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Design challenge: Facebook Timeline Cover Images
The profile image/logo has a prominent placement within the Timeline cover image. As we design branded Covers, we find it is best to work with the profile image rather than fight with it.
This reminds me of a time I was watching my dad finish a painting. He was getting ready to put in his signature. I asked him if he always put it in the same place. He said, no, you have to find a “home” for the signature in the painting. So the size, location, and color of the signature would vary from painting to painting.
I was thinking about this in relation to the Timelines Cover images. The profile image really needs to have a “home” within the Cover image.
In this example for Rink Strategic Communications, the colors of the image work with the logo. For example, the black in Susan’s camisole anchors with the black in her logo — it also calls attention to her as the important person in the photograph (besides the fact that she is in the center 
Could a tagline have also been included here in the Cover? Maybe, but I think the text would have been too busy and would have competed with the R. What you want for many Facebook Cover images is a compelling photograph or design that complements the profile image. With Facebook Timeline Covers, you have to know when to walk away.
When planning the Timeline image for other clients, I also look at the Cover in terms of balance and composition. For example, there is a good space in the upper right corner. You don’t want to crowd the left side too much, since the profile picture is there.
That is the approach we took with this design for the Keenan PR Facebook Page. This is basically a banner ad she already (created by another designer) that she liked that we reworked for her as a Timeline Cover.
We flipped the image so the Silver Anvil award is on the right, and we moved the text and changed the font. So, the result is a more balanced composition that works with her logo, which is her profile image. See how the logo points at the message and the award? Cool, huh? That was almost accidental
This is also a good example (we didn’t design) from Constant Contact UK that gives the profile image a “home” in the Timeline Cover and makes good use of that upper right corner/sweet spot… You can tell this image was designed expressly for Facebook.
There is also a really nice flow, composition, and a great match between the Cover image and the profile image in this example from Manchester United (we did not design this one, either).
Look, by contrast, at this one from the New York Times. I suppose with that red staircase that it’s an interesting photograph. But does it make a good Timeline image? In my opinion, no. Nothing about the image communicates anything about the attributes (or a single attribute) of the New York Times (other than they have a lot of employees and a really cool staircase). It’s not memorable. It doesn’t play nicely with the profile image. I think they should give this one another shot….
Facebook is a fun and friendly environment, and it has a certain cool factor. Being overly corporate on Facebook would be a mistake just as it would be a mistake to use business jargon at a backyard barbecue. Brands have a real opportunity with these Facebook Page Timeline Covers. It’s worthwhile to design them well — to delight the viewer, as well as convey a message.
Related articles
- Time to Update Your Facebook Page with a New Cover (fletcher-prince.com)
What’s In a Name? How to Maximize the Power of Your Name, Online
The young Mary Fletcher Jones
Not many 5-year-olds have to be concerned about their personal brand, but I did.
I was appearing in a professional theater production, my first. I was the first child in my class to get a regular paycheck.
It was time to print the programs, and the stage manager and cast members had a discussion with me about my stage name. It could be my real name, they told me, or a made-up one, but the important thing was to always use the same name in plays in which I would appear, so people would recognize me, and for reviews.
We talked about the options — can you imagine having this discussion with a little child? But it really happened — and we all agreed that “Mary Fletcher Jones” had a nice ring to it; much better than “Mary Jones” which was far too generic. So that became my stage name, and the name I used on my school work, and later my resumes, and as my professional name.
My name even became an important issue when I married. I married twice, and both husbands were dismayed to learn that I had no plans to change my name to theirs. With a modest career as a writer, as well as many stage productions to my credit, I was not about to change my name to someone else’s. Even in those pre-online days, I understood that changing my name would impact my career. Besides, my name is part of me! I protested. I even made up a little rhyme: My name is Mary Fletcher Jones. It’s part of me. Just like my bones.
Both men, I recall, argued that it was just too confusing for a married couple to have two different last names, so I gamely offered both husbands to take my last name, but they did not take me up on my offer
Well, I hope these two little stories bring home the point that names are important. Yet, even today I encounter communicators who have not fully embraced the power of their own name.
