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Lesson Info

Choosing the Right Avatar & Banner

These are the key points that you wanna have when you're deciding about making a great avatar, focus on the face and you want to make sure you position yourself asymmetrically Okay, light from the front and make sure that you're using a large file. That's because when face, when you upload that image to Facebook, they'll compress it. But the higher quality you start with the higher quality you'll look once it's finally uploaded. Additionally, you want to make sure you make a great cover photo and you want to keep watching. If you're online, I'm gonna give you the exact dimensions of what these photos are here in a second. But the key to great cover photo is the following one. I see this mistake all the time, and you guys may have may see it as well. People forget that there's a thumbnail right here, right, and they designed the cover photo as if the whole space is real estate. The best design cover photos have those two images working together somehow, and I'll show you some examples o...

f that here in a second case, So make a great cover photo. You wanted to feature your brand right. So if again and as a personal brand, Michael, you considers have a personal brand, Self employed king. Amen. OK, if your personal brand feature your face, feature yourself engaging with other folks, right? Maybe speaking on stage, we're gonna authority position so that other people do business with you. If you're ah brand like like Chris Wright, who studies on skateboarding company or you sell IPhone covers or coffee, maybe you show some of the product in that cover photo. Make sure, though, that less than 20 to 30% of that cover photo is not text. In other words, you can't just spray text across the entire cover photo. What we've got up here is about the maximum you can get away with. Okay, just as a general visual. So once you think about making a great avatar and ensuring that you have a great cover, you want to make sure you consider these things as you make updates to your cover photo. OK, use that space to tell a story, right? There's more real estate there, so you can use it to tell a story. Okay, Make sure you're not stepping on your avatar who I see this mistake all the time and again, just like the avatar you want. Make sure you light from the front. Use a big photo because Facebook will compress it. And you want to make sure that you got a high quality cover photo, Right? Okay, So make a great cover photo. Here are some examples of great color photos. Okay, so this scuba diving company, you'll notice they tell a story. You see the reefs in the upper right? Right On a bright, sunny day, they've got their logo and what they do in the upper left. And they specifically left space in the bottom, left for their thumbnail to be there so that they can get the proper exposure on both of those same thing with the follow me brand, The biking company. Okay, they left space. They've got bright text, and it works well, These are the optimal size. So those of you watching online, this is a great time to take a screenshot and retweet it back out using hashtag f b for smb. For those of you in audience, if you don't want to write this stuff down, you can always too afraid of snap a photo of this as well. The optimal size for your cover photo once Facebook uploads it and decompress is, is 815 pixels wide by 315. Excuse me, 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels tall. So if you upload a photo that's bigger than that, So I know you know the photographers. Watch me now if you got a really high res photo just makes her the aspect ratio sticks between the 3 15 to the 51 That way, when it's compressed, it'll compress and hold the aspect ratio and get you a high quality photo. Next that thumbnail. You want to optimize that to be 100 and 60 pixels by 160 pixels again, If you upload a larger image, just make sure it's square, so it hold that aspect ratio. All right, so again, those of you watching online or those that be an audience, this is the key things you need to know regarding sizing for that cover photo and for the profile picture. Now, how many of you guys in here would you consider yourself like rock star Graphic designers you and Valerie and say yes, and I've seen her page. You guys should check it out. It was a great graphic designer. David. You're like graphic designs. Not my thing. No, Giselle, no. What do you guys use when you upload these photos? Currently, like, do you use any tools to make sure Get the right photo. Michael, you're shaking your head. What kind of tools do you use? But we go to five. OK, so Michael uses Fiverr. What else? Chris, did you have a read your good Giselle? Use photo shop. Okay, well, you have. You know, you have some design skills. If you're in there in photo shop, there's like, 400 buttons going around in there. I mean, you should be good to go. Uh, what else can va Okay, use can va. Great. You, Chris, You said to use paint. Yep. Great. Honor. What? He used Adobe Adobe. So these are some of my favorite tools for the job. All right, so we just We just heard Cindy mentioned can But I'm also a can of a fan. Many of you guys use the adobe creative cloud, Another tool that's really great. And cheap and easy to use is called pic monkey. Okay, pick monkey. Another one is called Icon Finder. The reason of Icon Finder is like, let's say you're writing up. Uh, you're uploading a photo, your thumbnail photo and just want a quick icon. Maybe David. It's a bottle of wine and you don't have time to call your graphic designer. Get the updates made. You can just search bottle of wine. And here it will spit out literally hundreds of that kind of icon that you can choose from and use royalty