If you spend time on Facebook, you’ve noticed some changes. These changes have been a little bit of a headache for Business Pages – first because developing a new strategy midstream with new rules is rarely super fun. But I have collected some tips that will hopefully be helpful to anyone who maintains a Business Facebook Page. Mostly I’ve focused on ideas to increase fan engagement – rather than design:

1. The most obvious change is the big banner (aka cover) added to the top of the page. The dimensions are 851 x 315 px. It might be fun to change that on a regular basis. One idea might be a “guess the cover” contest. Choose a cover that’s a close up or obscure image and ask fans to guess what it is. Or take a page from Google’s playbook and use a standard image that you alternate with fun, meaningful surprises every now and again.
2. You can pin a post (make it sticky) so that it shows up at the top of your page. You can only pin for 7 days and it appears as if you can only pin your own update. You might want to choose a weekly post to rise to the top to create a conversation or theme for the week.
3. You can highlight (or star) a status update. This means they will show in full screen (covering both columns). This is a good way to draw attention to ongoing discussions.
4. You can also hide or delete items if necessary, which is a good way to minimize conversation that didn’t go very far.
5. You can create a history by adding posts and changing the date. So if your business opened in 1999, you could write a post as if you were writing on opening day, change the date and it will become part of your historical timeline. You can also mark items as milestone, which, like starring, makes posts full screen. This could be a compelling way to keep people on the Facebook page longer.
6. Images and videos have always worked well on Facebook. They are shown more prominently on your fan’s walls. So that’s my last tip, continue to use video and images to draw people in.
7. One note: You can feature friend activity on the right column. This column can appear boring when in test mode – but when people visit your Page any activity by fans they know will be highlighted. So in the field, I think this section will be more successful that it original appears.

This is a high level look at strategy and the new timeline – for instructions on to make changes you might check out the following resource: https://www.facebook.com/FacebookPages.