How to create your own Facebook cover photo using PicMonkey Photo Editor

Creating a good image for our business is vital to social media success! 

Our Facebook page is our showroom, window or portfolio and is not a market place like ebay!

Creating the right image can be achieved through your cover photo! I created the above cover photo yesterday to see what reaction it got and I was very impressed at how many positive comments I received!


So what is a cover photo?

Your Page's cover photo is the larger image at the top of your Page, right above the profile picture.

This is the cover photo from my Facebook profile, and not my Facebook page.

This is what Facebook say about cover photo's:

'For your Page's cover photo, use a unique image that represents your Page. This might be a photo of a popular menu item, album artwork or a picture of people using your product. Be creative and experiment with images to see what your audience responds to best.'

Creating our own unique cover photo is the perfect way to show off what we do best, it's the first thing that people see when they find your page, however make sure that you use pictures that you own or you have permission to use them, using someone else's picture can lead to being sued under Intellectual Property Rights!

Also bear in mind that Facebook do not approve of blatant advertising and have put many rules in place to stop us from doing this, this includes our 'Pages' cover photo, that has rules all of it own! Once again with Facebook it's never easy to work out exactly what the rules are for cover photo's, but here are our recommendations: Don't overwhelm your cover photo with text allow the pictures to tell the story, there was a maximum 20% text rule for a while but it appears to have been relaxed (for now), don't include any prices or call to actions such as 'buy it now'... remember it's not a market place but our shop window, we want people to be invited in!

What are the dimensions for my Page's cover photo?

Cover photos are 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall. If you upload an image that's smaller than these dimensions, it will be stretched to this larger size. The image you upload must be at least 399 pixels wide and 150 pixels tall.

To get the fastest load times for your Page, upload an sRGB JPG file that's 851 pixels wide, 315 pixels tall and less than 100 kilobytes. For images with your logo or text, you may get a higher quality result by using a PNG file.

(If this all sounds a little confusing do not despair, read on to find a really easy way to create a great and unique cover photo!)

Can I also remind you that for your business you should be using a Page and not your personal account (profile), I wrote a blog on how to set up a Facebook Page a little while ago, although some of the rues have changed... Facebook has lots of rules and they do change frequently! 
http://theverybestballoonblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/how-to-create-business-facebook-page.html

As many of you know, I love using PicMonkey (it's free, unless you want to up-grade) they offer great photo editing facilities, many of which are really fun and you will have a great time playing around with and using... great for seasonal events such as Christmas, Valentines and Halloween!

I used PicMonkey to create BAPIA's(Balloon and Party Industry Alliance) fun cover photo's for Christmas... adding in the cute little Christmas characters into the logo!

www.bapiaonline.com

PicMonkey also allows you to design your own unique Facebook cover photo, which is very easy, just watch the attached clip to see how easy it is!

I strongly recommend that you check out Pages Basics to ensure that you have your Facebook Page set up correctly and that you are not using your personal profile for your business.
PAGES BASICS Link

Happy Ballooning!
Sue
www.suebowler.com