How Facebook’s Timeline Is Turning Businesses Into Moments
It’s easy to get caught up in the hype of Facebook’s new Timeline feature. It’s groundbreaking. Revolutionary, even. Gizmodo even went so far as to label it the, “greatest thing Facebook’s ever done.” Dan Lyons hilariously and satirically poked fun at the importance of Facebook’s new Timeline feature in a recent blog post. “Nevertheless, 24 hours later, my hands are still shaking. I’m unable to focus. No matter where I am, I am thinking about Facebook and the new, deeper connection that I immediately feel to everyone I know,” he wrote.
Certainly, those are some of the more extreme reactions to Facebook’s recent additions. Still, I find it hard to disagree Gizmodo’s assertion that the Timeline is the greatest thing that Facebook has ever done. After all, I admitted just a few days ago that Facebook’s new features may be its most important yet.
What I failed to address, and something that I think will be the biggest adjustment for Facebook users and pages as a whole, is just how Timeline will be integrated among the various business and brand pages spread throughout Facebook.
Timeline will force many businesses to drastically adjust their individual perspectives on Facebook. And those that insist upon neglecting Facebook? Good luck being remembered in the canons of Facebook. Quite literally, they will have missed many opportunities to become an important part of their customer’s lives.
Pages Will Become Moments In Users Lives
It would appear, at first glance, that Facebook’s Timeline is simply another simple change to the profile layout of Facebook. That it’s just another way to maintain user involvement on the website that has, for years, been siphoning away our free time into the endless abyss that is the World Wide Web.
But, upon closer inspection, the true potential — the real power underlying Timeline — is not necessarily in what it adds as far as functionality to Facebook. Instead, its true potential lies in how we view Facebook. Facebook has, for years, simply been a social networking website.
Now, with Timeline, Facebook has begun establishing itself as an important staple of our everyday lives and a locker room for all of our digital memories. That’s something that Facebook has been attempting to establish for years and, with Timeline, it appears that they have finally begun making significant steps towards that ultimate vision.
That’s why Timeline will probably result in drastic changes to the ways in which businesses and brands develop and approach their various social media strategies. Now, brands and business pages must seek to create moments for fans of their pages that eventually become indelible parts of their Facebook timeline’s; they must find ways to make their respective events and messages an important piece of their fan’s Facebook scrapbooks.
Even Less Emphasis on The Sale
If Facebook has proven anything, it’s that successful marketing doesn’t necessarily require selling. Simply put, providing relevant and engaging content and conversations among customers will naturally result in increased interaction among customers with your respective brand.
And now, with Timeline, Facebook has made that point even more front and center. With Timeline, Facebook is finally telling all of the brands that haven’t necessarily been trying to connect with their fans, that they are basically doing it all wrong.
Facebook, with the introduction of Timeline, is suddenly and subtly beginning to see a shift in the way that people interact with the website. As opposed to being a website for simple communication, it has now become a central hub for experience. And for businesses and brands, becoming a central part of that experience will define whether or not they will ultimately be able to find success in this exciting new direction for Facebook.
How do you think Timeline is going to change the way businesses approach social media?
Source: MSM DesignZ, Inc. is a Westchester NY Social Media company specializing in advertising, web and graphic design, and SEO.