Is your Facebook business page timeline ready?

Well, ready or not, it’s rolling over to the new format tomorrow.

If you haven’t already acquainted yourself with the upcoming changes, you’re in for some big surprises. Whether they’re ideal still has yet to be decided, but they will require you to rework your previous strategies if you were a fan of the page wall and landing tabs in the prior version.

Some of the key changes include:

– Cover photos that span the top section of the page
– An admin panel that’s mounted to top of the page
– Posts that are organized in chronological order and easily navigable by year
– Admins can now post business milestones
– Posts can be pinned to the top or highlighted on a timeline

The biggest and perhaps, most criticized change is the deletion of a Page’s ability to send traffic to a custom tab. In the new Timeline format, your custom tabs still exist, but all traffic must be directed to the timeline. There is no wall anymore, either. It’s all on the timeline.

This has the potential to be a great asset to businesses. The new Timeline format has the ability to create an interactive “About” page for your company. You can add the date the company was founded, input old photos of the founders and post stories about past successful product launches. Facebook will allow you to input all of this in chronological order so that your viewers can learn even more about your company and they also can share their own memories within the posts. Early studies on Timeline have shown that it drives more engagement with followers of brands, especially with photos and videos, which are larger in the new format. So if it’s used well, your Facebook Timeline page could serve to be one of your company’s best assets.

To learn more about Timeline for Pages, Facebook has released a comprehensive guide on the new format.

What do you think of the new Timeline? Love it or hate it?