If I were to ask you how your business stands out from your customers, you would probably mention things like:
- Quality
- Professionalism
- Experience
- Customer Relationships
But does your brand image reflect those traits? Does your Facebook page? Apply these same qualities to your brand’s Facebook page. After all, it’s an extension of your company, isn’t it?
Does your page produce quality content? Are the images professional? Does your Facebook page look like you have the experience you claim to have? Does it say “you build customer relationships”? In other words, does your Facebook page say you care about the quality of all the work you put out there with your name on it, including the design of your page?
More than 2/3 of the US adult population has a Facebook. That means 2/3 of your customer market is on Facebook and has an opportunity to engage with your brand. That’s why it’s becoming increasingly more important to optimize your business’ Facebook page. This is where you MUST look professional if people are going to take your business seriously.
In this post, we’ll focus on 2 imagery components that will make your brand stand out from all of your competitors! These factors are your business profile picture and your cover photo.
1. Professional Profile Picture
Does your Facebook business page profile picture have a professional appearance? If you said yes, then you can skip to the next point. If you’re not sure or don’t think so, then here are a few ways to tell your profile picture is not professional for a Facebook business page:
The photo is not a professional photo, logo, or illustration
If your profile picture is a logo that was professionally designed and it fits within the frame well, then you’re good. But I see all too often a landscaper using a photo they took on their phone of a recently completed yard or flower bed with their name typed over it.
The issue here is that the photo in the background is not professional and is not eye appealing. Your profile picture is a visual representation of your brand’s image, so if it looks like crap, so does your brand.
Your profile picture does not contain your company name or logo
The human brain responds to images 60,000 times faster than text, so being able to have people recognize your business based on your brand logo and image is going to place you in the top of customers’ minds over the competition.
It’s the same reason why you can recognize the McDonald’s golden arch immediately or can tell me Pepsi’s color scheme without even thinking. You want this to be the same with your local community and your landscaping and lawn care brand.
The example below uses a professional photo (in fact you can Google “aeration” and find this “profile photo” almost immediately) but it doesn’t tell me anything. It isn’t branded at all. The landscaper’s Facebook page simply tells me they’re into taking short cuts and don’t have much of a personality.
Your picture isn’t designed specifically for Facebook
Facebook has specific sizing specifications for profile pictures, cover photos, posts, and more. Your Facebook profile picture should be square and meet the required and recommended dimensions set by Facebook.
You can’t even tell what this company’s name is based on their profile picture.
Facebook has a knack for updating their sizing specs on their photos a lot, so it’s a good thing Buffer has a knack for keeping a master list of social media image sizes updated.
If you take a look at our Facebook page, you’ll assume that our Facebook profile picture is simply our logo, but that isn’t true. Our profile picture is our logo redesigned to fit a square format on top of a textured background that matches Facebook’s recommendations.
This is our logo:
And this is our Facebook profile picture:
Sounds like a lot… but it was necessary in order for us to display a professional Facebook profile picture. Notice how the word “marketing” comes in two colors. We did this on purpose to make sure we had something that would still look good on both black and white backgrounds. You should be conscious of this when having your logo designed as well.
Is it low quality?
If any part of the picture is low quality, grainy, pixelated, or looks like you made it in Microsoft Paint, it is unprofessional. Get it cleaned up and give your profile picture a makeover. You may need to actually invest in a professionally designed logo, like these guys:
If you don’t have a company logo to display, we suggest getting with a designer to create you one that reflects your brand. A company logo is an important step in your brand marketing and should be taken with heavy consideration.
You can find a freelance logo designer from freelance sites like Fiverr or you can have a professional marketing and design company design one for you complete with all the vector files like us.
You may be asking:
“Okay, now I know what not to do, show me an example of a Facebook profile picture done right.”
Sure, take a look at Russel Landscape Service:
Russel Landscape Services is a model for how a profile picture and cover photo should look. Their profile picture follows all 4 rules:
- It’s a professional logo or illustration and does not feature unprofessional or cheap imagery or photography
- It features their logo and their color scheme. In other words, their branding elements
- It’s designed specifically for Facebook and nothing gets cut off
- It is not low quality or pixelated
Yes, their logo is simple, but that doesn’t make it low quality. There is a clear difference between them and the example under number 4.
2. Professional Cover Photo
Cover photos are typically neglected when it comes to finding an image that is as professional as your profile picture, mostly due to their odd landscape size.
This is one of those that I recommend having professionally designed because all too often I see cover photos that are being used from cell phone pictures and images pulled off the internet that do not fit completely on desktop. But don’t forget, there are 2 versions of Facebook, a desktop version and a mobile version.
Cover photos should reflect the mission, values, quality, or brand of your company. Displaying a picture of your company truck, a flower bed you recently did, or a stock photo of grass is a HUGE waste of that space!
