One thing you’ll notice about your new Timeline the large Cover Image on the very top of your page. Cover Images are a great opportunity for you to be creative and show your visitors. Instead of non-fans landing on your tab first, the cover image will be the first thing all visitors see, since it is indeed “above the fold.”

Facebook’s Guidelines

Although Cover Images are pretty large, Facebook’s terms of use prevents you from promoting special offers and creating specific call to actions for visitors to “Like” your page. According to Section 3.B. of Facebook Page Guidelines, you can’t:

To read Facebook’s Terms for Pages in it’s entirety, visit the official guidelines page.

Increased Engagement

Before timeline for Business Pages, multimedia posts (photos & videos) were the golden egg for harnessing the most engagement and interaction from a Business’s network. With Facebook Timeline, this effect is amplified, harnessing increased engagement and interaction. In a study by Simply Measured that analyzed the Facebook Fan Page activity of 15 early adopters from a variety of industries, they found that the average engagement per post increased 46%. All of these statistics are based off user activity while on the Timeline Pages – not within the news feed area.

As you can see by the chart above, engagement increased for posts containing Links, Photos, Videos, and declined slightly for text-based status updates. These engagement trends can be attributed to highlighted media content and how it stands apart from it’s text-based siblings.

Private Messaging

With the new Timeline update, Pages now have the option to offer LIVE real-time chat to their visitors. It provides your business an opportunity to rectify a problem before your client / customer goes public with it and posts it on your Facebook page for all to see. There are definitely cases where social proof of your care and diligence in dealing with distraught customers pays off by adding customer respect and credibility to your brand, but for questions regarding any details not located on your website, it’s great to have an open line of communication. This may create a problem for your company to manage real time interactions, but you always have the opportunity to disable the feature if managing becomes too time consuming of task with too little reward. On the other hand – customer demand for open communication may force your hand and willingness to participate.

Pinning

Timeline now enables you to make specific Status Updates “sticky” so they appear near the top of your Timeline for a full week. In order to pin an update, after you’ve posted it to your Timeline, select the pencil icon in the upper-right corner of that post, and select “Pin to top” in the dropdown menu. This now allows you to highlight pertinent and important information that’s relevant to visitors as they peruse your page.

Landing Tabs

As you may have noticed, if you had a tab that contoured nicely with Facebook’s width restrictions, it now has plenty of white space on either side. Facebook’s Tabs have adjusted to 810px Wide – which is beneficial moving forward and offers a valueable increase in visual real estate for your business to feature specials, your team, and videos.

An Infographic Guide (click to download)

We’ve put together an infographic guide of to help you leverage your new Facebook Timeline’s media sizes when planning and designing for your future promotions, graphics, highlights and milestones.

Stay tuned for future posts about best practices for your Business Timeline page and how to leverage the extended visual real estate that the new Timeline format provides.

If you have any questions on using Timeline to grow your social presence, head on over to our Free Consultation page and let’s schedule a time to chat!

Starting in Wisconsin, we made stops in Nashville, Memphis and Dallas before ultimately ending up in Austin to enjoy the festivities for the weekend. Our stop in Memphis undoubtedly set the tone for the trip as we made our way to Emerge Memphis. There, they provide both a co-working space and host Launch Memphis, a 90-day accelerator for young startups to learn from a strong mentor support system and provide startup capital to help get these ideas off the ground running. It’s been a long journey for Eric Mathews, Co-Founder and President of LaunchYourCity. He’s the visionary as well as the driving force that is helping reshape Memphis into a city that entrepreneurs are starting to consider in efforts to take their ideas to the next level. Not only did Eric and the rest of the his staff give us an inside look at their teams and the Emerge Memphis renovation the building is currently undergoing to host more people in it’s co-working space, but they hosted a rooftop reception to welcome us to their city and afterwards, showed us everything outside of Launch Memphis it had to offer from the sights, sounds and tastes.

