Last week we talked about why you should invest the time in making a facebook page for your small business, and how to do it so your ideal clients can actually find you! Before that, we eliminated all of the excuses preventing you from working towards building a social media presence for your small business. So since you’ve hopefully made the worthwhile decision to begin making your brand known on Facebook, I want to help you create a clean, effective and ultimately a Professional Facebook Cover Design. You should never be overwhelmed. Not everyone is a graphic designer, but every small business owner has a product, a brand, and ultimately a vision. We know that most small business owners cannot afford to outsource their social media graphics, so we’re going to show you how to do that yourself! I promise to take it step by step.

How To: Professional Facebook Cover Design

You may sit here and exclaim at the screen “But I have no experience”. “I’ve never taken a class in graphic design”. “I don’t have a creative bone in my body.” Or maybe, “I don’t even have Photoshop”, etc.

But do you want to know a secret – none of this actually matters. This is something you can play around with having no experience and no software. And for minimal investment, we’re literally talking a dollar max. ONE WHOLE DOLLAR. And your business is worth investing in that!

Let me introduce you, to Canva! I LOVE Canva and honestly use it for the large majority of any of the graphics I share on my blog/social media in general. It’s a great way to create a professional Facebook cover design for your small business. If you don’t have a canva account you’ll have to create one. This requires an email or a password, or my personal favorite – just sign in with your google mail account.

Finding the Graphic Designer Within

Let me be the first to say that its okay to look for inspiration. Find a Facebook Cover Photo that you’re in love with in your niche (or not) through Facebook, or you can even use Google. Find something that speaks to your heart and is aesthetically appealing. Not sure what looks great, find some great examples and rules of thumb here  from Canva. They’ve got you covered!

Once you’ve signed in select Create a Design from the left panel.

Next you’ll select, Use Custom Dimensions.

Then you’ll be plugging in the dimensions. You’ll be typing in 820 x 312 and make sure px is selected (this is the abbreviation for pixels. Keep in mind that your cover photo will appear slightly different on mobile phones, but having it fit a desktop view is most important predominantly. We recommend that any text you will place is centered for this reason.

Next select Design.

Finding a Great Photo

Then, find a great photo. For instance in this example, we decided to make a professional Facebook cover design for a company focusing on the outdoors. You’ll be utilizing the search on the left side of the page to complete this. Some of these photos will cost $1, some will be free. You can also utilize a photo of your personal business or your services, but I do recommend it is professionally done to make your Facebook cover design look schnazzy. This is especially useful if you have tangible results/products i.e. photos from one of your wedding sessions, results of a professional grooming, etc. That’s why relevant stock photos are great – they’re cheap and not every small business owner can afford a session initially. Personal ones are best, but stock is a great branding stand-in.

Feel free to try on a few for size, keep in mind you’ll be adding text. Once you find one you like, you can start to place the text.

Adding Text

Now,  you can click Add heading, Add subheading or add a little bit of body text. This will populate the text on your page and you can change the font, colors etc. While this is great, if you have no design experience I recommend finding an option you enjoy below these that are already in groups. I selected the text that mentions James Louis K. Stevenson.

This is also when you decide what the purpose of your cover photo is. For this cover photo, we decided to use a relevant quote, but we will show you alternative options down below. Now that I’ve decided on the quote I wanted to make sure that the color of the quote was contrasting, I chose white.

You can do this by selecting the text. I also selected ungroup from the options next to the color and font on the bar and spaced them appropriately.

Branding Your Image

Next its time to brand your image! You should have a social media handle for Facebook, Instagram, twitter, etc. You can also add Pinterest, linked in, google plus – the potential is endless. Use the search bar to select the appropriate social media logos for your channels. Then utilize more text (I personally prefer all caps in a simple sans-serif font to spell it out. Mine currently says @DaretoCultivate since this is my handle for all of my channels.

Next, I highly encourage you to include a hashtag that identifies your brand if you have one. We’ll get to the ins and outs of creating one in a later post. Finally, wa-lah you have a professional Facebook cover design! You’ll select download on the upper right hand side and select png.

Next, you’ll just hover over your current cover photo on Facebook on your desktop and select change cover. Then, upload it.

Creating a Facebook Cover Photo With Purpose

Above we showed you how to create a general Facebook cover photo. This one inspired your clients through a common emotion that your brand embodies. But what else can you do with your Facebook cover photo?

Here are a few more options! Share your personal brand statement/companies mission statement. The goal of this cover photo is to identify who you serve and specifically how you do it! This is a great way to invite clients in and show them how you can serve them. You could also substitute in your motto, etc. Here is an example below.

Have a new product or want to showcase one of your old ones? Make sure to mention it in your cover photo! This one I designed is for a dog trainer. Its goal is to provide a basic foundational class to demonstrate the owner’s skill level and gather contact information to encourage follow-up bookings addressing more specific and advanced challenges.

I had SO MUCH FUN showing you the behind the scenes way you can create your own professional Facebook cover design! What questions do you still have? Drop them below and I’ll do my best to deliver you an answer!

Thanks for reading!

Lauren