It’s been well over a year since Facebook rolled out Timeline in February 2012 and there have been quite a few announcements since then. The latest being Facebook’s new cover photo guidelines which for all effective purposes have been relaxed allowing businesses some new found opportunity in the land of Facebook marketing. This includes being able to use calls-to-action, websites and address info. So what can you do to maximize your timeline cover photo? Let’s look at a few real-life examples:

Opportunity = Calls-to-Action and Contests

Business Page: Pet Camp 

A local San Francisco pet daycare and staycare, PetCamp is running a contest to find their Star Camper. They’ve promoted it on their website, in their email marketing and now they can utilize their timeline cover photo which you can see they’re doing to lead fans to the contest details. They also use a clear call-to-action to tell visitors to their Facebook page what they want them to do. In this example, “Star Camper Casting Call – Your camper could be here.” They also use a nice graphic arrow to draw your attention and intention to click on the cover photo and get the details.

Opportunity = Calls-to-Action and Contests

Business Page: Best Foods

Best Foods does a great job with their call-to-action to “Click Tab Below” to enter their contest with Mario Batali – who wouldn’t want to do that? As you can see on Best Foods page, you can view four apps at a time and click to view up to twelve at a time. According to Facebook, “You can choose which of your apps appear and adjust the order they appear in, with the exception of the photos view, which always appears first.”

Text to Image Rule – Watch Out for This

The biggest challenge for businesses may still lie in the rule that your cover photo may not include more than 20 percent text. We read comments from businesses having their photo declined by Facebook because it was a picture of a cake with writing on top so it was more than 20 percent text. This 20 percent rule applies to Facebook ads, as well. In an effort to help puzzled Page admins, Facebook created this resource to guide you though balancing the text in your images.

How will you use your business timeline cover photo to maximize your Facebook marketing opportunities? Share with us in the comments.

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