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Facebook today made some significant announcements, during the Facebook Marketing Conference, in New York. In this post, I am sharing my observation of early sentiments around these announcements. I talked to Vikas Jain, head of Business Development, Wildfire Interactive - his reaction to the announcements, in the post below.
Facebook Brand Pages will get Timeline
As was expected, brands will now have Timelines just like personal pages. By March 30th, all brand pages will have Timeline by default. Check out some of the early Brand Timeline Covers - Handpicked!
The three key things to note about brand page Timelines:
- Timeline Cover photo - this will be brand's landing image. (Brand landing pages are gone)
- Tabs and applications - There will be four logos representing a brand's prominent applications or tabs. The Photo tab cannot be re-ordered, and will remain as the first tab.
- Brands can Pin favorite posts to the top - "above the fold messages".
Mixed Reactions to the Timeline Announcement
At one hand, I found that some of the Facebook service providers - social media agencies, and Facebook app management companies - that specialize in Facebook Landing Page management and design, are frustrated as they find their offers redundant.
On the other hand, some are embracing these changes as a positive move that will improve the quality of brand and user engagement, and are quickly adjusting their offerings as necessary. Wildfire Interactive, recently launched a very powerful tool kit to manage brand pages. Their reaction to the changes has been very upbeat.
I talked to Vikas Jain, Head Business Development and Evangelist at Wildfire Interactive, about this. And, he asserts "Actually it makes our value prop even more robust. With only three visible tabs available, [Wildfire] Page Manager is critical for making most of that real estate using our timeline optimized templates (which by the way also work in other formats such web and mobile)."
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Facebook Ads now, more integrated with your newsfeed
The blurring line of paid advertisement and social publishing is the new best practice that marketers need to adopt in the social era. The two key things to note related to this annoucements:
- Introduced Reach Generator - Facebook marketing platform for brands to create and managed sponsored stories
- Ads will be a part of newsfeed, starting with mobile and desktop. Premium ads will also be available on logout screens.
So, how does this impact brands, and user behavior? Ads that integrate within newsfeed, have to say a story, and add value to a user's interaction with the brand. Else, all it takes for a consumer is to unlike the page. This puts more pressure on brands in producing content (including ads) that are relevant and absorbs within the digital lifestream of a brand's fan.
Vikas from Wildfire Interactive suggests "Ads are going to play a very critical role in driving traffic to these brand pages". On Monday, Wildfire Interactive, announced an exclusive relationship with Adaptly to power their ads product. This suggests the movement in the Facebook Ads management space, considering, BuddyMedia recently announced its acquisiton of BrighterOption, another Facebook ad management provider.