here's a few tips:

Plan for the aesthetic changes first!

The new format is a total 180 from the previous Facebook profile.  This means that you need to analyze what each part of the format works best for what.  The cover photo will be an obvious choice to showcase the brand.  All in all, PR pro's should take a second and figure out how the looks of the page can benefit their brand.

Courtesy of Mashable.com

What's your brand's story or history?
Timeline is made for this.  Users can easily go back through the years via a simple click, but you want your story to be exciting and interesting.  Since Timeline is extremely visual, have a photo gallery of different ads from over the years, or maybe even a gallery of products and when they were first introduced.

Interacting with fans has changed.
Now, instead of asking fans to "like" a post if they have used your product, posts will need to be made in moderation to emphasize a chapter in your brand's life.  In other words, we aren't expecting the customer service users to go away, but don't spam your own page with useless posts, because most likely thousands of users have used your brand today (given the size of the brand).

So what should we take away from this? Facebook has changes that come around every now and then, and we all have to adjust.  If used properly Timeline can beautifully showcase any brand or image, it just takes a little more understanding and patience this time around.