Facebook Timeline is like Marmite, some love it, some hate it, but it is great for Facebook Pages, especially anyone working in the visual creative fields.

One of the better features that some people aren’t aware of is the option to make a Facebook Page post WIDESCREEN, giving you a big sexy image that will dominate your page. Check out this EXAMPLE full width Facebook Page post:

 
The best way to take advantage of this feature and make your Facebook Page post fill the full width of the Timeline:

1> Create an image 843 pixels wide X 474 pixels high. (This is the maximum size for widescreen Facebook Page images, anything larger will be cropped to fit. )
2> Upload the photo to your post.
3> Add text to your post, and any hyperlinks. I’ve found that shortened links using a service like bit.ly are best, as they won’t pull through any other images from the source page.
4> Publish the post.
5> Move your cursor over the top-right corner of the post. You’ll see a star and a pencil icon appear. Click the star. Your Facebook Post is now widescreen. (If you ever need to undo this, just click the star icon again.)

BONUS  1:

You can also display video full width in your Facebook Page Timeline. Videos linked from Vimeo will automatically go widescreen when you hyperlink them. Use Vimeo on your Facebook Timeline if you can. The player looks much cleaner and I’ve found Youtube vids to be buggy as hell on Facebook Pages, sometimes you don’t even get a preview still of the video, just a text link. FAIL.

BONUS 2:

Once you’ve created your widescreen Facebook Page post image or video, you can make it “sticky” by pinning it to the top of your Timeline. Select the pencil icon top right of the post, and click “Pin to Top”. This will now be the first thing anyone sees on your page, so you can use this for highlighting new products, special offers etc.

If you found this post useful, please share the love using the links below, and don’t forget to “Like” my Facebook Page and follow me on Twitter.

1 Outdated copy
Is your site still talking about Apple’s forthcoming super-secret tablet computer, and speculating if it will be called iSlate or iTablet? Make sure your copy is up to date.

2 Hard to find your site
You need to understand what words and phrases your customers when they are looking for your products, and make sure your site uses these frequently, so your site appears in search engine results pages. Not only that, but you’ll need to make sure you update your site regularly with fresh content to stay relevant to the search engines. Your page titles, page summaries, image filenames, image titles and page content should reflect what people are looking for.

3 Hard to find what I need
Web navigation has become pretty standardised these days – you either have a list of pages/sections running down the right hand side of your page, or in the header at the top of the page. This is where people instinctively look when they land on your site. There are ways you can enhance this though, by fixing your navigation so it doesn’t move when your page scrolls, by including drop-down or fly-out menus for sub-sections or individual pages, or including graphics in your menus. If your site has lots of pages and sections, it’s a good idea to also include a “breadcrumb navigation” so it’s easy to backtrack through the site.

4 Hard to make contact
I’ve found your site, and despite the fact it looks goddamn awful, and it was really hard to find the product, I know from my Google searches that you are one of the few places in my area that sells what I want. If only I knew if you would still be open so I can swing by after work? Or if your widget is compatible with my doohickey?

Sure, you don’t want to be dealing with emails and phone calls all day, and feel free to direct me to a comprehensive FAQ, but you’ll be losing out on business if you bury your contact details in the footer of your site and your competitor has their phone number on every page.

5 Badly designed
Design is about so much more than just pretty colours, shapes and fonts. Each market demographic has styles and visual references that “speak” to them, that they can identify with. All colours have associations – White is clean, minimal, Blue is used to establish trust, etc. It isn’t good enough to use green for your website because it’s your favourite colour. How colours interact with each other is also important to consider – Red will stand out a mile against pretty much anything for example.
Think about how you expect a website for a bank to look, compared to a fashion retailer? Not just that, but a well designed page with a proper visual hierarchy and well considered typography will lead a visitors eye to where you want them to go, and help them find the information they need quickly.
If you want an example of how NOT to do it, try this http://www.sfwgraphics.com/ Ironically, this guy is also pitching himself as a web designer!

6 Not solving problems
You know that your product solves a problem for people, but you have to make sure your customers know that. Does your homepage spend all it’s time talking about how successful you are, or how you can make life easier for its visitors? On your sales pages, make sure your website describes your product in terms of benefits, rather than simply listing its features. (A benefit is a result of using a feature).