Just recently, I was doing a Twitter search on some public relations speakers, and I was surprised to discover that for a few of them, there were no search results for their name.
Just as you select a business name, a name you are “doing business as,” you also have to select a professional name, which you will use consistently. To build your professional reputation, particularly online, you must put your name online to build search results.
Your “personal brand” name should sound good. Names that sound well when spoken are easy to remember. You may know that names that are comprised of a variety of syllables are considered to be more euphonious. So John Ray Smith is not as euphonious as John Carter Smith. If you had to pick between John Smith and John Carter Smith, you’d probably do well to pick the latter.
Your “personal brand” name should be the name you are known as by others, if you have an established reputation. If people know you as Bill Jones, don’t start calling yourself William F. Jones on your online sites. Stick with how you are called, or how you believe people will search for your name online.
If possible, your “personal brand” name should not be too long, or too hard to spell. Remember, people are searching for you by your name. Also, it’s hard to pick a username if you have a really long name. Do you really need a hyphenated name?
But, hey, some of us are endowed with unusual names. The most critical thing is to make the most of what you have, and to use it with consistency online.
How to Own Your Name Online
At a minimum, create these online accounts in your professional name:
1. A website with your name as the URL http://www.yourname.com
2. A LinkedIn profile, with your name URL like this: http://www.linkedin.com/in/your name (Remember, LinkedIn profiles are for real people, not companies, and you may only have one LinkedIn profile. Create a company profile for your business.)
3. A YouTube Channel, with your name URL like this http://www.youtube.com/user/yourname. You should also have one for your company. If you upload any videos in which you appear, be sure to tag your videos with your professional name (contained within quotation marks).
4. A Facebook Profile, with your name URL like this http://www.facebook.com/yourname or your.name (Remember, profiles are only for real people, not companies, and each person may only have one profile. Create a Facebook Page for your business.)
5. A Twitter Profile, with your real name listed as the user (e.g., Mary Fletcher Jones) and as close an approximation to your real name for the username as possible (e.g., MaryFletchJones). Be sure you also have a Twitter profile with the name of your business. You can link these profiles together, so people will find you on either one.
6. A Flickr account (for which you will need a Yahoo account), with your name as the account name. Do not forget to title and tag your photos of yourself with your professional name, contained in quotation marks, for searchability. And yes, I have a Flickr account for my business, as well.
7. Blog comments. Use your real “professional” name, not an anonymous moniker; not a cute nickname. Blog comments are searchable.
Related articles
- Got YouTube? You Need It – If Only For SEO (fletcher-prince.com)
- Learning the ropes of social media? Pick an encouraging instructor (fletcherprince.wordpress.com)
- Twitter best practices for PR professionals (theprsanccblog.wordpress.com)
4 Ways to Compose Fantastic Twitter Updates for Your Brand
So much has been written about Twitter, but I think the core essentials can be boiled down to four reminders:
- Be Relevant
- Be Useful
- Be Original and Surprising
- Present Variety
Golden Rule #1: Thou Shalt Be Relevant
Even when you are tweeting about your company or brand, your tweets should be news-related whenever possible and appropriate.
No business or nonprofit can relate each and every tweet to what is going on in the moment. However, it does pay to keep an eye on what is trending among your followers (not what is trending on Twitter as a whole).
Importantly: if there is a major crisis or breaking news story that everyone is talking about, or an impending adverse weather event, you do not want to be tweeting about your sales promotion at that time. The response can be unfavorable, and it can make you appear insensitive. (For this reason, I counsel against the use of scheduled tweets with third party platforms.)
On the other hand, if there is an uplifting story that everyone is talking about, such as the Royal Wedding, you could, in a clever way that is still relevant, relate your key message to that trending topic, with a little creativity. Just don’t go overboard and appear spammy.
Golden Rule #2: Thou Shalt Be Useful To Thine Followers
What do your followers care about? What matters to them? What are they worried about? How can the information in the tweet you are about to post make their job easier? Help them save money on groceries? Be healthy? Do something in a better way? Reveal new ways to have fun? Tweet about that.
