Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to my timeline Facebook profile (annotations to follow!)

Iv’e blacked out the parts of the profile which remain (pretty much) the same, and highlighted four new / highly altered page areas.

When you see the new layout for the first time, it’s quite shocking. Not much has remained the same. I think a lot of people will be put off by such a large change at first. Anyway, that’s not what I’m here to talk about… So let’s get onto the four annotations.

Firstly, there’s the all new “cover” for your profile. This is a banner across the top of the profile, which users can customize by uploading their own images. Note that I’ve already been playing with mine, to incorporate the profile picture (which lays over the top of the cover). The introduction of these “covers” is a huge step for brand awareness via Facebook pages, as I’ll discuss in a minute!

The second alteration is the timeline. Contrary to previous speculation (including my own previous article) the timeline takes a vertical approach, rather than a horizontal one. The “horizontal rumors”, as we shall call them, were imagined with the possibility of reducing the amount of content under the fold of a typical profile. The ATFC (Above The Fold Content) has been addressed with annotation four, however!

Annotation number three comes in the form of conglomeration. Friends, Photos, GeoTagging, Likes, Music and much more are now accumulated in respective groups (almost like Folders) which can be expanded independently. This generally tidies the profile (in my opinion) and leaves more room for the all important “wall”.

The final point is the wall itself. Facebook have divided the area into two columns (4″ to 9″ wall, for those in the building trade?!) to maximize on space saving. This works well, especially with a blue timeline running down the middle to show when individual posts were added.

It’s a good looking, next generation profile layout (and it’ll look lovely if replicated for Facebook’s iPad app!).

What does this mean for Brand Awareness and Online Marketing?

Ok, so that’s an introduction to some of the new features of Facebook timeline profiles, but what does this mean in terms of online advertising?

Well, for starters the cover (as aforementioned) provides a huge amount of screen space for getting brand identity out there. Take the space as a free 850 x 315 billboard! It’s the first thing customers will see, and it makes a big impact if done well. Grab their attention – check!

Take, for example, the RedBull Facebok profile. It’s clever use of the cover really stands out, and accompanied with the custom background (I’ve not looked into this yet, but I think it may only be for pages rather than profiles) and clever display picture gives a great aspect of brand identity. You’re not going to confuse this page for “Monster: Energy Drink” anytime soon! RedBull have a large online marketing presence, and some of their campaigns have been added to the wall; Including a video and imagery.

Similarly, McDonalds have produced a great looking cover, and let the profile picture do the explaining. That’s fine for a globally recognized brand, but smaller organisations may have to do a little more explaining in their banners! Anyway, so McDonalds have promoted their Free WiFi with a lovely large promotional image and used the “about” information (below the profile picture) to describe their service (not that they particularly need to!)

To conclude, the new Facebook interface brings much more customization and a greater identifiable page to the profiles. Remember the day of totally custom MySpace profiles? Well, it’s not quite THAT changeable, but it’s a perfect blend of standard format layout and unique profile content!

The new Facebook layout will give a new slant on Facebook based marketing, and I think we will see more and more organisations taking to social media advertising as this new layout is rolled out.

First off there is the revamp of the Facebook profile pages, up until now laid out somewhat uniform, with the profile picture on the left, paragraph of information at the top, stream of tagged photos parallel and the wall below. It seems, however, that this is soon to change; In favor of a timeline approach style! This new style will (probably) conglomerate tagged pictures, status updates and activity on the social networking site, to eliminate (or at least reduce) the amount of content hidden beneath the fold (beyond the view-able screen without scrolling).

Secondly, as discovered a while ago, the iPad Facebook application is “launching soon” according to a 9to5 Mac article. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if it launched alongside the Facebook UI updates!

So, this change again will inevitably cause a current of opinions in the world of Social Media… With everyone holding their own thoughts (and most posting/tweeting their feelings) be prepared (Social Sandbags?) for the next wave of “I love/hate the new Facebook layout” status’.

I leave you with this famous quote from Winston Churchill;

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

The solution?

Navigate to the following page;

• Go to “edit my profile” of your Facebook home page.
• Click “Profile Picture” in the left hand menu.

And then;
Beneath your profile picture, “Edit Thumbnail” and “Remove your Picture” links there is a “Row of photos at top of profile” and an “Unhide All” button. Hit that. Not much happens to confirm the process is complete, but go check out your profile page. All the tagged photos of you will now be accessible, with the most recent 5 appearing in the image stream on your page!

• 28% of small businesses said they used a corporate Facebook page
• 18% own a LinkedIn Profile
• 8% have a company blog
• 6% use YouTube or similar video-streaming service
• 2% own a corporate Twitter account

With over 2 million enterprises in the UK alone (according to the governments ‘Office for National Statistics’) that’s over 1.4 million businesses which don’t utilize Facebook, the world’s largest social media / networking website (with over 750 million users!).