7 Under construction
It’s not necessarily a mortal sin to put a “coming soon” holding page up while you build your site. However, there are right and wrong ways to do this. Simply posting a page that says “under construction” adds no value to your business. You’ve somehow managed to get a visitor to your site, but now there’s nothing for them to do.

If you’re guilty of any of the above, there’s no time like the present to make a change. One of the most important things any website should have is high quality, on-topic content that is regularly updated. Consider moving your website to a Google-friendly Content Management System like WordPress, so you can update more of the site yourself, and maybe even incorporate a blog. You’ll need a graphic/web designer to handle the transition, but you’ll be impressed with how easy the site is to update once it’s up and running.

1 Regular Updates

Search engines favour sites that update on a regular basis, so the main benefit of a blog is being able to regularly add content that’s relevant to the service or product you offer. Writing regular posts is not only good for Search Engine Optimisation, it can help establish yourself as an expert in your niche, and inevitably over time your site will develop a decent density of your keywords, and in a natural context. Google will love you for it.

2 Take ownership of your site

If you use an off the peg content management system for your blog like WordPress*, you can also use this to create pages for your main site. I actually recommend using WordPress for your whole site, because their user interface is very straightforward and the benefits that come with using their content management system and plugins are massive.

3 Increased engagement

With the “related posts” plugin for WordPress, you can automatically create deeplinks to other pages that people wouldn’t otherwise have found. This increases the number of page views for each user and therefore reduces your bounce rate. With more page views, each visitor spends longer on your site, and gets more time to soak up your brand. You can also use your blog to engage more directly with your visitors, develop community through your comments section, build anticipation for upcoming product launches or conduct market research through straw polls.

4 Easily add media

Your blog’s content management system will allow you to add images and video whenever you want. It will also give you the option to add keyword rich metadata via image alt tags and descriptions.

5 Syndicate your content

You can easily set up RSS feeds to syndicate your blog content – users can subscribe to get your new blog posts in a feed reader or as an email – you get to maintain a connection with potential customers without them having to remember your site URL or even visit to get your content.

6 Automatically add content to your site

Just as you can use RSS feeds to distribute your content, you can also pull in RSS feeds from external sources to expand your site content without having to write it, although this shouldn’t be the only source of content on your blog.

7 Integrate social media

Most blog software has plugins you can use to integrate your social media profiles and draw traffic to your site. You can add your Twitter feed into your sidebar or footer, or tweet your latest blog post. You can add your blog’s RSS feed to your Facebook page, or show how many people “like” your Facebook page on your site.

8 Update your website from anywhere

With the right plugin, you can set your blog up so you can quickly add simple posts by sending an email, or even an SMS text message.

9 Share the love

Using plugins like Sexy Bookmarks, people can easily share your content over social networks like Twitter and Facebook, plus bookmarking sites like Digg or Delicious.

10 Build your marketing list

Once you’ve had a blog up and running for a while, you can pull content from various posts and create ebooks or reports to give away as an incentive to sign up to your company newsletter.

* WordPress comes in two flavours. There’s WordPress.com, where you can get a free blog, hosted on WordPress’ servers. Your page will have a URL like www.jensonswidgets.wordpress.com. With this version you won’t be able to create a full site, and not all plugins are allowed.

The other version is WordPress.org, for use on your own domain. You can build full websites with this, including multi-user membership sites and e-commerce. You’ll need a hosting service that provides a MySQL database and FTP software to upload files. A web designer can set this up for you (hint!).

I have a love/hate relationship with this show. I get the same vicarious pleasure from watching over-confident narcissists fall flat on their faces as anyone else, but for all the schadenfreude, we’re missing a real opportunity to showcase British business talent, and inspire future entrepreneurs. The banking crisis here in the UK, combined with a glut of reality shows dangling the carrot of  overnight fame has made it near impossible to distinguish or celebrate true success born of real talent, serious hard work or even canny risk taking backed by hard won experience.

Having said all that, tonight this season’s clowns in suits were tasked with buying and selling urban art. If you missed the show, or avoid it on principle, here’s a slice of some of what you missed – excellent work from Pure Evil and Copyright.

And just for the Lulz, here’s Cassetteboy vs The Apprentice

I produced the image of Surallan/Lord Sugar/Nookie Bear from an original photograph, by desaturating the image, applying a reasonably heavy gaussian blur, manipulating brightness and contrast and adding noise for the spraypaint effect.