At Youzign, our goal is to help you create marketing graphics the easy way. But even if you use Youzign every day you might be unsure how to make the most of all the different graphics and formats available.

What is Facebook?

First let’s start with a brief introduction to Facebook. The website was founded in 2004 and is one of the busiest social media platforms with 1.44 billion monthly active users (up 13 percent from 2013). Of those, 1.25 billion people are mobile users, an increase of 24 percent year over year. About 65 percent of Facebook’s members use the service daily, and 64 percent use it daily on mobile.

Next question is, do you have a Facebook account? Most people will have a personal Facebook account. A fan page, or a Facebook page is different from the regular account. Some of the elements (profile picture, Facebook cover, news feed, and etc) are pretty much same.

A Facebook page is made to help businesses, organizations and brands share their stories and connect with people. It can be managed by several individuals – who need to have their own personal Facebook account. People can act/have role as an admin, editor, moderator, advertiser or analyst.

What is a Facebook Cover?

A Facebook cover is located at the top of your fanpage. Facebook originally introduced this graphic in 2014. Since the launch the size has been modified several times.

Facebook states that a cover photo is the large image at the top of your profile. Though you can totally leave your Facebook cover (and also your Facebook profile picture) empty, I strongly suggest you put an image there.

The company states that the Facebook cover is your chance to feature a unique image that represents who you are or what you care about. So it is important and your audience will pay attention to it.

Please note that Facebook always sets the Facebook cover that we upload as a public image. This means that anyone can see it. Unlike the Facebook profile picture, we can’t change the Facebook cover photo from public to personal. It sets as public and you can’t change it.

Facebook cover dimensions

The current Facebook cover dimensions are displayed at 828 pixels wide by 315 pixels tall (last update: 2016). On a mobile phone it is displayed at 640 pixels wide by 360 pixels tall.

While a Facebook profile picture displays at 160×160 pixels on desktop, on a smartphone the image is 128×128 pixels and 36×36 pixels on most feature phones. It must be at least 180×180 pixels. The cropped image would fit a square.

Ways to use your cover photo

You need to remember is that the Facebook cover needs to have a purpose. What are you going to tell your fans about? What do you want to use your Facebook cover for? Here are some cool ways to utilize your Facebook cover:

Brand yourself
You can use a picture or image that could tell people what you do and how good you are at it. Or you can show people what matters to your company. For example: if you are a company that appreciates your customers, make your branding reflect that.

If you are a company that has a very good sense of creativity then embrace that too. You can play around with your Facebook cover and Facebook profile picture for a very creative fanpage.

Show people how good your product or service is
What do you sell or offer? There is always a possibility random people land on your Facebook fanpage (and they don’t have a clue about who you are or they or how good is your product or service is). You need to show them this through your Facebook cover. You need to reveal the core benefit of your product or service.

Build an email list
Yes, you know that the email list is one of the best marketing tools. It is personal and people mostly read (or at least notice, aware) of their email. Use your Facebook cover to get people to sign up to your list by showing a free guide book that your fans can download by submitting their email address.

Appreciate your loyal customers
Customers love it when you show that you love them! Appreciate your loyal customers by featuring them on your Facebook page. Make a simple contest of art work or quote that represents you to your customers. Pick some of the best entrees and feature them on your cover photo.

Promote a campaign, contest or event
Do you have a campaign, a contest or an event coming your way? Facebook cover is one of the best places to promote it. Or if you have a new product too, it is a great way to start promoting this to your fans.

This is a pretty popular to promote something (either a campaign, contest or event) with a hastag so that your customers can find you on Twutter. After all, most of the time people use more than one social media platform.

Celebrate the season (and a bit giveaway)
Yes, why not celebrate the season! Christmas, Winter, Summer, Mother’s day, New Year, Valentine Days or any holidays or seasons can be a good way to touch your fans. People really relate to this. People will appreciate it if you prepare small giveaways to celebrate the season.

