Facebook is beginning to roll out the new timeline design for personal profiles for more users. If you haven’t looked at your profile yet, you should go check it out now. It may look similar to this.
Basically, your updates, updates posted to your wall by others, and updates you are tagged in show up on the right column. All of the stuff that was previously beneath your timeline cover photo (about, friends, photos, places, notes, etc.) are in the left column. Also added to the left column are sections for music, movies, TV shows, and books you like plus sections for services you use like Instagram, Pinterest, Quora, and so forth.
Editing Your Sections
The first thing I thought when I saw this new layout is that I didn’t necessarily want some of these sections on my profile. Fortunately, that’s not a problem. Just hover over one of those sections and click on the pencil icon.
Using this menu, you can choose edit all of your sections.
While the About, Friends, and Photos section are mandatory, the rest of the sections can be toggled on and off as well as rearranged.
Promoting Your Facebook Page on Your Personal Profile
If you haven’t already set up your page to come up on your personal profile, now is the time as the new About section is the first thing beneath your timeline cover photo to get noticed.
To do this, go to your About tab, and add a position that relates to your page (writer, blogger, owner, marketer, etc.) under the Work and Education section. Make sure your page appears when you start typing in the company name.
Updating Your Timeline Cover Photo
In case you haven’t heard, the rules for timeline cover photos has changed. You can now have up to 20% text in the image you use. Amy Porterfield has a great example of marketing your business with your personal profile timeline cover photo.
She even cleverly uses the “job title” as a call to action to get people on her personal profile to click through to her page.
If you’re not sure how much 20% of your timeline cover photo is, you can use the free tool on Mari Smith’s blog to test your own cover image – or your competitor’s!
Adding Pages & Links to Your New About Tab
Speaking of your About tab, that’s changed as well.
Note that you can add your pages to the About tab information and be sure to add your most important pages here. You should also add links to your main websites and even other social profiles under your contact information.
Beneath what is shown above, people can scroll through to the same sections in the left side of your main timeline design. Anything you toggled on or off using the Edit Sections option will also be shown (or not) in this area.
Highlighting Updates & Photos
Unfortunately, the new timeline layout means no more stretching a special status update across two columns. The only way to attract attention to an update is to use the Highlight option, which just adds a little ribbon to the top right of the update.
You can highlight multiple status updates on your timeline. This can help make your updates stand out over others posted to your wall or tagged with your name.
You can also draw attention to special photos in your albums by highlighting those as well. Just hover over a photo of your choosing and click the star icon. Your photo will then be expanded to cover four squares.
The Future Design of Facebook Pages
Is it inevitable that this same design will eventually roll out to Facebook pages? I’m hoping not as I would miss the ability to stretch updates across multiple columns and would hate to lose my custom tabs, especially now that I have two of them linked directly to my websites.
You can read how to do that here. It’s free and quick to implement, so you won’t have much to lose even if Facebook eventually does change the layout for pages.
Your Thoughts on the New Facebook Timeline
What are your thoughts on the new timeline design for personal profiles, and how would you feel about this design ending up on your Facebook pages? Please share in the comments!
Oh, and if you like this article, be sure to like my page on Facebook too!
