California Apparel News

Brands were given a sink-or-swim opportunity to redesign their conversation with consumers, along with their Facebook profile page, when the social-networking giant imposed a mandatory March 30 deadline for businesses to migrate to the site’s new Timeline format.

The new template places more emphasis on user engagement and community, encourages customization and curation with new Facebook applications, and offers the ability to highlight or pin posts.

Michael Kors is one company that has embraced the new platform, celebrating the brand’s 31-year history, as well as the life of Michael Kors himself, with the launch of a newly revamped Timeline page.

The new page integrates the designer’s personal and career accomplishments into a digital archive with exclusive footage of runway shows, editorial highlights, advertising campaigns and video highlighting memorable moments of the brand, as well as the company’s milestone of reaching 1 million Facebook fans.

Ultimately, the timeline offers a way to feature content and products in a more controlled and consistent manner, said Alan Wizeman, founder and chief evangelist of ShopIgniter, a Portland, Ore.–based tech company that creates social-media programs.

“Timeline is your new mission control to engage your fans with content, products and promotions,” he explained.

For brands such as Coca-Cola and Macy’s, the new format offers an opportunity to play up their heritage. Both companies have been using the new layout to emphasize their history by highlighting old advertising campaigns, photos and newspaper clippings.

Instead of a single wall, the new Facebook page is divided into a timeline with two columns of dated posts. This encourages a company to embrace its history and tell a story beyond its products, from the brand’s beginnings to a current status update, Wizeman said.

“Engagement rates for historical content and context are increasing, so it is important to cover those events—especially if they are relevant to who you are as a brand today,” Wizeman said. “Explore your company’s assets and historical events, adding them with that voice and strategy to the first event of the company.”

The new template also requires users to have a large cover photo in place of the former small profile picture.

“One of the biggest benefits is the real estate they give you, front and center,” Seth Lieberman, chief executive officer of Pangea Media, said.

“That position on the page is much better real estate to push whatever content you have to a user than before. The reason you’re on [Facebook] is the 850 million users there, so how do you leverage that exposure to get your message across?”

Wizeman advised that brands should use a cover photo that will help consumers get an understanding of the company’s culture, look and feel and to form a strategy and “voice” that will guide what they want to feature on their timeline.

“Pin,” “favorite” and the end of “like-gating”

 “Pinning” and “favoriting” posts are new Timeline features that allow Facebook users to highlight content on the timeline without it getting lost among newer posts. Once an item is pinned, it remains highlighted on the left-hand column for seven days before it’s pushed down by newer content. Favoriting an item stretches it across two columns, providing an oversized double-column look to better feature that particular post.

“It emphasizes creating better content that people will interact with, versus just producing mass content,” Lieberman explained. “If you think about a Twitter analogy, where people are just sort of putting their entire Twitter stream on Facebook, Facebook will not reward that activity unless people really interact with those tweets, which they probably won’t do.”

Along with these new changes have also come challenges for brands and retailers. “Like-gating”—the ability to offer exclusive content only to those who “like” a brand’s page—no longer exists, and marketing copy and calls to action (such as “Buy Now!”) are not allowed on the cover photo. This encourages page managers to share high-quality content rather than just garnering a high number of likes.

Another challenge that brands have struggled with is what to “feature” and what to “hide” on their timeline, Wizeman said, as Facebook now offers the ability to highlight certain items and not display others.

“These new capabilities need to be addressed with a uniform strategy that matches the brand, its message and its mission in the social atmosphere,” he explained. “Does the brand want to focus those capabilities on brand lift?  Or adoption? Or loyalty? Or sales? Once a strategy is in place, it is easier to focus content and relevancy around the fans.”

Although calls to action and “like-gating” are not allowed on the cover photo, they are permitted on the new Facebook application tabs.

Timeline in action

Companies such as Rue La La and Nike have used the new applications to embrace both online product launches and sales. Rue La La uses pinned posts to highlight its sales and then requires users to download the company’s Facebook application before the consumer may participate in the sale, establishing a chance for a closer connection with the consumer. Nike launched a men’s soccer shoe that required registration for Nike’s Facebook application before it released the discount code. This registration provided the company with more information on the consumer, along with a chance to further connect with them.

The new format also allows private messaging directly between brands and users, which allows fans to communicate with a brand without having to post a public message on the brand’s Facebook wall. The messaging also provides a customer-service channel for the brand to offer support and interact with consumers.

Brands can also capitalize on milestones and events by creating sponsorships or content that ties in with related happenings—for example, celebrity endorsements or sporting events, such as the Olympics. 

Capitalizing on an event also provides the opportunity for brands to take media from other channels and bring it in to theirs, which, in turn, is amplified through a much larger fan base.

Since launching Timeline, engagement with photos and videos on brands’ Facebook pages has increased 65 percent when compared with pre-Timeline pages, and overall engagement with Facebook posts has increased 46 percent, according to a study by social-media-analytics company Simply Measured that analyzed a sampling of brand pages.

This increase in engagement and media content has created the opportunity for greater connection with users, yet it has also presented a challenge for businesses because it has raised the stakes for users’ expectations.

“Now, you really do have to pay attention and produce good content to get results,” Lieberman said. “If you want to get a yield from your effort, you can’t afford to be passive. The expectation from consumers is that you’re going to interact and engage with them on Facebook and Twitter. If you do that and do a good job, there are massive results you can achieve. …  For those who don’t, they’ll probably get less out of their Facebook efforts than before.”