Create the Perfect Facebook Banner Using These 10 Tips

Are you looking to enhance the aesthetic of your Facebook home page? 

Visually pleasing content plays an important role in making your Facebook page successful. This is where Facebook banners come in. Having a great Facebook banner can transform your business’s home page from ordinary to extraordinary. 

Your Facebook banner should give an inside look at your business and should be a representation of what it offers. 

This article will break down the best practices to create an eye-catching banner for your business.

What is a Facebook Banner?

Simply put a banner, also known as the Facebook cover photo, is the first piece of visual that people see when visiting a Facebook home page and is a great way to attract potential customers and send a strong message. 

If you are a business with a Facebook page, a captivating banner is the first place that you can show off your brand and promote your services and products. There are many ways to do so, such as putting your business’s logo on your banner or featuring new services or products that you have. 

Creativity is endless when creating your Facebook banner, but this requires out of the box thinking to stand out from the competition.

Tip 1: Keep things simple and start with a template

This can all seem a bit scary for those of you that aren’t trained graphic designers but don’t panic.

A Facebook banner template is a great way to get started when creating your banner. A template will help guide you through the design, get your creative juices flowing, and will save you time. 

There are many ways to design your template but it is important to remember that your banner is what introduces your brand’s potential, so keep it personal and make it exciting.

Tip 2: Set a goal for your banner

You want your banner to look neat and professional. You also want you, viewers, to look at your banner and not feel overwhelmed. Therefore, setting yourself a goal for what you want your banner to portray and focus on is a good idea. 

Ask yourself a few questions to narrow down your ideas for your banner. Is your banner going to have a tagline or a statement that shows your audience what you produce? Or are you promoting a product or service? Do you want to display upcoming sales or events your business may be having? 

Answering these questions will help you make a more final goal for your banner.

Tip 3: Use high quality and attractive graphics

There are many ways to find and create images for your banners but at the end of the day, you want your image to be captivating and high-quality. You can take these images yourself or you can use great stock images. 

Using excellent stock images is one of the easiest ways to create a Facebook banner. These images are captivating and easy for your audience to connect to. 

Note: you can check out Facebook’s guidelines on how to change your photo.

Tip 4: Use video banners to make your page exciting

Videos are a great way to make your banner more engaging and entertaining for your audience. Videos are the next big thing in the social media world, and are a relatively new way to showcase your business. Therefore, the sooner you embrace the use of Facebook banner videos, the sooner you can make your Facebook business page fresh and exciting. 

Furthermore, uploading a video as your Facebook cover image is as simple as uploading a new image. So why not try it out for your Facebook page and see what kind of response you get?

Tip 5: Make your images more exciting with animations

Using animations is a great way to keep your audience entertained and excited when they visit your Facebook page. People often get tired of seeing static imagery, so why not stand out from the crowd and use an animated image. 
People tend to have a short attention span and it has been shown that you only have about 2.7 seconds to grab someone’s attention, so you better make it count. Using animations can evoke an emotion and increase excitement in your audience and make them want to continue following your business’s page.

Tip 6: Apply a color palette to your banner

Different businesses have chosen different colors to represent them. Research has shown that colors affect how we feel and think about something, which in this case is what your audience thinks about your business. 

For example, the color orange represents excitement and enthusiasm, which is exactly how you want your audience to feel when they look at your banner.

Fanta uses the color orange in all their logos, ad campaigns, etc. When you look at this banner, how do you feel? Happy, excited, enthusiastic? This is exactly how they wanted you to feel. So take note next time you are picking a color palette for your business.

Tip 7: Use different fonts

Having the perfect cover photo speaks for your brand in many positive ways. The message you convey is the one your audience needs to connect with, therefore, it needs to be clear, informative, and even inspirational.  

Your audience is more likely to connect with your banner if it is easy to understand. The correct choice of font, color, and text size can be a great way to attract new customers.