free on your Facebook on your Facebook thumb. Now, pick slur is another great tool to use any of you guys Pixar fans a little bit. Yeah, Cates like Pixar. Alright, Also word swag. Having you guys are words. Wag users anybody, so we'll get into more of all these tools later on. Word swag allows you to essentially take a photo of something and then quickly add text across the top of it and then publish it back out with very little design work. And it's strictly a mobile app right now. Okay, Did I miss any? So if you guys are using any tools that I don't have up here. You should say them now. Leanne. No. I used photo shop, photo shop. Michael, Did I miss any? I love pic monkey. Also your big Why do you love pick monkeys? It's so easy to use. And I am not a graphic designer like a lot of us, right? So great. These are good tools to use again. Your friends will really appreciate you sharing this kind of content out both on Twitter. And if you're just taking photos and showing it on Facebook because everyone's looking for easy to use tools for the job. So feel free to share this next one. This is something that I live by. You know, when I first started my dorm room and I had that in Monk Shot member in the upper left of my screen, I was petrified of doing this. I mean, I was an architect, major that was literally, like, huddled under his desk most days, like with my little drawing board, sketching new buildings, this kind of stuff, putting a video out there. This was really scary. And this is a quote that I live by its above my bed, and it's hesitation is the enemy of hustle. I've met so many people and those of you watching online, this might be you. I've met so many people that are scared to get a graphic uploaded because it's not perfect. I'll tell you, just get the thing design, get it uploaded and then optimize as time goes on. You absolutely need that when you're setting up your Facebook page and this is something again that I live by, so don't wait. Remember, hesitation is absolutely the enemy of hustle. Now, I just mentioned that when you upload your your Facebook cover photo, you also get optimization on that from Ed drank right? Any time you update a photo, your thumbnail or your cover photo, you get optimization for Ed drink. So you want to make sure that you add a descriptive link, okay? Or call to action whenever you upload your profile Photo. Most people miss this because they're so focused on updating my image and they forget to attach a call to action despite the fact that Facebook gives the most real estate to these kinds of updates. Okay, Yeah, go ahead, ask your question out loud. Oh, called action. So Angie's photographer. Many of you guys watching are potentially photographers. Angelina's your question. What is this? What's the best call to action? Yeah, Okay. Let me ask you, What do you do as a photographer? What do you sell? Um, I haven't started selling yet. What would you sell? In an ideal world, I would sell my photographs of the island's okay. Caribbean of the Caribbean. Great. So first off, you have a natural advantage because you're a photographer and you're photographing islands. Which everyone sitting in their cubicles going through your Facebook news even love to be there. Right? So when you up with that image here, your call to action might say something like, if you like to be here but can't afford the travel cost, just click here and decorate your home with these photos. Okay? You say that works. Let me give you another example. Anyone else wondering maybe what a call to action might be in there? Cover photo land. Do you have an example of when you used in the past? No, I'm just thinking about the page that I manage for offer vault and just the audience. And I'm trying to figure out what it. A good picture would be because what we do is we help people who are trying to make money online. Uh uh. We helped the market and set up their campaigns, and I'm trying to figure out what would be a good picture called action. Not so much because I'm pretty sure good with those called Took the raids in the open rates. Yup. Great. What if you use in the past few Something that is done? Well, you know, you're gonna e think your mouth. It's gonna We actually don't have a cover photo right now. No car photo? No. That's why your front row. This is great. Because a bunch of you watching right now might not. Might also not have car photos. Yeah, so you could in that cover photo, anyone that runs a professional service or something that's not a brand like Valerie's Or like Angeline, where you're helping other businesses. It's always great to feature the result of what in your case offer vault gives to its customers. So, Leanne, let's say Valerie is an offer vault customer. When she uses offer vault, her coffee shop fills up, and she's able to hire a new consultant or a new Bart Arista. A picture of Valerie with the new breeze to smiling, saying, We got this because of offer. Vault is a great cover photo. So again, if your professional service watching right now focus on the results you get for the people you help serve versus maybe your office or a shot of your user interface online. Was that helpful? Very guys that health online definitely a couple of questions come in just to clarify on the images we had. Paul Mumford and Time Capsule both submitted this question. They want to know if you think that people should be using a business logo as a picture or like a picture of an actual person, should this be a logo or a picture of you? Yeah, So Paul, Great question. And Chris, The 2nd 1 was Time capsule also submitted that question. So Paul in time capsule. These are great questions. If you've put many times, what people do is they use the 160 pixel by 160 pixel logo or thumbnail image for their