Facebook Page Timeline Setup Tutorial – Milestones

Today’s task in the Facebook Page Timeline Setup Tutorial is to create Milestones for your company. Timeline comes with a new feature where you can add your company milestones to your page and create a story for your fans to see. I really love this feature for small businesses because it helps your customers get a better sense of how deeply rooted and connected you are to their community as opposed to bigger brands. It also lays out the stability and growth of your company.

How to Create Milestones

It’s very easy to create a milestone. Simply go to the status bar where you would post a normal message, and then click on the Milestone button on the right.

The milestone window will pop up and give you the option to name the milestone, give it a date and location, and include a story about the milestone. You can also add a photo to the Milestone. The dimensions of the Milestone photo for Facebook Timeline should be 843 x 403. You’ll notice that the options are much more general than the Milestone feature on Timeline Profiles, to accommodate all types of business and industries. You can also choose “Hide from NewsFeed” so that you don’t clog the stream of your fans when you are updating your Timeline.

Ideas for Milestones

Create milestones for:

When your business or organization was established
When new locations were opened
When leadership changed
When new products were released
When you reached a certain number of orders/customers/revenue, etc.
When you established important partnerships
When you received any awards or recognition
When you launched your website or social media presence

One organization that is making good use of the Milestones feature is the U.S. Military. Read about how they are sharing their history here.

Alternative to Milestones

If there is something that you want to add to your Timeline, but do not want it to be as prominent as a Milestone, it’s easy to add a status message to an earlier date. Just write your status like you normally would, then use the option below the box that says “Year” to start adding a date. You should also hide it from your News Feed so it doesn’t confuse people.

You can use this feature to add events that you sponsored, charitable contributions that you made, you name it.

Job Seekers

This milestones feature is a great way to setup your page as a virtual resume. Employers will be looking at your online presence, so why not take advantage of it to sell yourself as the best candidate for the job? Include milestones such as your graduation from college, earning your masters degree, the first company you started (even if you were 6 years old), the month you were named employee of the month, big contracts you landed, etc, etc. Milestones will be the best way to show off your accomplishments.

Do you have any other ideas for Milestones? Share them in the comment section below.

Miss a day? Find out what tasks were on Day One and Day Two.

According to Facebook, these page changes must be done by March 30th. If you don’t have the time to devote to updating your business page, email me, and I will set it up for you for $150.

Brittany Botti

NikiBee 5 pts

I'm trying to add my first milestone to a new page "Just a Thought" that I created yesterday: 24Mar2013, however, I only have '2013' as a choice for a year. The milestone I want to add happened in 1975. Help! Why is 2013 the only year I can choose?

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Vintagerockster

Why aren't my posted milestones showing up on my fans' news feed?

Whbyrd

How do you edit a photo to 843x407???? Please email me at whbyrd@whbyrd.com

Raymond

Hi, I have the same problem as B. Kurtzner, dit the same as mentioned but still get the message 'You cannot preview or publish your Page Timeline while using Facebook as....'. Could you Brittany of B. tell what the solutions to this problem is? Thanks!

Hi Steve, When you say tag photos, do you mean tag them with people in them? I'm assuming that although the tagging function works with pages as well as people, Facebook has limited the tagging function in this way because no one who has or has had a Facebook account that would have been alive in 1905. Therefore they wouldn't be able to be present in a photo. This would be my best guess as to why you are experiencing that problem. I would suggest re-considering your tagging strategy, or suggest the change to Facebook - although I can't imagine them working quickly on a solution for you.

Steve Humphries

Hi Brittany, In terns of tagging, I was referring to tagging the photo with the proper date. In the attached image, you can see the founding date setting for the company was in 1887. I uploaded a photo and tried to set the date to 1899, but the farthest back I can date it in the drop down is 1905. This is really slowing up my ability to build out this historical timeline. . . Any advice appreciated.

For some reason I can't see the image you attached, but I tried it with one of my pages and I see that I can't do it either. You can submit a request for Facebook to change it here: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact_us.php?id=138856662881439, but you will probably need to find a work around. If you post the photos as a milestone you can get around this, though I can imagine you probably don't want to create a ton of milestones for each photo. Another solution, though not as elegant, would be to create photo albums with the date or year(s) as the name of the album.

B. Kurtzner

I'm trying to do this in the preview mode and can't find the Status-Photo-Ask Question-Milestone menu at all. This leads me to believe that Milestones can only be added once the Timeline is Published. Nowhere can I find any differentiation between adding them in preview mode v.s. the published timelime mode. What can you share from your experience?

B., I came across this issue, but it had to do with how you are using Facebook, not the preview mode vs. publish mode. Try using Facebook as the page (In the Admin Panel click on Manage and then choose the option "Use Facebook as" your page). This worked for me when I tried it. Hope that helps!

Thank you for responding. Unfortunately this did not work for me. When I use the Facebook as The Page (as opposed to me, personally) I am taken back to the traditional view. The traditional view gives me this notice: "You cannot preview or publish your Page Timeline while using Facebook as Laurel School." What a drag.

Scratch that! I reread, retinkered and came up with what I was looking for. Thank you!

You're welcome B.! Glad it worked for you.

Julie Thorner

How did you do it? I am having the same problem and can't edit the page as the admin, or find the milestone feature if am not using it as the page.

Brittany, your posts are really helpful. I am stuck on the milestone and date feature for my company page. can you explain how to edit the timeline milestone format before publishing?

Cschelfhaudt

Hi Brittany, For some reason, I'm not able to see the option to add a Milestone on one of my client's FB pages, but I can see the option on others. I only have the option to create a Post or Photo. Do you know what would cause that? I also have no option to add a "founded" date at the bottom. Thoughts?

Hey there, try using Facebook as the page (In the Admin Panel click on Manage and then choose the option "Use Facebook as" your page). This should fix the problem. I had the same problem with one of my pages. Might be a glitch?

Heather Cobbs

Hey Brittany...anyone reporting problems having their Milestones display? Working on a page for a client and the only years I can select are 2011 and 2012, which doesn't exactly allow me to build their company history. Thanks!

Hi Heather, I did a quick Twitter search and it does seem like some people are having problems with the Milestone feature. The first time you set up Milestones it will ask you to add the date that the company was founded, started, or opened. Once that is set, then you can add more Milestones whenever you would like after that date. If you set this up incorrectly, just scroll down to the start of your timeline and edit the date of the first entry. Here's a photo of what the first milestone dialog box should look like.