On 31 March 2012 all Facebook Pages will move to timeline. In the meantime – page owners can choose to move to timeline immediately, or use this month to redecorate.

Cover Photo

The cover photo is the hero image on your Facebook page – choose something which represents your brand, and is striking but doesn’t detract from the content. Cover photos are 851 pixels wide x 315 pixels tall. If you upload an image larger than this you will be able to adjust placement.

Highlight a post

To highlight a post click on the star button – this will make it double the width, great for videos and images.

Messages

Pages now has a messages function where users can message the page owner. Consider using this function when taking conversation offline. Consider a comment like, “Hi, X, I’m keen to help you with this – can you message me your telephone number so that I can call you?” If the person’s issue is common, remember to update the conversation with the resolution later.

Send a post to top of the page

To send a story to the top of the page, click the edit button on the post (a pencil) and select ‘pin to top’. At the moment you can’t both highlight and pin to top. However you could change the date of the post in the edit settings to move it closer to the top of the page.

Admin panel

Click the admin panel button at the top right to keep abreast of activity on your page, and access analytics. This is a great place to check that you’ve responded to outstanding comments.

Arrange your wall

You can choose to display posts on your wall according to whether they have been posted by the page owner (Posts by Page) whether they’ve been interacted with by friends (Friend Activity) or if they’ve been posted by friends (Posted by others).

To access this function click the highlights button in the centre of the page on the wall.

For most users, Posts by Page will be the preference. If you are running a competition or similar and choose Posts by Others ensure you have the appropriate volume of posts and are vetting the posts.

Our SMK Program Director is conducting training in Melbourne today, so we took this opportunity to upload his smiling face to the SMK Facebook cover photo. Surprise!

We'd love to hear your questions (and tips) – leave us a comment if you have a moment!