logo, and they use the larger 851 pixel by 315 pixel for the actual storytelling on the cover photo. So, yes, if you do have a great logo and it pops, use that as your thumbnail image. In fact, Valerie does a great job of this with her coffee shop. Question just on these photos. Shelly wants to know, Are these considered royalty free or copyright? When you upload these to Facebook, do they have the rights to these images once they're uploaded? Yeah. So? So, Shelley. Great question. What I would tell you is any photo upload to Facebook and college. June's will thank me. Here, it's your own property. Okay, So when you up with those, they are the royalty free. You don't have to worry about Facebook charging you or if they're repurposed, You want to make sure in that call to action. Like, if that is a photo Angeline that you took about of an island and you want to make sure you get your copyright in there just added to the bottom of the description. Right? So people re share it or something, right? It's got your copyright, and that's still what about a signature on the photographic self? That's great as well. Just make sure it only takes up 20% of the vote or or watermark in the bottom, right? That's great. Okay, either one of those Valerie had a question. I actually just wanted to add on to that. I used to work with Getty images and just be careful when you are actually grabbing images from somewhere else from a source that you probably don't really know much about. You have to always get clearance for those images before you plop it on your own company page because they will go after you. Yeah, great point. And again, uh, just reader anyone Valerie said, make sure those images you're using you do own. You don't want to be in a bad situation there. And if you take your own, that's usually the best way to do it. Anything else, Chris, We're getting online that you feel like we should address now. You know, we have some people talking about where to put the call to action and your cover photo. I know you're getting into a little bit more with the descriptions here, but any any tips on how to get that called action in there? Yep. So, guys, this call to action When you upload this to your Facebook page, it's actually gonna be the text description. So when you go in and and you hover over your cover photo and you click the drop down that says, upload new photo right when it up loads, it'll show on your Facebook timeline on your Facebook page, you'll click the image and say edit, and you're actually editing the caption on the photo. That's how you get this description where it is, okay? And you can put a Lincoln there and any call to action that you'd like anything else. Think we're good to go along now? Great. So again, make sure you get that right description of their with the links. Next, all of you guys have websites. Many of you guys have top ranking websites. I know Michael does a great job is Michael. You spend a lot of time, I imagine on s you optimization right a lot. So this what you see here is Facebook's version for graph search of quote unquote optimization so you might recognize and graphs are on your on your blog's when you're uploading a new article or you're or you're working with your your developer to make sure that your header tags and all this complicated stuff right you're putting a strategic keywords for Facebook. That's when you create your page and you update your about section K in this about section. This is what Facebook's gonna be using. When people search and graph search toe, pull your content to the top so you want to make sure your about section is fully and completely updated now. We'd be missing a lot of opportunity if we thought of Facebook and Google as just an apple compared to an apple, right, because it's gonna be very different. Facebook Graph search. I believe when it does move forward and the team that Facebook's teams develops it, it'll mimic what Google does. However, there's gonna be other elements they can pull in like life events. So this is an example of Halos Page one of our business life events. Isn't we launched our new You Are you X or for Valerie and might be when she gets the new coffee roast from Argentina, handmade by the would you call the people that had make them E. I guess the farmers in the crafters that plant the plant artisans of the plantation. You're very good at this artist is of the plantation, right? So you want to make sure use these use these life events to start populating your story? As it happens, you guys have something every day that happens at your business that you should you could put into this spot. And the reason I say this is its Facebook reach declines, which a lot of people are very aware of. The more you use Facebook features that are currently not getting a lot of use, the more they will bring those to the top. Because Facebook wants to see those things get used more. Right, so you will get a natural boost. Can I quantify that boost? No, but will you get it? Absolutely. So these air in the forms of milestones eventually you want to make sure you have your launch date all right? October 31st 2011. Okay, because an example might be, Let's say, someone is in San Francisco last night. They had a horrible dining experience and they want to find a new restaurant tonight. They might associate quality of restaurant with length of business, like how long they've been around so they might graph search restaurants in San Francisco that are older than 10 years. Okay, this is that's an example of how graph search could go. And if you get it set up now, you're gonna optimize for it, man, you're shaking your head. You like that one? I love this. Good, good, good, good. Okay, So, additionally, you can see here you can also feature and choose