Useful tweets almost always require a link to an article, special offer, or YouTube video. The tweet is just the teaser; more information should be contained in the link.
If you’re wondering how much “useful” content you should post, as opposed to strictly “promotional” content, you might go for an 80/20 ratio and see how that works for you (standard recommendation for email marketing content).
Golden Rule #3: Thou Shalt Be Original and Surprising
Alternatively, the tweet for your brand can convey surprising or entertaining information. These can be short tweets that don’t have links.
If you’ve got an amazing statistic or information nugget to share that you think will shock or surprise, that’s great tweet material.
A funny saying or joke can work, but it still should be relevant to your brand. There is a PR firm that tweets cocktail recipes, at least once per week. In fact, they tend to tweet more information about cocktails than they do about their expertise or client work. On the other hand, Firefly Vodka tweets entertaining content about cocktails — which makes sense for their brand. There is a way to be both entertaining and brand-relevant: find that way. And if you can’t be entertaining in a classy way, just go for informative and helpful.
Golden Rule #4: Thou Shalt Present Variety Amongst Thy Tweets
You wouldn’t want to eat the same meal everyday, would you? The predictable soon becomes boring. So, do you follow any companies or people on Twitter that JUST post famous quotations? Or those who just post links to articles other people have written? They’re not much fun, are they? Don’t lapse into these lazy communications habits. Show your followers that they are worth the effort and mix it up!
Your Twitter profile should present a variety of tweets (all related to your brand, of course), including
- Golden nuggets: short, funny or informative updates; quick and helpful tips; milestone or anniversary announcements (no link required)
- At replies and at mentions to followers (@Twitter name)
- Links to articles and blog posts (no less than 50% of these should be authored by you or someone in your company)
- Links to YouTube video
- TwitPic links (to photo images)
- Retweets (sparingly!)
- Thank you’s and acknowledgements
- Questions for your followers; requests for suggestions or advice
- Quick comments on timely or news items, when appropriate
- Announcements of special events, promotions, or giveaways
- New product or service announcements
- Etc. (got more ideas? please list them in the comments!)
Lagniappe! Extra Twitter Tips
- Space your tweets at least an hour apart.
- Keep tweets brief; under 100 characters when possible, for retweeting space.
- Use real words, not abbreviations, for searchability.
- Add hashtags (#) for common words and search terms (but no more than one or two per tweet).
- Use retweet-generating words and phrases, such as “how-to,” “top,” “blog post” or “blog,” “great,” “help” and “check out.”
- Avoid these terms in your tweets: “lol,” “ha ha,” “home,” “game,” and “work.”
- Reconsider the use of paper.li dailies, if you are currently using them. Unoriginal, auto-generated filler content really does nothing to enhance your personal or corporate brand.
Related articles
- Timing is everything: when to tweet (fletcher-prince.com)
- Twitter just got a lot more important to your brand, and here’s why (fletcher-prince.com)
- 5 Ways to Boost Your Retweets (freelanceswitch.com)
- Twitter best practices for PR professionals (theprsanccblog.wordpress.com)
10 creative and affordable ways to use your logo
In general, I am not a big fan of give-away promotional items with logos on them, such as notepads, candies, calendars, pens, and golf balls. For some companies, I suppose, they are right. For example, I stayed a nice hotel that had turn-down service at night, and on my pillow were custom chocolates. That was a nice touch that was worth it for them.
But another time, I attended an awards event once and I got a large ice scraper with a company logo on it for a communications vendor in the loot bag. Only thing is, that winter turned out to be moderate, and I never had to use it. I could probably count on one hand the days you have to use an ice scraper in DC. So, I think that company wasted their money.
What I see far more often, however, is companies not investing enough money in branding vehicles that make sense for their business.
Every business ought to have a high resolution logo for print purposes and a logo for use on Twitter, Facebook Page, YouTube, Flickr, the website, and the blog. While you are having a logo designed, you should also contract to have these variations: a header style logo for blog themes, email newsletters, and letterhead.
Here are 10 affordable logo items I believe every business and organization ought to have designed for them.