From Memphis, we took to the road for our next stop in Dallas, TX. We had a jam-packed day in meeting with both the Social Media Director for the Dallas Cowboys and also Gravity Centre, another co-working space focused around bringing the creative energy to the greater Dallas area. We spent the early afternoon with Shannon Gross as he discussed how his role with the Cowboys has evolved over the past nine years he’s been with the organization and how a certain incident with an accidentally-tackled cheerleader lead to a misinformed social influencer spreading erroneous claims. Where most would likely ban the use of social media to prevent a situation like that from happening again, Shannon saw an opportunity for the Cheerleaders to be better connected with the fans and took their efforts to the next level.

Highlighting the innovation focused around that same city, we couldn’t have partnered with a better place than Gravity Centre located within the Alcatel-Lucent building. The Director, Jennifer Conley, took us on a tour of the facilities and how the support of AT&T is helping these companies get into market faster than ever before. We were ecstatic to hear that anybody can utilize the working space free of charge and those selected in the Foundry have 24/7 access.

More than 3,000 miles, 11 interviews and 4 different cities later, the first official Trep Trip was complete.

Over the upcoming days, we’re going to take a deeper look inside these startups, what they’re up to, and how they see their products and services bettering their respective industries. Being an entrepreneur, it’s easy to have tunnel-vision focused solely on what you’re doing alone. It took a trip like this for us to discover that we’re not the only ones who feel the burden of the pressure we place on ourselves to make an idea work, and that the simple notion of becoming an overnight success…doesn’t exist. These people have left everything to take a chance of a lifetime centered around not merely trying to break the bank, but to break from the norm. For some, this is their first go-around and they’re looking to the future bright-eyed and bushy tailed. For others, they’ve been through this process before and are taking the lessons learned from their previous endeavors and putting it into development as they look to secure their next investor.

So how does it work? When you first log in, you’ll notice nothing but scattered pictures across your screen. Believe it or not, there’s method to madness as each picture is ‘pinned’ to a board that the user has selected for that particular picture to be categorized. Once you come across a picture that you’d like to share with your followers, a lot like Twitter and the ‘retweet’ feature, a Pinterest user can Repin onto a board of their own. In addition, if you happen to see something you like but doesn’t necessarily fit with any of your board, than you can simply do just that, Like it, as well as comment.

Putting this into perspective, lets consider you’re looking at remodeling your living room. Some boards you Pin pictures to could include Furniture, TV/Electronics, Decorations, Lighting and as you come across pictures that you find that are viable options to include in your new space. Have an upcoming wedding? Between the flower arrangements, venues and entertainment, it can be a bit cumbersome to keep all the details intact. Not anymore.

Along with creating your own boards, you’re able to browse Pins by category to help locate your new favorite photos with ease. The layout of the app mirrors the web design and makes it an overall easy process to share the buildings, book, and motivational influences that you just happen to come across.

As the app continues to ride the wave of popularity, it will be interesting to see how business both large and small adopt Pinterest to expand their reach. Pinning their products to their Boards that send traffic back to their company’s home website has thus been a popular approach.

With Tout, now you can.

This free app is a must for those looking to provide unique updates to their Facebook and Twitter pages without boring their followers. With it’s user-friendly features and point and shoot capabilities, Tout allows you to share your point of view with your audience. “It’s a combination of the real time blog and the rich clarity and vivid capability of video”, Founder and CEO Michael Downing stated in a recent article.

This has proven to be both useful and captivating for users and viewers alike for a wide variety of people and organizations. Here’s just a small sample of a few that take the cake:

• Shaq
The big man may be retired from the game, but he isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Considered to be one of the early adopters of the app, Shaq has leveraged his following base through Tout to promote his new book and even announce his retirement from the NBA.

http://www.tout.com/m/menvfz

• Minnesota Timberwolves
This team, bar none, is a leader in providing consistent and noteworthy updates through Tout to engage fans and give a behind-the-scenes look at what the organization’s been up to. Jeff Munneke (@MinnesotaMunn), the team’s VP of Client Development, does a fantastic job of interacting and highlighting season ticket holders, their Crazy 121 Section and the players themselves.