to make the page Oddeman public. Now we choose to do this. Ah, lot of brands don't do this. The reason we do it because I do want people to connect with me personally. All right, some of you watching online. You may not want that. I do enjoy that. Additionally, this about section is the most important piece of your description on your Facebook page. In fact, if you open any Facebook page right now and you look at the about section and highlighted and put in a Google search, google actually also crawling the about section the mission and the company overview along with the description. So we have seen clients that have gotten natural organic s CEO boosts in Google because they've optimize their facebook pages properly. Angelina's this Making sense. Any question? Yeah, you're good. Good, Very good. Okay. Additionally, I mentioned location already. The importance of that. I've done that. You know, those of you watching me now that have location? Independent businesses. Meaning you sell something online. It doesn't matter where you are. This tip is not for you. Okay, the optimization tips are but again, if you do have a physical location, you want to make sure you put that in here and make sure it's accurate, because when people are going around, you know, some examples might be, um uh, you know, there in Boston, Massachusetts, and a big snowstorm came through Snow Removal Company in Boston that my friends have used right coffee shop that my friends have gone to in Valerie specific location. Right? Consultants. My friends have worked with in potentially a specific location for Ana. Right? Is that all makes sense? Okay, to perfect the about section and again, I want to reiterate the most important piece of that about section and getting it right is making sure you've got those links in there. So after you got this right foundation set up, Okay, Then it comes time for you to populate your page before you promote it, and you want to make sure you use these three tactics you see behind me because these are what seem toe work over and over and over again. First, make sure you're using links to articles that automatically add photos. And if you guys check out Mike's blog's self employed king, you'll see every one of his articles at a publisher's on his blawg. He makes sure that he's got an image attached to the article. Why? Because Michael Smart he knows when somebody shares that content. He wants his photo automatically appear in that Facebook status update on the fan page, right? So on a sharing Michael's content, Michael can control that image to increase the click through rate, which we'll talk about later on that image. Additionally, you want to use videos, use a lot of videos. We're gonna talk about why the Ice Bucket challenge worked so well here later in the course. A lot of it has to do with video. A lot of it has to do with all of us looking ridiculous poring ice on ourselves, OK, but there is a reason based on Facebook's algorithm that this works so well. And lastly, look at what works on other people's pages. We call these stellar re shares and feel free to re share those. Okay. Additionally, these are things that don't necessarily seem toe work. OK, so if you're using pure text status updates, thes typically don't work well. And here's the reason all of us are guilty of this. I mentioned the average Facebook session is about 40 minutes. Well, I know I've done this. That What's the first thing you guys do when you wake up in the morning? I'll be honest with me. You checked, you know? Come on. That's like I paid you 100 bucks before you walked in here, and I said, You need to say I check it. What do you really do the first thing in the morning? You really? Oh, man, you don't need to talk about this. I have a program for that. All right, David, what's the first thing you dio uh, put on the coffee? Okay, Valerie, you guys go to the bathroom right now. Valerie, welcome. Here we go to the bathroom. You guys know where I'm going with this? You're all guilty, right? You're gonna sit down. And what do you dio? You whip out the phone and you start scrolling through the Facebook. Guilty. Guilty All of your guilty. You scroll through your Facebook, feed your twitter feed. You're re Sharon stuff, right? You need to make sure you've optimized for your toilet shares. Okay? Those people are great folks to then re show your content. They're sitting there. They don't want to goto work. They're bored there, typically, really comfortable. You want them re tweeting, and they're not gonna stop on those pure text photos. Okay, I told you guys, this is like, well based a lot of course than math and science, but a lot of it's just human nature. I mean, really human nature. Right? Okay, So don't use peer text linked to those articles up you don't want, Let's say, on a upload, Michael's our shares. Michael's last blawg post. Ana doesn't want Teoh. Click the X on the data that Michael's blawg post automatically puts in an upload her own photo that kills the ed drank boost that Facebook gives what they call a link share k a link shares when the metadata, which we'll talk about later from Michael's post automatically populates the status updates. So in other words, when you guys watching online when you post status updates, use the image that is attached to that update. OK, okay. Lastly, and people do tend to miss this because you want to make sure you're sharing your page to your profile. Okay, so once you create your page, people ask me all the time they say, Nathan, I've got 3000 Facebook fans and I say, Do you know the mom? They you know, they say Facebook friends, right? And I said, Do you know them all? And you know, they're full of you know what if they say yes, most of the people are business folks, right? And they