Facebook Timeline is going to become mandatory for everyone, all companies included, post March 30, 2012. There are several key changes, but some of them are absolutely crucial from branding and marketing perspective so that they should be carefully considered. This is necessary for a brand – irrespective of size, scale and domain – to fine tune its marketing strategy and align it with the new features.

It is pertinent to gauge the impact and implications of Facebook Timeline on small businesses, in particular. The new requirement, which will prompt businesses to switch over to Timeline by the end of this month, really changes the whole game. Many of them have thus far spent significant amount of time, money and energies on ‘like-gating’ apps. (Such applications try to force you into ‘liking’ the page even before you can actually interact with them.)  But this update will break that functionality.

Timeline is now going to emerge as the default view of a Facebook company page. And marketers, who are forward-looking in approach, should take the time now for optimizing their respective Timeline profiles. This is imperative to emphasize the new design elements, with a huge graphic space up top plus four buttons. These can apparently become calls to action. Also, if a business has had a sort of contentious past on Facebook, NOW is the time to clean it up before it pops up from nowhere in the new format.

Which businesses are going to really gain from this switchover? Those who already boast effective community engagement strategies and carry out user-friendly activities on Facebook are likely to gain from Timeline changes. Conversely, the businesses that will get negatively affected are the ones – barely active or those suffering from user apathy on Facebook. Those who think that just hosting a page is good enough will pay for their inaction. Timeline will highlight that they haven’t kept their pages active for quite some time. This will harm their image and ‘face value’.

Learn to effectively target your prospects

Another issue to consider is which social media outlet is perhaps best suited for your business? The answer lies in knowing where your target audience is right now. One practical suggestion I wish to make here is that you carefully study your customer database. Pick e-mail addresses of your say top 500 or 1,000 most valued customers – existing and prospective. Load them all into a brand-new, fresh, Gmail account.

Then check into all major social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. After you sign up, when they ask you to find your friends with help of your address book, opt for Gmail and then meticulously keep count of the people in your customer database on each service.Focus on the platform where your prospects already are.