http://www.tout.com/m/kb5py6

• Heidi Burgett, Nike PR
Ever wonder what it’s like to work for one of the world’s most dominant brands? Through Tout, Heidi provides this amazing first-person perspective of what it’s like on the day-to-day working at Nike. From product launches to international trips, her updates through this app give viewers a front row seat of her world-wind life as she personally ensures Nike stays on top of it’s game.

http://www.tout.com/m/18kwst

(Green Bay, WI) Evolve Concepts, Inc and Tweetsicles have come together to develop a four-city tour en route to the 2012 SXSW Festival held annually in Austin, TX. The tour, which is labeled, ‘TrepTrip, will have these young entrepreneurs making stops in Nashville, Memphis, Dallas, and end their tour capturing all the action and energy at the marquee event in Austin.

The two teams will be embark on the road trip in Evolve’s customized Airstream Skydeck; this coach boasts two levels, four unique zones to display content and will even be equipped with a social media rear lounge to be utilized for the various cities. Through these stops, the two companies look to network and meet with other young professionals and startups to share ideas and capture content to update through multiple social media platforms for people to stay current with.

“We really wanted to design this as a creative think tank road trip for young entrepreneurs”, Brad Kossow of Evolve Concepts stated. “Every startup has a unique story behind how they got to where they are today, and we’re aiming to highlight these as we make the trek to SXSW”, Kris Eul of Tweetsicles added.

Interested startups that are based in the Nashville, Memphis and/or Dallas area are encouraged to contact Kris Eul to for more information on having their business featured on ‘TrepTrip.

Evolve Concepts, Inc, located in Union Grove, WI, focuses on equipment leasing, fabrication, and mobile strategies for a variety of brands looking to showcase their products through experiential marketing. (www.evolveconceptsinc.com)

Tweetsicles is a social media-based company focusing on account managing, campaign creation and training. Based in Green Bay, WI, Tweetsicles provides targeted strategies and tactics for their clients to utilize while improving their overall online presence. (www.tweetsicles.com)

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Kris Eul
Tweetsicles
920.265.6135
kris@tweetsicles.com
www.tweetsicles.com

Path originally launched in November of 2010 as an answer to big social media networks. Places like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace share information that is much more public than private – all catalysts to connecting with people that aren’t exactly in your circle but are acquaintances. Path foresaw a social network that was more like a bonfire than a raging dance party. They wanted intimacy. They, like many of us, value quality over quantity.

In response to the question “How is Path different than Facebook or Twitter?” Path said,

Path is the Smart Journal that helps you share life with the close friends and family who matter most to you.

You can share photos, videos, your thoughts, the music you’re listening to, where you are, who you’re with, and when you wake up and go to sleep. You can share with a maximum of 150 people. This restriction preserves Path as a safe, intimate, judgment-free space where you can be yourself.

Facebook is primarily for sharing with all of your friends and acquaintances and Twitter is primarily a platform for public sharing.

As you can see in the quote above, Path restricts your network to 150 people. Why? Well we’re glad you asked.

Path was inspired by Professor Robin Dunbar from Oxford University, whose research delves deeply into the number of trusted relationships humans can maintain throughout life.

• We tend to have 5 best friends,
• 15 good friends,
• 50 close friends and family,
• and 150 total friends.

Path is building tools for you to share with the people who matter most in your life.

Here are some great screenshots of Path’s beautiful user interface.

If you’re an active person & also a Nike customer, and you’re planning on getting your hands on Nike’s new Nike+ FUELBAND product, you’re going to love Path.

Path recent announced a partnership between them and Nike that will integrate the two technologies. Nike+ FUELBAND activity will be documented on Path (with acceptance of settings and permissions of course).

Path is available to both iPhone and Android users so we definitely encourage you to download it and test it out for yourself if you haven’t already. Visit Path’s official website to learn more about the app and access the download link for your mobile platform.

