Choosing and Sizing Business Facebook Cover Photo

Every detail matters if you’re a business utilizing various social media channels for online marketing efforts, and a great example is Facebook. Even if you only focus on certain specific ad areas or metrics when it comes to Facebook, the full scope of how you present yourself can mean a lot for your impressions and overall success.

At SEO Werkz, social media marketing is among our specialties, and Facebook is one of the top outlets we can help you manage. One detail that some marketers don’t pay enough attention to, but that might be more important than you think: The cover photo you use for your business’s profile page. Let’s go over what this photo is, the proper sizing and formatting for it, and some tools at your disposal here.

Cover Photo Vs. Profile Photo

Firstly, it’s important to define what we mean when we talk about cover photo. This is not the same thing as your profile photo, which is a smaller photo that’s displayed at 170 x 170 pixels and fits in a square shape. Most businesses are best simply using their logo as their profile photo as long as it fits.

A cover photo, on the other hand, is the much larger photo that appears at the very top of your page, even above the profile photo. It’s much wider than the profile photo, spanning virtually the entire page if you like, and can be used for a wider variety of things – images of your products, your customers, or anything related to your services.

In the past, Facebook used to limit how much text could be present on the cover photo – this is no longer the case. For this reason, the cover photo can be used for a huge range of purposes, from announcements of new products to sign-ups for lists and much more.

Proper Cover Photo Size

The standard recommendation from Facebook for cover photos is those that are 851 x 315 pixels in size, but it’s important to note that this is far from the only image size that will work. Facebook has the technology to stretch the width of a given photo to fill the space, and will allow you a lot of flexibility when it comes to moving the photo around to get the right positioning.

Tools to Use

A few good tools for creating quality photos and templates:

• PicMonkey: A desktop app that allows you to crop photos to the proper size easily, and also has templates you can use to design cover images.
• Canva: A free photo tool for designing photos, including either stock images or your own upload.
• PicStitch: This is an app for taking images from your smartphone to use as a Facebook cover photo. It allows you to crop and choose a collage type at your discretion.

For more on how to get the perfect cover photo for your business’s Facebook page, or to learn about any of our search engine optimization or internet marketing services, speak to the pros at SEO Werkz today.