The New Facebook Page Cover Photo Rules: Don’t Get Too Excited On It

Aside from the recent announcements of Facebook with regard to new designs on the social media site’s news feed and timeline, its marketing team had also updated the Facebook Page terms, with the major revisions being made last March 6. One of the highlights of the said update was on the social media site’s policy for cover photos, in which a lot of rules were eliminated from the original.

Here is the new rule on cover photos under Page Features on the Facebook Page Guidelines, which can be found here:

“All covers are public. This means that anyone who visits our 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.”

The above underlined sentence was from the original rules on page cover photos, which took effect since December of last year before the update earlier this month. The original cover photo rules that were scrapped prohibited page owners to use cover photos that should not include the following:

•    Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it on socialmusic.com”;

•    Contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your Page’s “About” section;

•    References to Facebook features or actions, such as “Like” or “Share” or an arrow pointing from the cover photo to any of these features; or

•    Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends.”

Page owners/admins and Facebook marketers now have the flexibility with regard to the content they incorporate in their cover photos. For some of them, the leniency of the page cover photo rule would possibly result in them advertising promos and putting a lot of big arrows and words such as “LIKE” and “VISIT US” on their cover photos.

However, even with the ease in restrictions, this doesn’t mean page owners, specifically Facebook marketers, should abuse these changes. In fact, here are some key things as to why marketers and page owners shouldn’t get excited with the rules on Facebook cover photos:

•    Overselling. Facebook page owners marketing their products or services should make it a point to not oversell. Putting offers, discounts, and calls to action on cover photos would turn a Facebook page into somewhat of a used car dealership. Unless that is the type of brand being promoted, every page owner and marketer must consider putting a cover photo that is appealing and not too wordy with all the percentages and stuff.

•    Visual appeal. Images tell a lot, and that holds true in today’s social media. On the marketing aspect of it, visuals are getting more and more attention, with texts getting more and more obsolete. Case in point: Google+ and Pinterest profiles. We are now shifting towards brand promotion with the use of images. These should not be images of marketing messages, but should be images that represent the brand in more ways than one.

•    Lack of creativity. With the words “Like Us on Facebook” or “50% off” or any other related messages on cover photos, a Facebook page promoting a product or service easily becomes lacking when it comes to creativity. As what was already said, putting thought-provoking images as cover photos to represent the brand is becoming a norm, and that is creativity in itself. Packaging a brand for the social media should be engaging and true to the brand being promoted.

With the new updates and rules on cover photos on Facebook pages, marketers and page owners may still use calls to action, advertise promos, and provide offers on their cover photos, but only at a minimum. As it is, there are a lot of ways to promote products or services, and that is through creative means and an engaging approach.

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This guest post article is contributed by SEOP.com a leading global SEO company providing effective and affordable SEO and social media marketing services.
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