Let us know what your thoughts are about the application’s social aspects, as well as design!

To kick things off, we’re starting with the recently released Oink for iPhone. Developed and launch by Kevin Rose and his team at Milk, Oink allows users to ‘give a simple thumbs up or thumbs down.’ It has completely removed the idea of rating an establishment on numeric scale and focuses more on if a user likes (or even ‘loves’) a certain cup of jo at a nearby coffee shop or even the atmosphere at a local clothing shop. Similar to foursquare, users are then able to leave mini-comments, tips and photos of the actual item for sharing across networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Another interesting concept they threw into the mix was including ‘cred’  to provide a reason to ‘oink’ on a consistent basis. They’ve also provided different Levels that users can work up towards so their oinks carry more influence. If you happen to be a first-timer in a city and are craving a slice of pizza or a pasta dish, you can search under that specific tag and it’ll not only show you the closest locations that offer those items, but also the ones that serve the best.

Oink’s cred feature allows users to categorize (in folders essentially, by tagging the item) their ratings and most remarkable items, which will help build that user’s cred on that specific topic.

The design is clean with a touch of distress and very user-friendly. The navigation bar is along the bottom bar as most native applications are – which ensures that it’s very intuitive the minute you download the app. As soon as you open the application you’re taken right to a feed that displays activity from everyone you’re following. If you agree with one of their “likes” or “loves” – you just hit agree! If you see something that looks intriguing, but you’ve never had it, you can add it to your to-do list to save it for later as a reminder.

Overall, OINK is about sharing remarkable products and services, not just brands or restaurants and a great edition to the social space.

You can find more information and download the OINK app at www.oink.com to experience it with your own fingertips.

Highlighted Updates

Never miss a status update again with this new feature. All updates that you missed while you were living your life offline will be grouped and waiting for your viewing pleasure the next time you log on. All new updates not previously before seen will be indicated with a small blue arrow.

Status Ticker

Providing real-time updates of your friends in regards to pictures they’ve commented on, Fan Pages they’ve Liked, and even music they’re listening to on Spotify. This brings in a bit of a Twitter feel as it definitely brings the ‘social experience’ to another dimension, but still unclear from a user-perspective if it’s truly beneficial in the long run. By putting your cursor over an update within the ticker, the respective update with expand (picture, status update thread, etc) and allows the user the opportunity to jump in where the conversation was left off. While on the main Status Feed page, users will be able to hide the Facebook Chat bar that’s located along the right-side of the screen, but the Status Ticker will remain as you scroll up and down with on the page.

Timeline

This undoubtedly was the biggest announcement and update revealed as this developers have been focusing on this initiative for the past year. ‘Timeline’ allows users to see the highlighted parts of their interactions on the site from birth to the present. And you thought those pictures from college would never resurface. Whether it was your first date with your fiance, graduating college, buying your first home or even breaking an arm, ‘Timeline’ now allows you to highlight all of these things you wish to make notice of (privacy settings allow users to hide anything they don’t want the public to see). The overall look and feel allows your profile page to come to life as users will be able to not only set a custom profile picture, but will also have the opportunity to select a photo of their liking as the larger, banner picture.

As Zuckerberg stated, when Facebook was first released, it showcased the first five minutes of a conversation. You found out the person’s name, where they went to school, and their relationship status. With Timeline, it’s taking that conversation a step further and providing content for the next 2-3 hours of that conversation. Another great feature is that if you take a look along the right-hand side of the banner picture, users are able to easily navigate through the years. Looking for pictures of old friends from 2006? Simply click on that year, and Timeline will provide a breakdown not only pictures, but friends added and memorable status updates and posts from others. Here, I’ve highlighted a sample from 2008:

Currently, ‘Timeline’ is only available for those users that are considered to have ‘developer’s profiles’. However, as a fellow Tweetsicles staffer here learned, if you’re really antsy to start using the new feature, there is a way to do so. Mashable posted a terrific article that takes users step-by-step into how they can enable this ‘Timeline’ to their profile with not too much complexity.