Tip 8: Use graphically illustrated images instead

You may have a hard time finding a stock image that resonates with your business or you may not have the inspiration to take the images yourself. But, don’t worry. There are other ways that you can get the perfect image for your banner. 
You can have a graphic designer create the perfect design for your banner. This will require minimal effort from you and at the end of the process, you will have yourself a great image.

Tip 9: Give an inside look at your business

Using images that are interesting and relevant allows you to gain attention, build brand loyalty and communicate information, which ultimately increases engagement. If you want to stand out from the competition it is important to build a brand identity that people can resonate with and remember when they see your business. 

When designing your banner, keep in mind what your business’s values are. This way when a customer looks at your page they can better understand what your business is all about.

As you can see, Madgicx’s banner gives an inside look at what the business’s service is in an exciting way. It states “all in one advertising platform”, which tells you exactly what Madgicx does. This leaves the audience feeling informed and will make them want to further investigate what Madgicx is all about. The image is clear and does not overwhelm you, which is in tune with Madgicx’s ideology.

Tip 10: Use a call to action button

Having a call to action button encourages your audience to click on your page and continue interacting with your Facebook page. A call to action button acts as a signpost and guides your audience on what to do next, this can be anything from signing up for a newsletter or purchasing a product.

Now that you have understood what a great banner should include, it might be time to create your banner for your business. You may think this is challenging. But fear not, it can be done in a few simple steps.

How to create a great Facebook banner?

Let’s get down to business and show you how you can create your Facebook banner. 

Here are the steps you should follow: 

1. Decide on the type of banner you want to create
2. Choose the right size
3. Pick a layout
4. Make your design personal
5. Complete and share

1. Decide on the type of banner you want to create

First things first, decide on the subject matter and type of banner that you want to design. Is it going to be a Facebook cover photo with a great graphic or image, or will it be a Facebook ad that targets specific audiences, or a profile photo, or lastly, an event cover?

2. Choose the right Facebook cover photo size

Once you have figured out what type of banner you want you must choose the correct pixel dimensions for your banner. The optimal Facebook banner size is 820 pixels wide by 312 pixels tall on a desktop and 640 pixels wide by 360 pixels tall on a mobile device. However, if you use an image that works well on both desktop and mobile devices, such as smartphones, then 820 pixels wide by 462 pixels tall seems to be the most ideal.

3. Pick a layout

You can now choose a background for your cover. You can choose from stock photos or photos you have taken yourself. Moreover, you can use Facebook cover videos or animations to make your banner more entertaining. If you already have a graphic that you would like to upload, you simply drag it and drop it onto the template.

4. Make your design personal

You can add fonts, images, shapes, or text. All these elements add to your banner and make it more personal. You can also make your banner creative and add animations or gifs to it.

5. Complete and share

After you have created your perfect banner, you can download it and share it in the relevant format.

Here are some examples of great banners

Let’s take a look at some Facebook pages that have created some great banners.

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Nike’s banner is a great example because they have kept their image clear and they have their famous “Just Do It” slogan, which is a great way to showcase their business.

Pantone has great use of color and the correlation between the profile picture and the cover photo will make the page look very aesthetically pleasing. This is a great display of creating a banner that will have a target audience, people who are maybe looking to paint their house.

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Coca-cola uses a very captivating image that will most definitely engage viewers. The center focus of this image is the bottle of coca-cola, which is a great way to draw attention to Coca-Cola’s products. This image is a great example of a high-quality image. They have also shown how you can use your own image.

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Apple’s banner uses high-quality images to showcase their products. This can be a very effective way of showing your audience what type of products they can expect from your business. Their image is also very clear and simple, which is a great way to make your banner attractive to potential customers.

Now over to you

Creating the perfect banner requires the right image, text, font, and style. This can sometimes be challenging as you need to be creative and think out of the box. However, if your banner is done right you can attract thousands of potential customers. 

Your banner is a great opportunity to convince your followers that your brand is the best and they should continue following your business’s page. Furthermore, your banner is the first step in increasing lead generation. 

So make sure you create a banner that represents you and your business well and sends a great message to potential customers.