I first wrote about Facebook Timeline in this February 29 post, the day it debuted. I stumbled upon it when I visited Dove's Facebook page because I was planning to write about the brand that day. Dove was one of the 43 early-adopter brands (as well as Coca-Cola, Burberry, Chevy Volt, Old Spice) that Facebook partnered with on the launch. With the elimination of a default landing page and the addition of a bigger, new cover photo, along with some other entirely new branding opportunities, brand pages had to scramble to get ready for the conversion. Many of them, like my client, are now very interested to learn if users are more or less engaged with their content. Those that made the switch prior to the March 30 deadline have a little more data than the others to review.

Wildfire Interactive compiled an analysis of the 43 early-adopter brands. Since several of their clients were part of the initial launch they were looking to understand engagement statistics such as People Talking about This (PTAT), Likes per Page Post, Comments per Page Post, and Fan Growth Rate. They tracked these brand pages for 21 days before the Timeline switch and 21 days after. 45% of these brands have less than 1MM fans. 40% had between 1MM-10MM fans and the remaining 15% had greater than 10MM fans (mega-brands).

According to Wildfire, the brands with less than 1MM fans saw their comments per brand post grow 40% and Likes per post rise 60.3%. The “PTAT” metric also increased, up 67.4%. For brands with between 1MM- 10MM fans, comments per brand post dipped 17.43%, while Likes per post and “PTAT” both increased, by 13.56% and 28.58%, respectively. For brands with more than 10MM fans, all metrics declined, with “PTAT” down 13.72%, comments down 16.72% and Likes down 11.57%.

Social media measurement company Simply Measured also studied some of these early-adopter brand pages and found that average engagement on brand posts rose 46% during the same time period. Prior to the Timeline introduction, these 15 brand pages saw an average of 1,672 points of engagement per post, rising to 2,441 after switching to Timeline. Thanks to our friends at eMarketer for creating these graphs.

I feel it's still a bit too early to determine exactly how the Timeline pages will affect fan engagement. I strongly believe the most important element is the content brands put out on their pages. For now, it seems users are still participating and engaging on Facebook and will continue to do so. I'm curious to hear from any of our readers who are managing their brand pages if they have seen any difference so far. Please share any data that you can.

Speaking of Facebook brand pages, I launched a new Facebook page last week for the company I have been working with, American Sweepstakes. I won't have any data prior to Timeline launch, but will be able to track going forward. As of now we only have 22 fans, and we need 30 to be able to have access to Facebook Insights. So please visit and like us. I plan to posts about the latest sweepstakes and contest promotions we are launching for clients as well as what's new in promotional marketing and of course share my blog posts.

I now have to work on scheduling Facebook posts and updates into my schedule. I forgot to post on Monday already and then yesterday I posted twice. I don't want to post too much, but not too little. How often do you post on your page? Any advice you can share with me from your experiences would be appreciated. Thanks!