Storytelling with Timeline: Top Three Things to Remember

By Nikki Parrotte (@nikki_parrotte)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks, you’ve probably heard about, and hopefully prepared your brand pages for the changes that come with the new Facebook Timeline. As a refresher, I’ve compiled these changes into a list of the top three things you’ll need to remember in order to effectively tell your brand story and fully tap into your potential with Timeline in the next few weeks and beyond.

Imagery, Imagery, Imagery

There is nothing more important for brands than populating a file of rich brand images. Timeline is a highly visual experience, beginning with a page-wide cover photo. Whether you’ve selected a powerful stand-alone product image or created a collage of storytelling snapshots, this cover photo should capture the interest of your fans, inviting them to enter into your brand’s online world. The photo we chose for our client, Rioja Wine is an excellent example of how best to utilize this new Facebook function. Not only is it colorful and captivating, but the photo tells the story of Rioja Wines. Nothing fancy, just a highly impactful, culture-rich brand image.

While the cover photo is the first thing a fan sees, brands should also tap into their file of rich brand images for regular Timeline posts – and often. Any true storyteller knows that sharing an image is much more powerful than any carefully crafted body of text. To stay true to this guideline, I’ll let each of the following images previously posted on our client, Early Mountain Vineyards’ Timeline speak for itself. 

Mastering Milestones

One of the most important elements of telling a brand’s story is celebrating its history. With the new Facebook Timeline, brands have the ability to do so via the new milestone function. Just select “milestone” in the sharing tool at the top of your brand’s page, then add a headline, location, date, description and photo to illustrate all the important pieces of your brand’s history. Check out how we’ve utilized this function to tell our client, Cambria Suites’ story.

Playing Telephone

Just as in the children’s game of telephone, Facebook provides a function for fans to pass along a story to their friends, friends of friends, friends of friends of friends and so on. In addition to the posting of engaging and “shareworthy” content, Premium Ads and Reach Generator provide new opportunities for brands for expanded engagement. As we make our way into the second quarter of the year, we will be experimenting with these new capabilities in order to ensure our brands’ stories are heard.

And now for your viewing pleasure, just a few more of our clients’ stunning cover photo selections. They’ve really taken to Timeline!

About Nikki Parrotte:

Nikki serves as account executive in CRT/tanaka’s Washington, D.C. office, where she executes day-to-day public relations campaigns for a variety of clients. Her specialties include media and influencer relations, writing and editing marketing collateral, public relations research, event marketing, campaign implementation and overseeing and managing social channels on behalf of clients.