Are you ready for Facebook's timeline rollout for business pages? As mentioned in a previous article here on Mortgage Professional, most likely the larger brands will start seeing the change at the end of February and the rest of us will start seeing these changes in March and April. However, the rollout may not take as long as the personal timeline rollout with over 800 million users vs 20 million fan pages with over 30 fans.

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**UPDATE**

As of February 29, 2012 you can now preview this new timeline layout for business pages. It is up to you to decide when you are ready to hit publish until March 30th. If you don't update your page before March 30th, your page will automatically rollover to the new design.

Here are a few resources to get you started on timeline layout for business pages:

http://www.facebook.com/about/pages/


Here are a few things that you can do to prepare for the timeline rollout:

Design Your Cover Photo In Advance

**Cover Photo UPDATE**

“This space is NOT meant for promotions, coupons, or advertisements. Your cover photo should not be primarily text-based or infringe on anyone else’s copyright.”

On the Learn More page, you will find the main three “don’ts” of what cover images cannot contain.

•  Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”

•  Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section

•  References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features

•  Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”

As you can see, the restrictions on the Timeline cover prevent you from turning it into a fan-gate, promotional billboard, or other marketing tool.

Additional rules for the Timeline cover include:

•  Covers must not be false, deceptive or misleading, and must not infringe on third parties’ intellectual property.

•  You may not encourage or incentivize people to upload your cover image to their personal timelines

Your cover photo is a great piece of real estate to market your business. This photo should be at least 720 pixels wide. The optimal dimensions should be 850 pixels wide by 315 pixels high. It's a great idea to start on your cover design now. This will make it easier to upload as soon as possible whenever your mortgage or real estate fan page switches over to the timeline format.

Decide on Your Important Milestone Events Now

An advantage with the timeline layout is you can feature important milestones in your business. This can be any significant milestone that you choose. This gives your fan base an opportunity to comment, ask questions or celebrate your milestone(s) with you. This example below is a personal milestone but you get the idea for your business page.

Prepare An Announcement For Layout Changes

There have been questions about landing tabs or welcome pages and if we will still have these options. You may need to re-direct your fans if content has moved around. It is not definite on the exact design but there will be a Facebook Marketing Conference on Feb. 29, 2012 that could shed some light on this topic. This conference will be streamed live to so be sure to bookmark this link for the breaking news.

Have you noticed less interaction on your real estate or mortgage fan page? Stay tuned for my next article on Facebook's algorithm Edgerank and what actions you need to take for more engagement.

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Tweet to @NaomiTrower