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18 More Creative Tips to Fire Up Your Facebook Page Cover Photo

Note: this is a sequel to ‘15 Creative Tips to Rock Your Timeline Cover Photo for Facebook Pages.

new timeline layout

Everyone is busy converting their Facebook Pages into Timeline layout before the official roll out on 30th March. Cover photo continues to be a major issue for many as inspirations are few to occupy that 851×315 pixels spot for brand visibility. Due to that, I’ve decided to write a sequel to earlier post, hopefully 18 more of these tips (with 50+ cover photos from non-big-brand pages) and a BONUS tip near the end can assist you in firing up your new Timeline page layout. Buckle up your seat belt for this is going to be another joyride.

Disclaimer: Below pages are mentioned due to their creative use of cover/app images. It has nothing to do with affiliation or promotion for the products/services they offered.

 

#1  To Use Cover Design that Matches Your Brand Presence

 

A good design can be used in various social networking platforms for brand recognition. The Agents of Change uses the cover design (and timeline app image) that matches their new business cards (leaving out the contact information, of course).

agents of change

And this is how their business card looks like:

business cards

 

#2  To Add Watermark for Your Product Cover

 

A lot of artists concern about copyright infringement when displaying their artwork in the cover. Oana, the photographer published a book named ‘Aglow’ and created a page for it. She cleverly added a watermark on the cover, stating her ownership while showcasing some of her best works.

aglow book

 

#3  To Highlight the Important Areas in Your Cover

 

Despite with all the taglines and short descriptions, sometimes focusing on a particular term or area will alert visitors what your brand is really about:

amanda taylor consulting

 

design modo

 

#4  To Use Photo that Strikes an Emotional Chord

 

If your cover photo can strike an emotional chord of those who viewed it, that’s bound to create engagement and impact! Not to mention evoke awareness among your fans and visitors.

I just LOVE this cover! Doesn’t it remind you of something?

animal humane society

Looks familiar?

e.t.

Or a picture that shows how your organization serves the community:

bowery mission

Or an inspirational story of a public figure:

motivational speaker

Or a continuous effort to protect what you believe in:

 

#5  To Have More Than One Method in Showing Appreciation

 

We’ve talked about how a cover photo can be used to showcase page fans as appreciation (I got one on my page too, head over there for a look). Actually there are more than one way to do it:

a. Appreciate Friends on Your Page

Beth Kanter’s Timeline page cover caught my eye in which she created a huge collage of her friends in an artistic way:

beth kanter

b. Manually Hand-Picked Your Loyal Fans

Oretta rewards her fans weekly via her cover image:

feature fans manually

c.  A ‘Thank You’ Note to Supporters

Sometimes a banner and lovely smiles will do:

razoo giving

d. Let’s Get Festive!

I came across Mari’s page on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s hard to not include this – her innovative idea to add a festive feel to her cover inspires us to do more with ours:

festive cover

 

#6  To Expand from the Main Tagline

 

I just love how a word can be stretched for more meanings. For example, Dawn clearly explains how social media can be more than just a ‘Party’:

dawn gartin

Ever wonder what could be derived from ‘Marketing’?

mih marketing

 

#7  To Use Impressive Art with Hidden Messages

 

This is more than just an ice cracking picture. Can you read what Greenpeace New Zealand is trying to tell you?

greenpeace new zealand

 

#8  To Use Creative Product Sets for Your Cover

 

In previous post I mentioned about showcasing your products in the cover. Here I would like to stress on using a none-mediocre-way to do this. Learn from Dove Chocolate Discoveries where they display creative work made from their product,

dove chocolate

instead of the common pictures found on their website:

regular chocolates

Little Chipipi with their products blend in together to brighten up a kid’s bedroom:

little chipipi

 

#9  To Showcase Your Portfolio with Image Thumbnails

 

A lot of people misunderstood only photographers get to showcase their stunning photos from the cover. Truth is, if you would like to showcase a variety of your master pieces, why not do so by using the image thumbnails:

freelance graphic designer

 

smarti studio

Or brands who are currently using your product or application:

iframe wrapper

 

#10  To Showcase Reliability of Your Brand

 

Another good use of cover is to showcase awards and recognitions from your niche authorities. That is a good way to instill trusts and reliability of your brand, not only to your fans but for first-time visitors as well.

dianna booher

 

#11  To Merge All Facebook Elements into One

 

Notice how below pages smartly integrate designs from all three facebook elements (cover photo, page profile and app images) into one harmonious blend?

papayalove

 

digital couture

 

living simplistically

Note: You get to see more harmonious examples like these in the ‘Bonus’ section below this post.

