Facebook is constantly changing. For the most part at staunch protest of its users. Remember when they introduced timeline and everyone threw a hissy fit?
I remember all kinds of petitions being set up to bring back the old Facebook.
People don’t like change.
However, earlier this month a new change was met by cheers of joy from Internet marketers and businesses worldwide.
Because they lifted restrictions on cover images.
Prior to this the guidelines stated that cover photos were not allowed to have calls to action, contact info, price or purchase info or any references to Facebook features (e.g. “Like us!”)
Yup, that’s all been abolished. For now anyway.
The 20% text maximum remains however. So it’s up to you to design something that is still image heavy yet promotional.
Even so, it’s time to make the most of the new guidelines by ramping up your cover image stat.
Here are four different ideas you can use to fully leverage the potential of your Facebook page:
1. Get more “Likes”
Statistics have shown that people will take action given very clear directions.
So by simply instructing them to “Click Like” the likelihood of them doing it is far higher than if you don’t. Make sense?
I especially like the way Facebook expert Mari Smith added “get notifications” below the call to action. Just those two words add a benefit to visitors to like her. All it really means is that once you click like her updates will appear in your newsfeed. Very clever copywriting I must say.
And above that you’ll notice she’s also giving away a free report in exchange for filling out a survey. Which brings me to my next point…
2. Grow Your List
The money is in the list. All the top marketers and super affiliates will tell you this. And it’s a cliche for a reason.
With an email list of targeted leads who willingly signed up for your newsletter to receive your updates, you can build a relationship with them and promote products and services directly to them.
It’s direct contact with your ideal audience.
Email marketing and Facebook go hand-in-hand.
By creating a custom app on the platform you’re able to set up squeeze pages within your Facebook page and capture leads straight into your autoresponder from there.
So a great way of using your cover image is by directing visitors to your app where they can sign up for webinars, giveaways, contests, freebies etc. Whatever it is you’re giving away, they’ll have to give you their email address.
3. Promote a Product or Service
If you’re using Facebook for your affiliate marketing campaigns, this is a huge benefit for you.
With the new guidelines you are able to directly promote a product or service on your cover image. Of course there’s no way of adding a link within the image, so I suggest adding a URL to your landing page. From here you still get to capture leads before directing them to the offer page.
Keep the landing page URL clean and simple as visitors will have to manually type it into the address bar.
Something like pengjoon.peacefulmediadev.com/offer.
4. Generate Traffic to Your Website
If Facebook is a supplement to your official website, then use it as a traffic generation tool.
Add your site into the cover image. I’ve seen others put up their actual contact information. Especially for real estate companies. They add their office address, phone number, email address and so forth.
And again, for affiliates, this is a great way to generate traffic to your landing page or affiliate site.
On top of all this, an added bonus is that when someone likes your page, a portion of your cover image will show up in their timeline. So it could potentially look something like this:
Imagine having your call to action or product promotion displayed in the newsfeed of every new fan you receive. Pretty cool stuff huh.
Now my Facebook Page is a little sad, I know. I suffer from Shiny Object Syndrome. Just too many new things I want to do. So I’m not yet practicing what I just preached. But I would love to get your feedback on what you think I can do with my cover image.
Check out my page and let me know in the comment section below.
Or better yet, like me and comment directly on my FB page!
Thanks guys 🙂