Seems crazy, given the focus and publicity of these potential market avenues! Sure some businesses wouldn’t find all of the options necessary, but with such a high volume of service based business in the UK I can’t help but think some of the 1,000,000 businesses with no social media avenues are missing out.

Case Study: Ultimate Hairdressing, Wolverhampton.

To give an example of how Social Media can be applied to a range of industries iv’e used a case-study of my local hairdressers. ‘Ultimate Hairdressing Wolverhampton‘ (UHW) have recently re-branded after a number of years as a franchise. The newly devised business requires a number of Social Media avenues to keep them engaged with users in as many ways as possible.

Facebook

Facebook, as aforementioned, boasts over 500,000 users. That’s a lot of potential you could be missing out on without a company page. Facebook is a great platform to display photos, communicate with customers and market special events/offers. Using a Facebook Page (rather than a group) UHW can demonstrate not only model hairstyles but also produce albums of consumer’s haircuts.

‘Tagging’ users in an album such as this would allow friends of the newly trimmed customer to see the end product, spreading the word to a much wider audience than just those who get updates from the UHW page. This wildfire style of social marketing removes the boundaries of subscriptions; If each customer has on average 300 friends, and Ultimate Hairdressing takes 20 haircut photographs a week, that’s a potential of 6,000 Facebook users being recommended to UHW.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has a reputation for being IT Industry specific. However, a huge variety of companies use the ‘Professional Networking Site’ to, well, network! Perfect for starting ventures, LinkedIn provides the ability to manage a professional identity and engage with similar professionals (not to mention consumers and colleagues, too!).

Whilst less of a marketing tool than Facebook, LinkedIn is a business tool which can be utilized by companies such as UHW to access knowledge, industry specific information and produce new professional orientated opportunities.

Corporate Website & Blog

Ok, so a website isn’t really a form of Social Media (not saying that every company shouldn’t have one!). However, a constantly updating blog (or online journal) can keep users informed of ‘behind the scenes’ on-goings. UHW don’t currently have this platform available, but articles could include their success in the ‘Trend Vision 2011′ and other stories which consumers may not necessarily know about.

Other articles could include featured haircuts, ‘A day in the life of’, new looks and salon updates. These articles could be shared via other social media sites too, further spreading the news. Competitions and special offers could also be detailed via a blog. Best of all, it’s free if you have some computer knowledge and an existing website.

YouTube

YouTube isn’t overly useful for everyone. Personally, it’s my least favorite of the social medias (in a marketing context). That said, videos do tend to have much higher click-through rates (I looked into it during my Mobile Marketing application development).

UHW could (and do) already use YouTube to show events (namely the Trend Vision 2011 finals build-up). With specific, rich media content such as this, users are much more likely to take an interest in the company as an organic, dynamic entity. Furthermore, videos can be embedded into other social media (Facebook, LinkedIn) as well as on Websites or Blogs.

However, bare in mind that a poorly developed, inappropriate or out of context video can have a negative effect on consumers. Make sure you only show customers highly tuned, relevant videos.

Twitter

According to the survey I read, only 2% of companies have a Twitter account. This, at first, surprised me. But come to think of it, there is a lot of confusion behind Twitter; What it does, and how to approach customer feedback.

Personally, I like to think of Twitter as a two-way communication tool, where as Facebook is more one-directional (outwardly). Each business should have a specific set of guidelines regarding feedback, and any responses should always be professional and with the company’s principles at the center of comments. That said, replying to ‘Followers’ is a brilliant way to engage your consumer base, and give an element of transparency to an organisation.

There is other ways to utilize Twitter too; Follow relevant companies also on Twitter (networking), Detail promotions and offers (advertising) and supply links to articles, blogs and Facebook albums (self-linking).

Twitter is an area that UHW are just getting into, and there are still questions to be answered and a clear route to be established. However, it’s definitely (in my opinion) worth persevering with; It’s much more than just for celebrities!

Conclusion

To conclude, there are a number of Social Media options available, each with their own advantages and marketing strategies to hand. These strategies are no longer specific to the technological industry, with something suitable for almost every organisation imaginable.

If your company or business doesn’t already have social media integrated into it’s website and business plan; Why not? Business plans are constantly evolving, and more recently ‘web strategies’ have become common headings amongst almost all of them!

An Orange spokesperson said today “We are aware that our mobile customers are currently having issues accessing Facebook via their handsets. We are working with Facebook to fix this as a matter of priority and would like to apologise to our customers for the inconvenience this may cause them.”

Update: I think this is now fixed, according to the other half, although some users may continue to experience problems until the early hours.

