On 29 Feb 2012, Facebook officially announced the change in their Facebook timeline design for pages, just as they have upgraded the profile designs for most of the Facebook community users. Has your profile been upgraded to timeline? If it has, you probably would be more familiar with the cover photo and other timeline features that now exists for fan pages too!

In this series of blogposts of the new Facebook Timeline features, the most important, concerned and obvious item that fans see would be the cover photo when they land on your fan page, which is the first point of contact.

Spanned across the whole width of your page with a dimension of 851 x 315 pixels, it is a great tool to capture attention and communicate your brand. Make sure your cover photo is at least 399 pixels to allow it to fit nicely on your page. Facebook will zoom in to this picture to make it fit within the profile page. Do note that there is a profile picture of 180 x 180 pixels that sits halfway through on the bottom left of the cover photo.

Before you start designing a cover photo telling fans to LIKE your page or about the recent discount promotion you are having, take note of the regulations below as stated on Facebook’s Help Centre and FAQ  to make sure your photo does not contain these information:

1. Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”.
2. Contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your Page’s “About” section.
3. References to Facebook features or actions, such as “Like” or “Share” or an arrow pointing from the cover photo to any of these features.
4. Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”.
5. Covers must not be false, deceptive or misleading, and must not infringe on third parties’ intellectual property.

Essentially your cover photo can look like this:

Note you can insert your company logo as the profile picture for brand recall.

Other examples of good cover photos:

An eye catching cover photo showing Starbuck’s primary products and their heritage.

A photo encompassing what Dove believes in.

Inqbation's profile picture ties in really nicely with the total feel of the cover picture. You do not always need to have the logo in your profile picture, but good to have one that does not contain too many text and images inside the profile picture as this can seem too cluttered.

Share with us if you have come across any outstanding Facebook timeline cover pictures! And have fun in crafting the beautiful cover photos that you can now use to draw closer attention to your brand. :)