So Facebook changed your page once again…

Most of you have seen people with the new Facebook Timeline in action or maybe you've activated it for yourself. I'm not really sure how I feel about it but I figure I'll just embrace it and get used to it because I'm sure it's here to stay.

I found a great little rundown and wanted to share it. This post will give you a basic guide on some of the key Timeline features.

Graphics

• 851x315 px cover image
• 125x125 px [shown] profile image thumbnail

If you don't have access to Photoshop, you can use something like Resizr to adjust your photos. And if you don't want to do that, Facebook allows you to drag and drop your images into alignment.


There are three main types of posts that appear on your Timeline.

• "Pinning" - Makes a post 'sticky' (stays active for 7 days and you can only pin one post at a time)
• "Highlighting" - Makes it's double size on the Timeline. Use it when you really want something to stand out. You can do more than one post and photos and videos may be best.

**Note, you can not pin and highlight something at the same time.**

• "Milestones" - Simply that. Important dates and events in the company. First designs of the site (from napkin to now type of thing…)… x subscribers…. anything you want. Milestones must include a date and they appear as a double wide image. Text will be centered too.

To see the interaction on your page, look under the 'Recent Posts by Others' box.

I recommend watching the video yourself if you want to dig deeper. It's just under 13 minutes and may make more sense.

I need to write more

Why?

I use Twitter as my main writing platform, there’s no getting around it. According to TweetDeck, I average 12 tweets a day. I really thought it would be more than that… Anyway, that’s potentially 12 different topics for me to choose from, and expand on.

Twitter can also feel a little too ‘short form’ to get big ideas across. And really, it’s called microblogging for a reason.

I want to have a more lasting impression. Both in a way for friends and family to follow along with my life and even just to create a more searchable archive (I love going back and reading past blog posts!).

Twitter and other microblogging services can give an ‘at a glance’ view of a person but to really get to know them, you need to hang out with them more. In this day and age, that space is usually online.

I also want to write more because I think I’m a horrible writer. Some of you may not think that but if you are any of my past English teachers, I apologize. So how does one get better at something? By doing more of it! Ultimately I need to do it [writing] correctly but I need to at least be in the motion of doing.

So that’s what I plan on doing.

Bonus Resources:

• Expand Your Social media Mix: Twitter Alone is Not Enough /via Web Strategist
• 19 Reasons You Blog and Not Just Tweet /via The Future Buzz
• Steak or Pepper /via Gary Vaynerchuk

Photo by Flickr user Irish Typepad