Podcast: Play in new window
In a welcome change for marketers and businesses, Facebook has reduced the restrictions that apply to Facebook Page cover images.
Most business owners that I’ve worked with didn’t know the previous restrictions. As simply as possible:
- no website address
- no phone number
- couldn’t prompt visitors to like or share you page
- no pricing or purchase information such as 40% off
- no calls to action
Now all you have to contend with is:
“All covers are public. This means that anyone who visits your Page will be able to see your cover. Covers can’t be deceptive, misleading, or infringe on anyone else’s copyright. You may not encourage people to upload your cover to their personal timelines. Covers may not include images with more than 20% text.”
If you haven’t read Facebook’s Page Guidelines or it has been a while then its a good investment of a few minutes to check the guidelines out again.
A maximum of 20% text is also the restriction for any image that you wish to promote using a paid Facebook Ads.
Episode Transcription
In this video, we go over the changes Facebook has made to cover images.
A very quick primer, on Facebook, we’ve got Facebook profiles which are for people so you, me, Jane, Bob, Mary Smith and then there are pages which are for community groups and business pages which is what we are particularly interested in for this video.
Facebook has come out with a change to the page guidelines, about what you can do with your business page cover image. This is the large image that you can set to put at the top of your Facebook page.
Now, previously there were some restrictions on what you can actually do with that image. You couldn’t have any kind of text in there which was your phone number or your website address, anything that should have appeared on your ‘About’ page. It couldn’t have things like 40% off or you couldn’t ask people to share your page or like your page or have an arrow pointing to the ‘Like’ button. A lot of people don’t know but it, that’s some things you couldn’t do.
Just recently, Facebook has come out with an update to the guidelines or requirements for business pages and now, with your cover image, all those restrictions are now removed. You can have any kind of text that you want there in the image up to 20% of the image being text.
No more than 20% of the image can contain text for that photo but you can include your website address and your phone number and things like that now and not run foul of the Facebook requirements.
It’s a pretty good idea, if you haven’t revisited your Facebook cover image for a while now, is to go back and see if it is worthwhile adding your website address or your phone number to that image.
How do you know if you have got more than 20% of your image as text if you think you’re getting close to the mark?
Below me on the screen at the moment is a cool little tool you can go and check out and it will basically go ahead and grab your Facebook cover image and overlay a grid over the image of 25 squares. You can then manually go and click on the squares that contain text and it will come back and give you an idea of what percentage of your cover image contains text and whether you fall within the requirements or not.
You can check that at that link or if you’re watching this on Redcliffe Marketing Labs website, directly below this video is a copy of the tool that you can use as well so try that out.
This is a really good change for marketers and business owners because it gives you a lot more freedom at what you can do with that cover image to get people go back to your website or to engage with your Facebook page.
It also brings alignment to the different Facebook requirements there because now again, a fairly recent change on Facebook ads, the little images that you see in the right-hand side of the screen, there’s also a restriction on those. Those images and those ads can’t have more than 20% text as well so that 20% requirement has come in on several different places in Facebook. It helps to streamline things saves you from having so many different rules and numbers.
I hope you find that useful. A quick update and tip there. If you are not already subscribed to our e-mail list head over to redcliffemarketinglabs.com.au and grab some of the free goodies we have got there and get on the e-mail list so you get these news updates.
If you are not the administrator for your Facebook page for your business and you know someone who is, then flick them a link to this video so they can update their business Facebook cover image.
Facebook Page Cover Image 20% Compliance Checking Tool
How to use:
Visit you Facebook business page and copy the text that appears after ‘facebook.com/’ eg. http://facebook.com/redcliffemarketinglabs would become ‘redcliffemarketinglabs‘
Paste this in the text box above.
Click on the grid images where text appears in the photo. More than 5 grids and you’ll be over the 20% limit.
Here are some more to try:
- CricketAustralia
- holdenaustralia
- brisbanebroncos
- RedcliffeLeaguesClub
Leave a comment below if you think any of these brands are falling foul of the Facebook Cover image requirements.
Did you find this useful? Please consider giving it a +1 or sharing on Facebook with people that you know are Facebook admins.