You want to keep 4 main things in mind when choosing or creating your cover photo:
Don’t over complicate things
The more you add to your cover photo, the more cluttered it looks. Additionally, it will be very hard to digest on mobile devices (example at the bottom of this topic). If the photo has a lot of info but isn’t designed specifically to be a cover photo, it just looks awful. It looks unprofessional, things can get cut off, and well… just take a look:
I blurred out some details on their cover photo and profile picture. You don’t need your name and address in these, since they should already be located in the contact section of your “About” tab on your Facebook page.
Use an appropriately sized image
Too many people use images that are not cover photo size. This causes things needing to get cropped off and ultimately looking unprofessional and can even force you to leave important things off… like part of your company name in this example (I blocked out the part of the company name that was showing and their phone number), although not as prominent as the photo above:
Use a professional background image
This is the biggest violator I see. Way too many landscapers are using photos they took with their cell phones of a freshly cut yard or a newly installed flower bed that is neither professional nor breathtaking. Here’s a good question to ask yourself when choosing a photo for your cover, “Does this photo separate me from my competitors?” Do you think this one does?
I guess my big red ‘X’ gave it away… but no, no it does not separate this ‘unnamed’ landscaper from their competition.
Does the cover photo provide value?
Your cover photo should provide some kind of value. It should have the background of a professional looking shot but also provide some kind of message to the customer, even if it’s simple. If you take a look at Russel’s you’ll see exactly what I mean. It lists their services very briefly. When I land on their Facebook page, I know EXACTLY what they offer since it’s right there in the image.
Remember when I said the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text? That’s why images, and the quality of those images are important with your brand appearance and marketing.
Here’s another example of a good cover photo:
Weed Pro uses professional grade images with a simple design and simple value message, “It’s Time to Love Your Lawn”. Another great touch is the split and subtle before and after shot.
- It isn’t cluttered
- The image is appropriately sized
- They used professional images
- It contains a value message
Pay Attention to How Your Cover Photo Looks on Mobile
Keep in mind, the mobile version of Facebook automatically resizes your cover photo image, so if you don’t use the right sizes, the photo will get cropped and have extra graphics cut off. If you have a lot of text, it can appear really small on mobile devices making it hard to read.
Check out the example under “Don’t complicate things” on mobile. Since it’s not the right size, it cut off even more during the resize. I didn’t even have to blur out the phone number this time.
Just like your website, your Facebook page should be optimized for mobile devices, which includes your cover photo. As of January 2018, the traffic on Facebook is more than 95% on mobile devices, so if your imagery isn’t optimized for mobile, you’re letting yourself look unprofessional in front of 95% or more of your customer base.
Just an FYI, Buffer also offers a good guide to cover photos, videos, and sizes of each you should use for your Facebook cover photo.
Free Design Program
Typically, as a digital marketing agency, we give your social media pages a complete makeover from top to bottom including your profile picture and cover photo.
But if you’re looking to take on the design task yourself, check out these free programs that offer professional and very easy to use tools to edit photos and images.
Gravit
Gravit is easily my favorite free tool. It has a lot of similarities to Adobe Photoshop® but without the cost. The platform is completely free and you can use the web-based version or download the free software onto your computer.
In fact, I used Gravit to edit all of the images in the blog post.
Canva
Canva is a super popular photo editing and creation software. Simply select your template or dimensions you want and drag and drop preloaded or uploaded elements onto your canvas. It’s a ‘freemium’ product so there is a decent amount of elements that are free, but you may have to end up paying a dollar or two here and there to get a few of the nicer elements.
The great thing about Canva is that it doesn’t take any photo editing experience and there isn’t a learning curve at all. Once you sign in, you’ll be designing your own image immediately.
What’s even cooler about Canva is that it has a mobile app so you can create custom, eye-catching images on the go. This would be super ideal for creating ads when you’re not in the office or adding captions to photos you took in the field and uploading them to your Facebook.
Microsoft Paint
Although I’m not a fan of this method, I still often use it for quickly resizing images to certain specs using the ‘Resize’ feature. The quality of the tools in Paint is pretty low so it isn’t the best tool out there, but it is free. But check this out, this guy illustrated an entire book using Paint because he “sucked” at Photoshop, so it definitely has the capabilities… technically… I guess.
Wrapping it All Up
This was a lot of information to keep in mind when picking your Facebook profile picture and cover photo, so here is a simple bullet list of everything:
How to Make a Better Facebook Profile Picture for Your Business Page
- Use professional imagery, logos, or illustrations
- Use your company logo in your picture
- Follow proper Facebook sizing guidelines
- Don’t use low-quality graphics or low-resolution imagery
The Most Effective Cover Photo for Your Facebook Business Page
- Keep it simple
- Follow Facebook sizing recommendations
- Use professional imagery
- Provide a value message
Free Image Editing Software to Use
- Gravit
- Canva
- Microsoft Paint
Jake thank you for the awesome tips! can’t wait to put them to use