Too much work? How about just the cover photo and the page profile picture?

pint sized sites

 

friends of social media

 

#12  To Consider Landing View before the Complete Cover Image

 

Only half of the cover is visible for all landing view to any Pages on Facebook. See how L’Arche USA is making sure their descriptions show up clearly and neatly when visitors land on their cover,

larche usa halfpage

before viewing the complete cover image:

l arche usa

 

#13  To Evoke Curiosity

 

It’s more than just a picture sometimes. Lindt Gold Bunny managed to capture both my curiosity and attention with its cover:

lindt gold bunny

 

#14  To Add Portrait even It’s NOT a Public Figure Page

 

You would notice in previous post I talked about how public figures are using own portraits in their pages. Now even service providers can benefit from using their own portraits too. Your fans will know who they are communicating with on the page:

my business presence

 

reclaim your workday

 

sandi krakowski

 

search news central

 

idea girl media

 

#15  To Showcase Your Front-Liners in the Cover

 

This is similar to ‘people behind the brand’ but in a detailed manner – profile pictures and names. Let’s say you have a group of writers for your website. They are the front-liners and people (commenters, readers) are more familiar with them comparing to your brand name. Why not get them on your cover to say ‘Hi’.

search news central

 

#16  To Show Business Location or Offices

 

I know there are mixed reviews about whether or not a building image should be on a cover photo. In my opinion, it’s all about how the brand is using it. For example, Fona International uses staffs picture as the page profile pic to add more ‘life’ to the page:

fona International

Certainly a peaceful, beautiful shot of the winery doesn’t hurt:

robert mondavi winery

Or a panoramic view of the office:

search engine people

 

#17  To Brand your Timeline Layout with Your Website Design

 

This is quite an interesting attempt to personalize your page’s timeline layout using your website design.

website for small biz

 

#18  Animated Figures and Story Telling

 

It’s fun to use animated figures to bring life to your Timeline cover. Twirp Communications has a comic that is yet to complete, but I would love to find out what the ‘twirps’ are saying when done. Don’t you?

twirp communications

To tame an internet monster and many more:

tame the internet monster

 

ubervu

 

smart boy designs

 

frogs are green

 

SEOmoz

 

BONUS:

Visual Branding via Timeline App Images

 

There are many ways you can customize your facebook page for visual branding. Apart from the attractive cover photo, make use of your facebook app images to create harmonious, recognizable brand presence for your audience.

For example, Amy designed her facebook page via three major colors: red, white and grey,

amy porterfield

which are the main colors on her business blog:

amy porterfield blog

Here are some other great facebook page designs that worth a look. Notice how their app images are neatly blend in with the cover photo and profile picture:

more in media company

 

love that shot

 

solatina

 

kiyonna clothing

Who say ‘harmonious’ has to be the only way? You can always try a more ‘dynamic’ feel for your app images, for instance:

uconcept

 

What If You Have More than 3 Apps to Show?

 

Another great idea I love is from AppAddictive in which a call to action image is posted to remind fans to visit other app icons by clicking the drop down menu:

appaddictive

 

How About an Explicit Call to Action to ‘Like’ your Page?

 

No harm in adding a ‘Like Us’ image for your facebook application:

quintain marketing

 

maximize social media

 

yoga relief

 

Recommended Read:
Facebook Timeline for Fan Pages: 21 Key Points for Marketers

Graphic Design Resources for Facebook Timeline Cover Image

 

[Updated 21/03/2012]:Minor edits had been made to remove examples with explicit facebook logo in it until we are absolutely sure if that is allowed. Any information about this is much needed.

 

Now Is Your Turn…

 

Is your facebook page ready for the big transition to Timeline layout? Do you have any concerns? Share with us in your comment. Or, if you would like to share your stunning cover photo, kindly do so via this link.

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27 Comments

  1. Hi Chingya!
    These are some really great ideas we can use to get our creative juices flowing. Facebook Timeline for pages is one of the best changes they made in a long time and it’s bringing out the best in everyone. Hopefully this will result in more engagement and a better experience for everyone. I see a lot of people making mistakes with their cover photo, thanks for showing off some great ones!

    1. Hi Ileane, so great to see you here! 🙂 You’re right. Although there are mixed reviews for the Timeline roll-out for Pages, as long we’re on Facebook we could only do our best to follow their trend. Hopefully everyone will have a positive mindset about this and let our cover photo be one of the major assets for our brand visibility. Thank you for taking the time to read and comment, hope you liked the resources.

  2. Ching Ya,

    What a terrific job researching Facebook Business Page Timelines!

    I really appreciate your thoughtful organization to present them according to idea. And, of course, I’m thrilled to be among the fine people and organizations listed above!! 🙂

    Some wonderful pages out there…

    ~Keri

    1. Hi Keri, thank you so much for dropping by. I really appreciate your comment, it’s encouraging and made all time/effort spent on creating this post worthwhile. I owed a lot of thanks to readers who suggested their pages in previous post, including those who tweeted me page suggestions as well. Most of all, I’m glad people find this post useful, that’s all that matters. Your page is well deserved to be listed, thanks for inspiring us.

  3. I am always impressed by people’s imagination and creativity. Wish I could come up with something as creative, attractive and awesome as most of these covers are. Will have to change mine, now that I saw all these. Got some good ideas form them though. Thumbs up, Ching. As always, fantastic read

    1. Thank you DiTesco, I’m really glad you enjoyed the post as much. I’m just as amazed as how creative these smaller brands are, if only I have more creative juices in me, lol! Love to see yours when done, let me know.

