UPDATE: OCTOBER 1, 2018. The 20% maximum texts limit for a business Facebook cover has been removed by Facebook. You can put as much text as you want now but you still need to be careful if you are going to run an ad on a creative that has a lot of texts. It could get flagged. And your Facebook ad won’t be approved.
Facebook loosened up their cover photo text content rule; however, it must never exceed 20%. This revision took effect early last week and many businesses are scrambling to change their Facebook page cover photo to make it compliant to Facebook’s policy.
Optimizing Your Facebook Business Cover Photo
How would you ensure that your Facebook page cover photo is within Facebook’s 20% limit? There are options to make sure that it is.
- Use a Photo Editing Software to create the cover page, like Photoshop. How? By using the grids and computing 20% off the Facebook page cover photo area. The advantage of this is you own the file and can edit it when you want. The question is: do you have the skill, or time? If not, then perhaps options #2 will #3 will work for you..
- Outsource the Facebook Cover Photo job to a Graphic Artist. For many small businesses time is a scarce resource so hiring a graphic artist may probably be a better option. The advantage of hiring a graphic artist is that they know what they are doing when it comes to creating high quality images. But not all graphic artists know this rule (I know, because I hired one for my Facebook cover photo page when I first launched it) so make sure that you tell your graphic artist this rule. You may or may not own the edit-able version of the image file however but that will depend on your arrangement with the graphic artist.
- Lastly, use the 20 Percent Tool. This is a nifty tool created by Paavo Schmid. The 20 Percent Tool works for anyone who does not have the time to learn a photo editing software nor the money to pay a graphic designer. That’s the same tool that you see that is being used by some social media folks.
Our Facebook Cover Photo 20 Percent Tool Test
Paavo’s tool is very straightforward. You only need to copy and paste the URL of your Facebook page. Then follow the on-screen instructions.
Our original cover photo when put to the test looked like this: Yikes! Yup clearly it was in violation of the Facebook cover photo text policy, and we prefer to be on Facebook’s (or any social media platforms’) good side.
With the handy 20 Percent Tool, our Facebook cover photo page does look like what it is now, whew!
Other Facebook Cover Photo Guidelines to Remember
Before you move along to edit or test your Facebook cover photo image, ensure that it is high quality. Facebook suggests the following:
- Upload an sRGB JPG file for faster upload.
- Cover photo dimension should be 851 pixels wide, 315 pixels
- Cover photo should be less than 100 KB
- PNG file is what is suggested for better quality result
What you can now include on Facebook Cover Photo
- Addess
- Email Address
- Website
- Promos like “60% off”
- Texts like “Share to friends” ,“Like my Page”,” “Download Here” ,”Join Contest”
Regardless of what you put there, use Facebook’s new cover photo rule to your favor. Make it clean and crisp. Never forget that it should be within the 20% rule before you get too excited. 😀
Is your Facebook cover photo compliant? Does it really matter? Your turn!
Related links: Facebook Cover Page Photo Guidelines