Show testimonials
Testimonials are a good place to get quotes to put up on your Facebook page. People love to read other people experiences using your product / services / working with you.

Facebook cover content guidelines

Speaking about the current Facebook cover guidelines, you should check out the Facebook page guidelines. Previously (you might have heard) it was forbidden to have phone numbers, website or other address details on a Facebook cover. However, Facebook has since changed its rules.

Facebook states that the cover photos are public. This means that anyone who visits your page will be able to see your cover. You can be as creative as you like, but your cover can’t be deceptive, misleading, or infringe on anyone else’s copyright material.

If you are thinking of using your Facebook cover as a marketing or promotion tool, it is important to remember that your image may not include more than 20% text. This is the maximum amount of text allowed in the image (this includes logos and slogans).

It is indeed a bit complicated to know how Facebook measures this.However, you can use this grid tool provide by Facebook to check it. Another option is to use the Facebook cover-photo compliance tool by Paavo. Voila, it is as easy as that to know whether your Facebook page cover complies with the rules or not.

How to Create Your Fanpage 

Creating a fanpage is pretty easy.

Thanks to Facebook friendly interface creating your fanpage couldn’t be easier. In fact, simply head over to Facebook, scroll to the bottom and click on “Create a page”. Alternatively, after you log in to your personal Facebook account, you can open a new tab on your browser and go to this address: facebook.com/pages/create.

Then there are several page categories that you can choose between. You can see all of the various options below:
– Local business and place
– Company, organization or institution
– Brand or product
– Artist, band or public figure
– Entertainment
– Cause or community

After choosing the category that is most relevant to you, you can get even more specific by selecting a sub category. All the categories for each of above choices appears in drop down menu. Fill in all the required fields (put in a Name for your page. Then add the local business or or place as well as the address). After that just click the “Get Started” button.

Who is a Fanpage good for?

So yes, the Facebook page or fanpage is dedicated for business purposes. There are various categories that range from local business through to a community. A Facebook page is for anyone who think and want to build their business, brand or organization.

A Facebook page can be a great marketing tool for your business. You can manage everything in one place. You can get insights / analytics about your Facebook page (you can’t do analytics on your personal page) – which can be a great data for your next marketing campaign. Using this data you can see what works and what doesn’t work for your business.

The analytics data can show you many people engage with your post on your Facebook page. The insight of post reach can tell you what content works really well on Facebook. You can even learn if posts, links or images or videos work the best with your audience through analysing how many people click the post.

In addition to this you can compare your page performance to other pages (for an example: your competitors). This is another method you can use to see what content is likely to work well with your audience.

Adding your Cover to your Fanpage

 

To add your cover to your fanpage is pretty easy. Follow these steps:
– Go to your fanpage.
– Click Add a Cover or hover over your current cover photo. On the top left you’ll see the camera icon, click it.
– Upload a photo from your computer or if you’ve already added photos to your Page, you can choose a previously uploaded photo.
– After choosing a photo, you can reposition it by dragging it up or down.
– Once you are happy with the result click Save Changes.

Your Facebook page’s cover photo can be anything that represents your page. This can be a popular menu item at your restaurant, certain running campaign in your community or an image of a customer using your product or service.

Remember that the cover photo can’t be deceptive, misleading or infringe on anyone else’s copyright material.

Adding your Profile picture to your Fanpage (optional)

Once you have added your cover it is highly recommended you add a profile picture too! The profile picture on Facebook dimension is 180×180.

To create your profile pic simply head over to Youzign, select Facebook and then Facebook profile.

20% Text Rule Guide for Facebook Ads

At Youzign, we have added a guide to help you follow the for 20% Text rule set by Facebook for marketing ads.

Here is how to enable it:

1. Login to your Youzign account
2. Click New Design and choose Facebook format
3. You can choose from Large, Medium or Small Ad canvas size from the sub-format options
4. To enable the 20% text rule guide, click on the guide button on the tool options on top of the editor.
5. Ideally, you should only use 5 or less blocks to pass the 20% rule.