- Signage, if you are a brick and mortar business.
- Business cards.
- A website, blog or both.
- Twitter and YouTube backgrounds.
- Letterhead.
- Address labels.
- Brochures.
- Postcards.
- YouTube video slides.
- Email newsletter template.
The Fletcher Prince Mobile!
7 Things That are Nice to Have
- Large car magnets.
- Buttons. But don’t expect your customers to wear them! You wear them, or have your employees wear them.
- Vinyl printed banners, vertical or horitzontal. Once you have these, you’ll find you use them often.
- A t-shirt or other wearable apparel, for you and your employees to wear.
- Postage with your logo on it.
- Notecards, for thank you notes.
- Seasonal cards (e.g. for Christmas or New Year’s).
Please contact us to design a suite of branded materials for your company.
Branding Your Twitter Profile
One of the smaller (but important) tasks we handle at Fletcher Prince is branding Twitter profiles for individuals and organizations. This only applies to you if you are using Twitter for business purposes.
In customizing your Twitter profile, there are four areas to consider
- Your Twitter username. This will vary, depending on your needs. Personally, I like using my company names for my various Twitter profiles. (The Twitter accounts are customized according to their purpose. So I post different information on my Fletcher Prince account than I do on my Conversations in Public Relations account.) Unfortunately, with Twitter, you don’t have a lot of latitude with dashes, spaces, and extended names, which would help for SEO purposes. So, in my view, using your actual name for your username doesn’t really score you points, unless you are a celebrity. And guess what? You get to list your real name separately, anyway, and it will display on your profile, just above your location. So, just pick the most brand-equivalent version of a profile name you can manage. Mine is FletcherPrince (for one account). Best I could achieve, given Twitter’s limitations.
customized Twitter profile example
- Your Twitter profile description. You have very little space to describe your company (or yourself). In fact, you only have 160 characters to work with. So highlight what you do, taking care to differentiate your company and provide a key benefit why people should follow you. For example, my Fletcher Prince bio reads: “Follow me for creative marketing, social media, and public relations tips.” Since my home page URL is listed right there, I really don’t need to elaborate on that. The curious can click through.
- Twitter profile picture. There is a camp that says use your real picture, because social media is all about real people having real conversations. I don’t buy that, particularly. Social media is still a pretty self-serving media. If I want authenticity and connection, I pick up a phone or meet someone for coffee. For me, social media is (1) about providing relevant and useful information that establishes you as a trustworthy company, loaded with expertise (i.e., building your online reputation) and (2) building your SEO; e.g. backlinks. So, how you handle the all-important brand-identifier of a Twitter picture depends on your communication goals and situation. If you are a consultant or sole propietor, feel free to use your photo if that is what will serve you best. If you have a company with a diversity of service offerings, and you are the only person tweeting about your company, or it is a corporate or government agency or association Twitter account, then use a square version of your logo. It is worth the effort and money to have a graphic designer create a legible square version of this logo because you will use it for many online marketing purposes. Don’t feel compelled to use the entire logo, and especially, avoid text. Just use one graphic element of it. We do this for Fletcher Prince (with our green and white asterisk design) You can use this for multiple purposes: for your favicon on your URL, for your Flickr site, for Facebook, for iTunes podcasts, for your blog avatar, for Yahoo, and for YouTube. Fletcher Prince can create one for you, if you need it (about $250 to customize your existing logo).
- Background design. It’s simple enough to customize Twitter with the hexadecimal values (or web colors) of your web site or logo, and you should. You can also use the background as an opportunity to visually reinforce your brand, with a large, customized design, as Dunkin Donuts does. I’m not a fan of adding a lot of text here. You can, but it tends to look like a dog’s breakfast, next to the Twitter stream. Stick with compelling visuals, instead. Whatever you choose, make sure your Twitter page coordinates with the brand identity of your other marketing materials. There are impostors on Twitter, and this extra effort will build trust in your Twitter identity. Just don’t use the default designs! Again, this is a design project that Fletcher Prince is happy to handle for you.
Dunkin Donuts Twitter page
