If you follow Moms With Apps on Fridays, you may notice that we get a little crazy on Facebook. We created “Download Parties” to get developers and consumers interacting in real-time. Every App Friday we gather on a Facebook page to share app news and deals. But what happens when Facebook changes their layout, and moves our cheese? Here are some tips on navigating the new Facebook “Timeline” in a group setting. Thanks Susy of Busy Bee Studios for being the first to dive-in, and pull these tips together!
The Challenge
When Busy Bee Studios signed up to host for App Friday we didn’t realize it would also be a bit of an experiment in the new Facebook timeline, but it turned out to be a fun challenge. In planning for the party we noticed that the new format takes all of a page’s visitor/guest comments and truncates them into a little summary window at the right of the page.
For App Friday, this meant that participants would essentially be able to see ONLY the page admin’s postings – sort of like showing up at a party, and all you can see is the host, though there might be dozens of other ‘invisible’ guests there with you!
Given that challenge, here is how we hosted our AppFriday party in the new Facebook Timeline — and we think it worked out pretty well.
The Solution
After some searching, we realized that there was a way to view guest comments in an expanded form. There’s a subtle pull-down button under the cover graphic that lets you change the default “Highlights” view to “Posts by Others,” which filters the view to show only posts by guests. Works great! Except…you can’t see any comments from the host.
The solution was to host the party in this “Posts by Others” view, then to make sure I (the hostess) was posting as an “other” as well – i.e. I could not post as “Busy Bee Studios”, but had to be logged in as “Susy Christiansen” so that I could participate.
There’s a page setting in Facebook (Admin Panel > Manage > Edit Page > Your Settings) that lets you choose whether to always post on your page as the Admin, or to let you post as an individual. I unchecked the “always post as admin” option, and now I could participate in the party as Susy. And if I did want to post as Busy Bee, I could do that with a manual switch at any time, via the upper right-hand corner drop-down as before.
Plus, to avoid any confusion, I changed the user icon for “Susy” to the same one that “Busy Bee Studios” uses – the idea being that people would see my posts and know immediately I was the hostess.
The Set Up
Once we had a plan, we needed to figure out how to let people know about it, since it required an action from them. This was done in 3 primary ways before the party:
Lorraine at MWA made sure to mention in the AppFriday announcement that there was a new format, and that visitors should be on the lookout for instruction.
I posted a comment, as Busy Bee Preschool, that explained how to change the page view. I then “pinned” this comment (a new feature) so that it would remain permanently at the top of the default Busy Bee page. (Yes, sort of like the “Come on in” sign taped to your front door!) To do this, hover over the top right corner of a message and select Edit or Remove > Pin to Top.
Next I took advantage of the prominent Cover image by customizing a “Happy AppFriday” graphic that showed you how to change your settings. I tied our brand characters in with the message, and created a functional but still inviting “welcome” to the party.
The Party
During the event, there was only a small bit of confusion about ‘where’ to go, but there was far less chaos than I anticipated.
The biggest issue was the format of the new Timeline itself; while conversations still do flow chronologically top-to-bottom, message containers now shift to either the left or right column randomly as new posts appear. So while a conversation may start in the right column, as you refresh the page it would appear lower on the timeline (expected) and perhaps shifted to the left (unexpected).
And because of the large Cover graphic, the bigger fonts, and the new layout itself, there is less space to house messages. So messages get pushed off the page faster, and the party ended up feeling much more fast-paced. I found that to be kind of fun, but it was clearly annoying for some guests who found it hard to grab codes and peruse information.
But other than the frustration with the timeline, the party went well – a good turnout, codes were given out, apps and developers were introduced, and we even had fun with some Bug Trivia to help celebrate our new bug-themed app. The new timeline itself ended up being a point of conversation, and we got through it together and had a good time.
App Friday Party Checklist
Though everything went well, we did learn a few things. This is my summary checklist for throwing a party on the new Facebook Timeline:
Preparation
- Create a custom Cover graphic with a “welcome” message and instructions for changing to “Posts by Others” view
- As the site admin, post a how-to comment and then pin it to the top
- Use a direct URL to promote the party. If you manually switch to the “Posts by Others” view on your page, you’ll notice your page address change, with an added “?filter=2” variable attached to the end of your URL. That direct URL will automatically take users to the “Posts by Others” view.
- Log into Facebook with your personal account, ideally with the same user icon as your page.
During the Party
- Post tips periodically about the new format, how to switch the view, and how the timeline works.
- Don’t include too much in a comment all at once – longer entries will get cut off, and it also serves to push other messages down faster.
- Keep an eye out for anyone who seems confused or frustrated, so you can jump in and help them.
- Use “control R” to refresh, which keeps your “posts by others” view intact.
There’s a lot more to the Timeline than the few features we mentioned here, and I’m looking forward to digging into it further. I’m also looking forward to the next AppFriday party, to see if people are a little more comfortable with the format. But until most companies migrate their pages over and users get more familiar with the timeline, there will likely be a bit of a learning curve at Facebook parties for a while. But we’re proud to say that MWA jumped in early, and hopefully has helped make the process smoother in the future.
Nice post! I wonder if Facebook had this use case in mind when they designed Timeline. Using the “filter” URL in links about the party is a great tip!
Thanks for taking the time to post these suggestions. My question is, wouldn’t it be more efficient and effective for you to keep a “Facebook party”/group event/Q&A contained within one specific comment thread? All the comments and likes (engagement/” talking about this”) would accumulate on a single post, the questions and answers, promo codes would be contained in one place and a highly engaged post would be more likely to show up (and remain) on the walls of other people who have already liked your page. Additionally, you can promote the party thread with a specific link (by clicking the timestamp and copy/paste the dedicated URL) and on the timeline by pinning it to the top. If you need to address someone in the thread directly, you could just tag or mention them by using the “@” symbol.