say, How do I get my 3000 friends over to my Facebook page? In fact, Chris, you might be seeing that on the online shot right now. That exact question actually did. Who asked, Do you remember? This is from Bella, and they says I already have a personal page with friends. Is there a way to easily convert them over to my business page, reading their mind, Bellow, bellow were like, Wait together right now. Okay, so this is for you. Bella, if you've got a lot of Facebook friends and you don't know how to convert them over to fan Page likes, just do this. Once you've launched your page, you can click share on your page. It's right here. The three buttons you click share, and it'll take this update with your icon and your cover photo and share it back to your personal profile. And when you do that, that's the easiest way to get your Facebook friends to convert over to Fan page likes can you want to do obviously more than once with different kinds of text in the update. Okay, Lastly, you don't want to promote your page. OK, now I know a lot of you watching. I don't want you to be scared and say, Oh, this course is only gonna work for me if I've got 1000 bucks a month to spend on Facebook ads. What I will tell you is we have an example coming up where you can spend a dollar a month on Facebook ads and get actually a really high click through rate. So Angelina, that's gonna mean more people clicking through to your island photos, potentially buying them on a very small budget. And we'll talk about that later. Okay, So what I wanna ask you guys is what is your favorite learning so far? You can go to heo dot com, forward slash Tell me to tell me what your favorite thing is that you've learned so far. It could be the dimensions on the cover photo. It could be the fact that Michael loves pic monkey. It could be that you want to update your location. So that graph search finds you, Giselle. What's the favorite thing you've learned so far? That I'll get a boost if I update my cover. My proof of boost with your cover photo greatly. And what your favorite so far that, plus having a call to action on that particular post. Great. Very good, David, for you with the image when I put a a link not to screw with the image when you put a link. In other words, when you upload image update, link up the without changing the meat. Yep. Perfect. Good. So, again, those of you watching online tell me what you've learned it here dot com forward slash Tell me and Chris what are we seeing from the chat room? Any feedback on what they've learned so far? Yeah, people. I think that last bit that you were talking about converting the friends into likes on your page. SCF Funny says I'm able to get my Facebook business page to my personal, and they're trying to do that. So that's something they're gonna put into effect as soon as we go to break, Lisa says, adding the description to the cover photo updates and having that called the action, I think a lot of people didn't realize that that was an opportunity to have a call to action on cover page, so that's been really helpful. Great. And for those of you, I know Chris is gonna be launching his page, ideally as you go through the course and we'll touch base them tomorrow to see how it goes. But those of you also joining us that are just launching your page as the course goes along. Take all this into consideration and let us know how it goes by tweeting back to us. We may feature you tomorrow, Chris. What? You got Facebook, that drink and how a good way to get your page up in rank is to re share popular photos or popular videos. Is it best to share from the person who shared that or to go to the original source of that video or picture and share it from them? Yeah, great questions. So you always want to go back, continue the string, right? So if the things started, its source a right. No one knows maybe where the ice bucket challenge started. But if you share it because your dad published it, it's gonna then be more likely to share it with your entire family because two people out of the person family have now shared it. So you're leveraging something called Affinity, which is a key piece of ed drink, which we'll talk about later. Good question, David. Anything? I'm good right now. Who raised Michael? You raised your hand. What you got on your personal profile? Used to be able to boost to your friends, to get them to see your post. Yeah, and I just noticed, like, over the last month that disappeared. Because people like me, like I boost every post on my personal page and then face doesn't do it. You're right, though they did remove it permanent. I don't know if it's permitted. I can't predict Facebook. What I can tell you is my suspicion guys in this is speculation. But my suspicion is that folks were using those promoted post on their personal profiles for business. And Facebook doesn't want that. They don't want that. I'll tell you guys as well. This is a cool statistic, especially those of their social media consultants. And you wanna watch till the end of this course. We're gonna go specifically into how the social media consultants like Anna can make $10,000 a month selling social media products on Facebook toe end clients. But an important thing to consider is that when you're updating okay and promoting these things, Facebook Currently there's 30 million active Facebook pages, meaning they have more than 100 likes, so it gives you an idea of how many active pages there are. And to date as of ah, well yet to date, there's 1.5 million active advertisers that have spent at least 100 bucks on Facebook ads, so it gives you a sense of how small those two markets are compared to the larger ecosystem. The folks that do it now, while you're watching this course, you really are getting in early.