Whilst real life people adjust to the look and feel of Facebook Autumn 2011 (facebook’s biggest profile change to date), brands have some serious thinking to do. It’s highly likely that brand pages - such as World’s Best Bars, BaByliss and Cuisinart to name a fantastic few - will soon be getting to grips with changes that closely mirror those seen by individual users... changes like these.

But what should brand community managers be thinking about using the benefit of foresight?

• - Looking at the BIG picture; that is some prime real estate you’ve about to receive. Gone are the five pics, replaced with one cover image – but how best to utilise it?
• - Timeline; from a big picture we come to the really big change. Wall posts, events, photos and apps will now all be integrated into a flowing timeline arranged in chronological order. Whilst at first this may seem daunting the potential for brands to tell their story (a key currency on social media) has never been easier.
• - Brand engagement; Facebook is changing its algorithms so that fan-to-brand interactions no longer appear in the main news feed. Instead such engagements will appear in a scrolling sidebar (or 'ticker') on the right hand side. Relevancy is king with community managers now facing the challenge of generating content which encourages groups of friends to interact with posts.
• - The unknown; before any of the above is applied the question of where and how facebook tabs will fit into all this needs to be addressed.
  
  

If these changes are embraced and adapted correctly its exciting stuff – new layout new opportunities. How will we at Libertine proceed? Well you can always ‘like’ our work and find out...