In March 2009 Foursquare was launched, primarily in New York, but soon found itself checking people in all around the globe! The concept is again simple: Tagging yourself instead of a photo (or other media) in the form of a ‘Check-In’. Other people can also ‘Check-In’ to locations, and a hierarchy can be build for individual locations. It’s a superb example of social media turned addictive game! It works brilliantly with the ever evolving capabilities of smart-phones and other IED’s (Internet Enabled Devices).

But let’s go back to the beginning for a moment. Dennis Crowley, one of the head developers of Foursquare created a similar program back in 2005 called ‘Dodgeball’. It was soon snapped up by internet giants Google and closed down in 2009 (to make room for ‘Google Latitude’). So, Foursquare is mature. It’s evolved. It’s developed. And it’s got competition.

Facebook Places. Announced August 2010. It’s a big hit for Foursquare. After all, who want’s to go up against Goliath? Places allows users to ‘Check-In’ much like Foursquare, but that’s about it. I see what Facebook have done, in keeping it as a simple status update style addition it refrains from encroaching on Foursquare’s USP (Unique Selling Point). But it could have been so much more! And it should have been too. I was so excited to see the new icon on the Facebook iPhone app, and thought that something being added to the home screen of the app like that would be more than an additional way of updating your status, in effect. Perhaps the Facebook team have bigger plans for Places? I hope so.

For me, Foursquare is a much more addictive, interesting and smart geotagging application. Seem’s like David may have slayed Goliath again!? It’s hierarchy scheme, locational advice/tips and badges make it far superior to Facebook Places. Personally, I will use both. Foursquare for its addictive, fun nature. And Places for it’s ability to update friends and family on Facebook exactly what I’m up to, the essence of social media.

A little birdy told me Twitter is changing. Re-designing. Evolving. It’s been speculated for some time, but last night (September 14th, 2010) Twitter began rolling out it’s brand new user interface to some of it’s users. The 141 strong employee team have been busy, producing not only a lovely looking interface but also an impressive video to demonstrate the new features. Check it out.

The re-design strategy, much like Facebook did in 2006, 2008 and 2010, is a smart move, keeping the top-dogs of the internet fresh and up-to-date. It’s a principle which I like to follow quite closely, re-designing this site quite often! (Could be less as my final year approaches!). Sure, some people will dislike the change, but such is life. You don’t see anyone moaning about Facebook’s latest interface like you did back when they rolled it out in February 2010!

Twitter’s new layout is very interactive. One could say it’s almost trying to resemble a certain mobile device application look and feel? Not that there is anything wrong with this (Just look at the success of the official Twitter App for iPhone!). The smooth glides and efficient persona exuded by the new website succeeds in giving users the concept of a well-oiled machine. A lovely development from the Twitter team.

Now, stay with me here, as I spent ages looking at blogs thinking that the Facebook RSS pages have been blocked, but they haven’t. To access your Facebook RSS feed navigate to Facebook and click on your notifications (“See all Notifications”). On the right hand side is a “Subscribe to Notifications” section, and under that is a “Via RSS”. Uncheck all the tick boxes and click on this link. From there, simply change part of the URL from “notifications.php” to “status.php”. This should produce the RSS feed required.

Now, on TwitterFeed.com sign up and add your copied URL for Facebook RSS feed. Authenticate Twitter and set (in the advanced options) your prefixes, postfixes and update schedule.

And that’s it! Facebook will now generate the RSS of your status’, TwitterFeed will pull them in (checking every 30 mins or whatever) and post them to your Twitter for you! If your really clever you could set up an RSS from your website too, and get that to post to Twitter/Facebook whenever you add a new article!

There is a relatively new release is a small piece of software. You can find it over at http://code.google.com/p/photograbber/. It not only allows you do download all your tagged photos, but also any of your friends. It’s brilliant for downloading all the tagged photos of yourself, but not so great for downloading individual albums.

For that, I’d use FacePad, a firefox plugin that allows you to right-click on albums and download them all. It’s important to note that facePad will only download the first 20 photos unless you have set the default language to that of your facebook by going to tools > options > addons.

Either way, try it out!

Export Photo’s Too does this brilliantly. Install the application to your facebook profile and hit ‘Download Tagged photos’. The application then takes some time to compile a .zip folder of all the photos which you have been tagged in. In the meantime your free to continue using facebook.

After a short while you get a notification explaining that your photos are ready to download. Click the link and you can start to download the folder. It’s brilliant! The only negative is that it’s a little slow (as it’s being ran through the developers php pages on a relatively slow server. The fastest download speeds I was getting was 10Kbps with a folder of approximately 20Mb.

Never the less this is a brilliant app! Just goes to show that the little people can still make killer software too! If I were facebook I’d look towards incrementing this to the iPhone’s version of facebook.