How to be ready for your Facebook Timeline

So the greatly anticipated ‘Timeline’ is here folks, get ready to see a barrage of negative status updates from your many Facebook friends complaining about the hefty change. The Facebook Timeline will be featuring on your profile whether you would like it to or not and the social media gods are giving us 7 days to preview your profile before it goes live – giving you some very much needed time to clean up your profile. 

How the timeline works is like this - The new Facebook profile is divided into two main columns, with a line down the middle representing the passage of time. The passage of time throws up any saved status updates, friendships, photos, events or wall comments – going right back to the birth of your profile. Everything is there and everything can be viewed by your friends until you decide to ‘hide it from your timeline’. We, the Facebook public, are being encouraged to add life events which were not captured by Facebook, in particular those that occurred before users joined the social network.

Whatever you love and whatever story you want to tell, you can add that to your Timeline.

Your profile now also contains a large banner that Facebook are calling your ‘cover photo’ – this is a large image, of your choice, that remains public to everyone on Facebook, including non friends – so choose wisely.

If you’re like many of us at Carvill Creative and have been on Facebook for what seems like forever - I would suggest you put aside a good couple of hours to sift through your Facebook past and ensure you’re happy for it to be regurgitated to your present.

Get ready to click “Hide from Timeline” a fair amount in these hours  You can find this very important button under the “Edit or Remove” pencil icon that appears when you hover your mouse over the top right corner of every Timeline post. You can remove anything on your timeline that you would rather people didn’t see by simply using this button.

Remember, it’s not just  photos that Timeline digs out and highlights— it’s every inappropriate status update you’ve ever posted and every message your so called  university ‘friends’  may have written on your wall at some ungodly hour.

You can also remove or hide posts through your “Activity Log,” which presents everything posted on your profile in a more compact, easy to understand form.

In order to ensure that all your Facebook albums have the privacy settings still intact – visit your albums page and look at the tiny icon on the right hand side of each album. This is where you will have the option to change the privacy on your albums; Facebook explains what each symbol means and should ensure that pictures are only seen by the right people.

If you are concerned about what is appearing publicly on your profile then just opt to, ‘View As …’

On your Facebook Timeline, you should see a little gears icon with an arrow next to it on the far right. Click on it, and then choose the “View As” option. This will let you look at your profile as if you were a stranger or let you pick a specific person to see what is viewable to them on your profile.

If you want to get the timeline now, simply click here ' https://www.facebook.com/about/timeline

Or you can wait until you see an announcement at the top of your home page.

Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  Carvill Creative covers all aspects of online visibility – website effectiveness, social media marketing, social media management and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

Passionate about Online Visibility - creating an integrated approach across websites, blogs and social media platforms.