5 Ways to Enhance Your Facebook Timeline Page With Images

With each new overhaul of Facebook pages, there have been increased opportunities for brands to use imagery to better promote their offerings and create visual interest, and Timeline for pages is no different.

Establishing a consistent look and feel across pages and personal profiles, Timeline for pages provides significantly more opportunities to create a visually compelling page, starting with the masthead.

#1: The Cover Photo: Your Biggest Branding Opportunity

The most visually significant change in Timeline for pages is the addition of the cover photo, an 851 x 315 pixel area where you can upload a single image.

In creating your cover photo image, Facebook advises:

• Use a unique image that represents your page. This might be a photo of a popular menu item, album artwork or a picture of people using your product. Be creative and experiment with images your audience responds well to.
• Use the cover photo to bring a strong visual impact to your page by extending your brand with lifestyle imagery, product images or a description of your services.

#2: The Profile Picture: The Hardest-Working Image on Facebook

In the previous page format, the profile picture was your page’s “hero” image, a 280 x 540 pixel area in the upper-left corner of your page.

What Facebook still calls the “profile picture” is now a 125-pixel square image that is inset into your cover photo in the lower-left area. The profile picture now does triple duty:

It’s important to take all three contexts into account when creating your profile picture graphic, making sure the image works nicely with the cover photo, as your brand’s 50 x 50 pixel icon accompanying page posts, and on the Facebook mobile app.

Here are some fine profile picture examples:

#3: Custom Tab Images: Make Sure You Take Advantage of These

This is one of the major improvements of Timeline for pages. Facebook has moved the navigation to your Facebook and custom tabs back to the top, below the cover photo. Where before you had your navigation as tiny 16 x 16 pixel icons with the tab name in the left column, now you have a maximum of four tabs prominently displayed at 111 x 74 pixels PLUS the tab name below the image.

Here are a few important things to keep in mind about the custom image tabs:

• You can’t change or reposition the “Photos” tab (which displays the most recently uploaded image).
• You can display a maximum of four tabs (including the Photos tab). Your remaining tabs are displayed when the user clicks the “arrow” icon to the right of the tab images.
• If you opt for fewer than four displayed tabs, the “About” info occupies the extra space.  You can create your own graphics for any custom tab images EXCEPT Facebook’s own apps (Photos, Notes, Events, Videos, Links).
  • Create Your Custom Tab Images to Fit Your Overall Branding.  Make sure you pay attention to how all the graphic elements in your Timeline masthead work togetherto form a unified whole. You can even “control” what the Photos tab image is by reuploading the image you want there after any other images are uploaded. This is a bit obsessive, but it’s within your power!

#4: Highlighting Posts to Create Visual Interest

Many users and page admins have found Timeline’s new way of displaying user and page posts cluttered, confusing and counterintuitive. Where before users could view all posts—by the page or by other users—in a chronological sequence, in the new Timeline format this sequence is broken up and often hard to follow.

However, page admins can use the new “highlight” feature to bring a bit of order to the chaos!  When you highlight a page status, it then occupies two columns in your Timeline, breaking up the monotony of the two columns as well as attracting more attention to that particular status.

#5: Create Milestones to Make Your Page “Sticky”

Another way to break up the two-column layout and create a more compelling experience is to use the new “Milestones” feature.

Brands can create Milestones—incorporating pictures and text—for various significant events in their histories. Check out how the Macy’s Page and the Ford Page use Milestones to visually organize their content and keep users on the Page with great archival photos.

And The New York Times Pagehas a wealth of content from which to create Milestones, in both one- and two-column formats.

How to Create a Milestone on Your Timeline Page

To create your first Milestone, just click on the “Milestone” option where you create status updates.

Click “Milestone” to create your first Milestone.

Before you can create Milestones, you have to establish a benchmark date—birth year, company started, company founded, etc. Facebook makes this easy by displaying a pop-up dialog the first time you click the “Milestone” link.

Once you establish an inception date, you can then create Milestones. Of course, I encourage you to utilize imagery in your Milestones and create as many as you want, the more the merrier!

The takeaway: Imagery takes center stage in timeline!

As you can see from the above examples, the new Timeline for pages format provides far more opportunities for visually branding your page. It’s up to you to take advantage of these opportunities.