To learn more about Facebook’s Timeline & the features it has, visit the official Timeline page.

SPOILER ALERT:
At last week’s Smash NYC conference, it was noted that Facebook and PayPal will have an announcement in regards to an upcoming partnership due to be unveiled next month.

Businesses big and small are looking for ways to leverage Social Media and create valuable experiences with their customers but most businesses perceive Tweets & Twitter in general, as a less-formal network.

Every social network is an important tool to growing your business as long as it provides value for your customers (dependent on your transaction type(s) B2B / B2C). Some networks may be more pertinent to your industry than others in which case you should be actively engaging within that channel, regardless of the amount of users signed up for the platform.

Without further ado, let’s begin reviewing TwitSpark and how it helps businesses realize the value of every interaction on Twitter.

The web application is designed by a Belgium-based web company, KePa (http://www.kepa.be), which is headed up by Davy Kestens (http://www.davykestens.be). At first glance you’ll notice that the application’s flow is very pleasing and visually balanced.

What you see above is a screenshot of the main Dashboard panel upon logging in. On the left side you can see statistics for the number of mentions (tweets directed at your account specifically) are New, On Hold (to answer at a later time), or Archived. This simple panel allows you to keep track of all Tweets that mention your business and show you exactly how many you need to reply to. Not all @mentions will demand replies but in most cases, an @reply will go a long way in building relationships.

When answering a tweet, there are several actions that you could take to manage the tweet on your end including the ability to Reply, Put on Hold (to answer / tag tweet at a later date), Archive (once you’ve responded / taken action correctly), and Tag (which is useful for categorizing tweets and viewing all tweets within a given tag later).

In addition to the ability to reply to specific tweets and make sure you’ve handled all @mentions accordingly, you’re able to create multiple users to handle your account.

When having multiple users manage an account, it’s important that a reply of a specific tweet is not created twice.

TwitSpark has a built in feature that prevents this from happening and lets a user know if someone else is currently replying to that tweet. The last thing your company wants to do is look amateur, regardless of your company’s size.

So let’s say that you get a frequent number of the same requests / questions. TwitSpark has a built in feature called “Canned Replies” that you can utilize as a base to respond to those questions accordingly.

As a general rule, the more personalized and genuine you are on social media, the better it will be for your company. So we suggest that you use the canned replies as a template and modify it each time keeping the answer the same but your delivery different.

Another great feature of TwitSpark is it allows you to see stats and details of a user’s account as well as their the overall Klout Score (a user’s influence on their network) as well as which topics that user is influential in.

The final TwitSpark feature we want to highlight is the ability to tag tweets and categorize them in similar topics. In talking with Davy about the feature, he noted that they are currently working on an export feature so that once you view a list of tags, you’re able to export the tweet report and deliver them to the right department within your company.

A good example of this would be for a Hosting company that receives report/trouble-shooting requests daily. Each day a member of the social media team would be able to print off a report of all tweets tagged with “support” or a similar tag and deliver that to the support team to handle promptly.

TwitSpark is currently still in Beta but they have plans to publicly launch the service this week. One of the main notable companies currently using the service to deepen the relationships with their customers is VolksWagen. TwitSpark is also currently developing Desktop & Mobile applications to tie into their service and help their customers utilize the service natively & on the go.

SUMMARY

Overall, TwitSpark helps companies & businesses of all sizes formalize the interactions with their customers via Twitter and make sure companies engage back effectively & efficiently.

Many companies find it hard to see the value Twitter creates, but it really is an essential tool for immediate and instant communication between customers and businesses of all sizes.

APPLYING FOR A TwitSpark BETA ACCOUNT

While TwitSpark plans to launch this week, you may still have the opportunity to sign up for a Beta account and test drive the service to see if it can help add value for your company. Sign up here and let us know what your thoughts are of the review & the service!

UPDATE! TwitSpark has now launched & they are offering a 14 Day Free Trial!