One of the new features that Facebook has rolled out to both a personal and business Page is the ability to add a Milestone to the Timeline. This means you can add a status update and date it for anytime in the past. Those of you who like to think ahead, be aware, you can’t add a Milestone to a future date!
The tips for creating engagement are the same for Milestones as they are for regular posts. In the text; try to add a question that has a simple answer, use fill in the blanks, ask for opinions, reply to every comment, and tag people that have an important connection to the Milestone. It doesn’t matter if your company is old or new, add a few Milestones and see how it adds to the overall quality of your Page.
The nice thing about a Milestone is how Facebook formats it immediately as a Highlighted post spanning the whole space left to right with a little flag icon to mark it as a special post. If you don’t want it to span the whole way you can make it span half the page, as Coca-Cola did on these two Milestones.
Facebook’s first required Milestone
If you haven’t added a Milestone to your business page, Facebook asks that the very first Milestone is about your Page itself. They want you to post the date the business was founded, started, opened, created, or launched.
Here’s the caveat. If you are going to be adding Milestones that date back farther than when you opened the business, make the first Milestone date as far back as you can. Otherwise, if you create the first Milestone as the page launched in 2010 and then try to add a Milestone in 1990 you won’t be able to. But don’t worry; if you’ve already added your first Milestone you can edit the date to give you room to add new ones.
For this first post Facebook only gives you these verbs; founded, started, opened, created and launched. But after you’ve created this first Milestone you will not have to stick to those words. Instead you will have a field called Event where you can add your text about the Milestone.
Once you have acknowledged the launch of the business, you can add as many Milestones as you want. Here are a few ideas for different types of businesses:
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Product-type businesses: You can create a Milestone for the launch of each new product. Make sure you add images (or historical video) to each of these Milestones. Create a Milestone for new people added to your business, or people who have made a great contribution to your business.
Everyone uses the Coca-Cola page as a great example (and it is), as their history goes all the way back to 1886! Most small businesses I know don’t go that far back, but some started in the 50’s and 60’s. I would imagine there would a lot of Milestones that could be added. Here’s a tip: don’t add them all at the same time! Make sure you read the upcoming section about Timing Your Milestone Posts.
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Service-type businesses: You can create a Milestone for each new service you created through time. For example, maybe you started out as a writer, but then became a public speaker. Add those two things to your Timeline as Milestones. Maybe your service business moved into a different building, or to a different city. Add those, too. Did you change your marketing tagline? Did you retire a service that was no longer needed (like typewriter repair…)?
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Food-type businesses: This type of business probably has all the different kinds of Milestones that the product and service types would have and more! How wonderful to scan through a food business and see lots of images of food!
Timing your Milestone posts
You might be thinking to organize all your Milestones and post them all at once, but stop that thought! When you post a Milestone, it goes out as a status update to everyone connected to your Page. Imagine having 20 posts from a Page post one after another in your news feed. Multiple posts might create a little curiosity — but they also get to be a bit annoying after the tenth Milestone.
It’s great to organize what you will be posting as your historical Milestones, but think about creating a little strategy around the timing of these posts. Most research shows that people are little more attentive to Facebook on the weekends. Maybe you can spread out these posts over the next few months posting them on Saturdays, starting with the oldest to the newest, or visa versa!
If you know the exact times when your Page connections are most likely to be on Facebook, post at those times. Some businesses post right before lunch and right before dinner, as those are the times they see the most engagement.
Creating a storyline around Milestones
Create a storyline around your Milestones. In the text of the post, refer to the last Milestone you posted to keep the story going. Weave the historical with the current. In other words, as you post an historical event refer to why this event becomes something even more important in the future.
“The red roof restaurant design makes its debut. Variations of this iconic shape would later become part of the company’s logo.” -- Pizza Hut
