Images as branding

As the old saying goes, a picture says a thousand words. With the new Facebook timeline design, not-for-profit (NFP) organisations can now display two photos on their homepage – that’s two thousand words worth of promotion.

The size of the cover photo has been significantly enhanced compared to previous Facebook image capabilities. Organisations can use this large space as their own personal banner to display enagaging photos or graphics that capture the essence of their organisation.

The smaller photo that sits to the bottom-left of the enhanced photo is the image that will appear alongside all posts the organisation makes. For this reason, it is a great place to display the organisation’s logo to increase brand awareness.

Highlighting milestones

All NFP organisations are products of passion. An effective way to bring your organisation to life and get people excited about its values and goals is by explaining how and why the organisation came into existence.

Milestones are markers of progress; some are big, others small, but all are important and worth sharing. They are a time for reflection, as well as forward-planning, and highlighting them enables your organisation to increase the visibility of its goals and articulate its vision for the future.

The Facebook timeline design enables organisations to tag certain posts as milestones, which will appear significantly larger on the organisation’s profile page. Additionally, milestones are displayed corresponding to a year. This allows NFPs to complete a detailed historical record of their organisation, which followers can easily navigate through by clicking on the list of years displayed down the right-hand side of the organisation’s profile page.

Invitations to like

Individuals within your organisation can now use their personal Facebook page to send invitations to their friends to ‘like’ your NFP’s page.

Once someone likes your page they will automatically receive updates in their newsfeed of posts your organisation makes.

Private messaging

Visitors to your organisation’s page are able to send a direct message to the page administrator. This function enables people who have an enquiry or who want to provide feedback to make direct contact with your organisation.

It is important that responses are made to each person who takes the time to send a message to your organisation. Remember to thank people for their feedback, regardless of whether it is positive or negative.

By now, you will have seen the prompts to change your profile to the new timeline design. Even though it is currently optional to convert to the new format, eventually it will be rolled out across all profiles. It is a good idea to begin setting up your timeline profile now so you can take the time to do it properly and not make it live until you are ready.