The Facebook cover photo is the largest image on your business Facebook page and is often a missed opportunity for many businesses. Before you start brainstorming what might look good in that space, you’ll want to know exactly what Facebook won’t let you post there:

• Calls to action (ex. “Call Now for a Free Consultation!”)
• Prices/Special Offers (ex. “All Sunglasses 2 for $20″)
• Mentions of the Like or Share function on Facebook (ex. “Like Us for More Info”)
• Contact info, which should be included in the About Us section (ex. “435 N. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL”)

Now that we know the ground rules, there are a lot of things that you can do to make the cover photo work for your business…

1. Think Seasonally – With the holidays coming up, you may want to consider getting festive with your cover photo. If you’re a jewelry store, for example, consider taking a picture of your products draped on garland. Having a festively-fun cover photo can help you appear more relevant and timely to your fan base.

2. Go Beyond Uploading a Basic Photo – The fun thing about cover photos is that you can be pretty creative when designing one. You’re not limited to just uploading one photo and calling it a day. Think outside of the box and design a cover photo that features several images to promote your products or services. Cover photos are 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall, so get creative!

3. Say Something About Your Business – The image at the top of this blog post is our current Facebook timeline cover photo. We opted to create an image that has a word cloud of all of the various services that we provide. It’s a nice way to promote a little more of what you do and still have something visually appealing. The cover photo is a great spot to help shape your brand and show your company’s personality.

These are just a few ideas to help you think differently about how to use your Facebook cover photo to better promote your business. Our main piece of advice is to great creative and try new things. Use this space to express your brand personality and keep your audience engaged with the page. As long as you stay within Facebook’s rules, the sky’s the limit on what you can create for this space.

The post Facebook Cover Photo Tips for Your Business appeared first on 435 Digital.

Facebook’s already hosted  two live streaming sessions and they’ll be holding  four more, two for each of the next two weeks. So far, the Live Stream has been of mixed quality, so it’s a good thing you can pop in and watch the sessions at any time once they are posted. If you are signed up for the Bootcamp, you’ll get a special offer for Facebook ads as well as supporting materials, including one checklist each week. The checklist consists of action items to implement to get your page started.  If you drive 100 fans to your business page by Nov. 30, you can win $100 in free Facebook ads.

If you are curious about the benefits of a specially designed branded page, how to handle  B-to-B marketing in Facebook, or the best way to market via various industry sectors, the bootcamp might be worth a watch. I also expect that Facebook’s thorough and engaging global staff  will be explaining many of the new Facebook features. We’ve seen lots of changes in the past few months.

The best part of the sessions so far has been the Q&A session at the end. Facebookers usually  direct you toward many types of useful resources that already exist on Facebook, such as the Facebook Marketing Page,  Facebook for Business, Facebook Ads Marketing and Facebook Manage Your Ads.

I’m embedding my “Invite Friends” code from my email newsletter. Let’s see if that works. (Maybe I’ll get extra credit for some projects I’m working on.)

For the best live training on Facebook, go to Trib U and check events.

Facebook BootCamp  sessions.

Why Facebook for Business?
Nov 1, 12:30pm ET

Connect to people with your Facebook Page
Nov 2, 12:30pm ET

Spread the word with Ads
Nov 8, 12:30pm ET

Let your customers do the talking with Sponsored Stories
Nov 9, 12:30pm ET

Maximize your efforts with Insights and Optimization
Nov 15, 12:30pm ET

Make your business more engaging with social technology
Nov 16, 12:30pm ET

The post Get a refresh on Facebook for business appeared first on 435 Digital.