Timeline Holds Business Potential
In the coming weeks, Facebook will make Timeline the default setting for private profiles around the world – but what does this mean for businesses?
At the moment, the mandatory transition to Timeline only officially applies to private individual profiles, but there are rumors that Facebook Pages – the public profiles for businesses and brands – will soon be switching to Timeline as well. Facebook will announce its plans for Facebook Pages at the upcoming Facebook Marketing Conference held in New York at the end of February.
Rumors and predictions aside, the integration of Timeline into all user profiles holds significance for the numerous companies already using Facebook for marketing and communication purposes. Thanks to the new Open Graph apps that are a prominent feature of Timeline, businesses have the potential to reach a much wider audience than before and, at the same time, disperse their content in a more targeted fashion.
Previously, when a Facebook user liked a brand, product, or business, a notification would appear on their profile for some time before it eventually slid out of view. Now companies can develop social apps that are tailored to their customer’s on Open Graph, and customers and users are then able to interact with the brand on Facebook.
For example, when a user is listening to a particular song on Spotify or reading a certain article in The Washington Post via the social app, Facebook displays the information in real time on that user’s profile and in their friends’ Tickers and Newsfeeds. And the more a user interacts with an app, the higher Facebook will rank the notification, making it more visible not only in the profile of the user, but also in their friends’ profiles. It’s mass advertising and targeted marketing in one.
Even companies that don’t have a Facebook Page can benefit from the transition to Timeline. The new transparency into user interests will make it possible for businesses to conduct even more targeted ad placement with Facebook Ads.