Benefits of Facebook Timeline for Digital Marketers

Timeline, where you can share your story in the way you want it to be told, plus remove the stories which you don’t want to share with others or which embarrasses you. So far, some of the users are cringing to get the Timeline, when they see their friends have it. Well, go ahead and read some of the posts related to Timeline and how you can activate it for your Facebook profile on TechCrunch and Mashable.

Currently, most of the Timeline users are either ‘bloggers’ (who like to know about things early and express their thoughts) or ‘developers’ (who want to learn and show the world that they are different from others) or technical geeks (who want to learn the new thing faster than anyone else). So, no matter who you are, the current Facebook Timeline is simply incredible with its beautiful layout, you can hide stories you don’t want to share, create your own privacy levels and more. For those users who still have not got Facebook Timeline till now, you don’t have to wait for too long; the news is that it will be available for all at the end of this week.

Facebook’s Timeline will have an impact on the way interaction is done between Facebook and Websites. The deep level of interaction through ‘Open Graph’ will provide positive results for digital marketers. Some of the benefits we think Timeline can offer to digital marketers are:

Contextual Sharing

Now, with Facebook Timeline, when someone clicks on any website that uses Facebook Connect to see your profile, they will see your life in context. Your Facebook ID is now a contextual ID, WHY? Because all of your information from start to end is now in one place. Previously, your profile had hand-picked stuff on your wall and some of the recent updates you made or some recently shared items, now, things will be different, you can view the images of the night when you were drunk 5 years ago, or an status update you made when you were feeling down because of the break-up you had 3 years ago.

With the help of Open Graph feature, a user now can share everything he is reading, listening or viewing. This contextual sharing feature has enabled marketers to take major benefits for on-site engagement.

Auto Sharing

Facebook Ticker (on the top of the right hand panel) is one of the other features Facebook has unveiled, it allows the sites to share content on the ticker user is interacting with. Off course, it is necessary that user has activated the sharing functionality for the ticker.

Some of the users are sarcastic about this feature as it is ruining their privacy, at the same time some users (specially the users who are growing up using Facebook) are not bothered about this feature, as in their case sharing is everything on a social network.

Increased Traffic

Facebook upgraded features, are an advantage in itself for websites. The interaction between Fan pages and websites through Facebook Connect features allows marketers to generate more traffic, which ultimately results in getting higher ROI for the companies.

The sharing facility on almost every activity performed by a user on the website helps business to promote itself on Facebook. Facebook features like the Ticker, Timeline, Newsfeed etc. helps business to achieve the target.

Discovery

Initially internet was used for making search for the things you are looking for. Now, with the revolution in social networks, business contents are finding users. This trend wasn’t found long ago; when it was discovered that social networks are generating more traffic and interactions than websites. Facebook’s new features are some of the major advances to gain more referral traffic on your website by sharing content to targeted users.

Businesses spend a huge amount on optimizing their websites to appear on different search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo etc.), but now is the right time to discover the potential of social networks, as it can certainly generate more traffic to your website through referrals. Websites normally is a one-way traffic where users collect information, on the other hand social networks provide business an opportunity to offer two-way traffic i.e. users can gather information as well as provide their input to business.

There may be a lot more benefits business can have using the new features Facebook offered. For the time being, enjoy the new layout of Facebook Timeline, till we get more details about it.