  4. Love your last posts about new FB timeline, but I do see two problems with some of these pages. I have seen pages removed from FB just for using FB logo in their images, example would be page at #11. The second thing is that some pages have names that are actually against FB rules. Which may not be a problem now, but sometimes they will do a “manual” check up and actually remove the page because the name isn’t written by the rules.
    But that has nothing to do with you actually and I just wanted to say thanks for this great work, got a bunch of ideas 🙂

    1. Hi Brankica, thank you so much for the insights, and a good reminder about the facebook logo too. Although Facebook didn’t specifically mention ‘facebook logo’ in their cover rules (yet), but it may be possible that they are categorizing that as one of the facebook elements? I’ve just did a minor edit to this post by temporarily removing (most) examples with facebook logo in it, before we’re absolutely sure if that is allowed.

      Thanks again for the reminder. 🙂 Much appreciated.

  5. What a great visual of the way people are making their FB pages stand out, and of course, I am thrilled to be included in your list.

    I have to believe ‘we’ are the front runners on the cover images and will likely take all our creativity and do well in business as well. Those who understand the significance of the Timeline for Pages roll-out, are also the ones who understand social media much better than most.

    I am honored to be listed with these great brands!

    Thanks.

  6. Wow I was looking for examples of cover shots for clients and your article showed up on my FB wall, courtesy of some of my friends that you have featured here. (And there I am in #5D with another group of them on Mari’s wall)

    Excellent article and great suggestions Ching Ya! This will be sent off to multiple biz friends and clients.

    1. Hi Denise, thanks so much for dropping by. 🙂 You look fabulous in that green hat, Mari rocks isn’t she? Many thanks for sharing my article, you’re wonderful. Hugs~

  7. The St. Patrick’s day hats one was marketing genius. That’s just great, need to keep that in mind for the next landmark day. Bet everyone in that image got a huge kick out of it and told all their friends to check it out. Brilliant.

    1. That’s right, Charles, better mark that calender of yours. 🙂 Be sure to notify me if you created something festive on your cover too. Thanks for visiting!

  8. The new timeline for Facebook is a game changer for advertising you business. It opens new options and the 18 tips given in this article are great ways to make your Facebook the happening place.

    1. Well said, Elena. I must admit at first I wasn’t too fond of the changes, but after seeing so many wonderful examples, I realized it could be a positive thing after all. Thanks so much for commenting!

    1. You’re welcome, Piotr. Wow, it’s a great design! One question though: how do you change the app image for ‘Likes’? I thought that app is default and no ‘edit setting’ options? 🙂

      1. Hello! 🙂
        This is just mock-up, so those will be different custom tabs than “Likes” and “Map” od course 🙂
        Unfortunately (or fortunately really;) you cant get rid of this tab. So it will really look smoething like this: http://i.imgur.com/0pG0e.jpg

        But as i’m thinking right now you can always install custom tab with “thumbs-up” icon, name it “Likes”, upload custom graphic and redirect it, for example to: https://www.facebook.com/SocialBloggingTracker/likes

        🙂

      2. Good question… would like to know if that’s possible or if they did a workaround of sorts. I know you can change the image on other apps, but thought we were stuck with certain FB ones.

  9. I’ve bookmarked this page as I know a few others have… some good ideas and inspiration.

    Question… I’ve heard the rules are tough about the timeline image… not being “advertising” or a call to action… but some of these seem that way to me…

    Where do they draw the line on this?

    1. That’s a good question, Christine. It’s quite hard to have a clear definition of ‘advertising’ on a cover unless facebook is willing to provide detailed examples, otherwise there will be grey areas since everyone has a different interpretation of ‘advertising’ (or indirect advertising). As for call to actions, in my opinion, nothing that is explicit to direct fans to respond to facebook elements on the Page. Further observation is for sure needed.

      1. Timeline cover:
        -no call to action (click here, see there)
        -no promotion info (50% off, Free gift…)
        -no contact information

        BUT….

        Profile picture (180×180 px) AND Tabs graphic
        are the places where you can use all of this.

        It’s not that large place i know… but always something 😉

  10. Hi Ching Ya my friend.

    This was an awesome collection of great and very creative design with the new Facebook Fan Page Timeline.

    I really enjoy the new Facebook Fan Page Timeline.

    Working on a article where I showcase some Hotels that have been really creative and utilize the new Facebook Fan Page Timeline really well.

    Have one of my Fan Pages that I converted early on, and another I just converted. I the most recent I follow some of Maris tip, and keep the images there more dynamic.

    Have played with the application buttons on Facebook.

    Engagement is the key. So pick up some ideas here from your article.

    My TimeLine: https://www.facebook.com/HotelStrategist
    https://www.facebook.com/HotelSMarketing

    Keep up with more of this type of tips.

    Cheers..

    Are Morch
    Hotel Blogger

  11. Hi Ching Ya,

    A great collection of ideas for business pages, With the new timeline its a lot of work to set it up correctly and these ideas will help.

    The timeline opens up new ways to interact with the people and we need to use it to maximum benefit.

    Thanks,
    Sanjeev

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