Make your Facebook Fan Page Picture Full-size :: Social Media Marketing Mentor : Tina Cook

Did you realize your Facebook Fan Page profile picture can be as big as this?

[Have updated this post as the new size is 540 pixels high by 180 pixels wide.
Facebook still refers to the vertical banner on your Page as your Page Profile Picture. This post is intended to encourage you to maximize your visual branding of the vertical banner on your Facebook (Fan) Page.]

Very generous of Facebook to give us all this valuable space on their site – the second most popular site on the globe! (Alexa)

A picture is worth a thousand words! And all this space is free!

How to Make the Best Use of this Free Space

1. Do this first – upload your full-size profile picture – 540 pixels high and 180 pixels wide. Grab your designer or Photoshop friend! Aviary is a free online photo editor you can use to create your vertical banner if you are using a single photograph.

2. Keep your branding consistent. On your Fan Page, Facebook allows you to promote your products or services – so go for it!

3. Include a photo of you in your profile picture – its about connecting with people.

4. Include your core offering so your visitors can see immediately how you can help them.

Some Great Facebook Profile Pictures to Inspire You!

Consistency is Key on Social Media Platforms

Comments

Jamie says:

February 6, 2012 at 5:45 pm

Great ! this site is really helpful I was wondering why my pics were changing so much, loosing the quality but I managed to upload the banner and looks crisp and cool !

Got to be PNG

Have a look: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Colorin/329251407119797?sk=app_184217821649480

Many thanks Tina

Jamie

- Tina Cook
  Twitter: TinaCook
  says:
  
  February 7, 2012 at 11:24 pm
  
  You are most welcome Jamie. Best of success with your new Fan Page!
  
Clare Josa
Twitter: clare_josa
says:

February 5, 2012 at 11:54 am

Thank you so much for the inspiration, Tina – as usual! You nudged me to get up and sort out my fan page profile pic. Thank you!

- Tina Cook
  Twitter: TinaCook
  says:
  
  February 6, 2012 at 12:02 am
  
  Awesome Clare!
  
Industrial Photographer
Twitter: pashminu
says:

January 30, 2012 at 5:53 am

Very helpful set of images. Anyone with simple editing skills can now have good professional profile image for FB.

Michelle Nichols says:

January 14, 2012 at 4:25 pm

I can confirm that this works! Thank you so much! I have added a 488 x 200 px photo to my photography page and it makes it stand out very nicely! I simply went to ‘change photo’ by hovering over my profile picture and uploaded from there. I recommend doing this.

Thanks again!

Michelle Nichols

Emilse says:

January 12, 2012 at 6:21 pm

Hey there everyone! Does anyone know if facebook will be moving to the new interface for product fan pages as well as for users? I knew that users wont have an option to remind with the way the profile looks like now.

- David @ Buy Books
  Twitter: davidsyw
  says:
  
  January 12, 2012 at 7:39 pm
  
  I understand that is no commitment by Facebook to support timeline for fan pages. http://mashable.com/2011/12/15/facebook-timeline-pages-for-brands
  
Raúl Bonilla says:

January 10, 2012 at 10:31 pm

Hi Sarah. The answer is yes–kind of. Facebook automatically compress any jpg, even if it was already compressed. If you upload your pic as a png, Facebook will convert it to jpg and compress it without giving you the chance of making adjustments. Your best option is to either save your picture as jpg with maximum quality (100) or saving it as a png.

DAGMAR Marketing
Twitter: chrisgregoryjax
says:

January 10, 2012 at 8:35 pm

Right now I thought I was doing good by getting my logo up as my profile pic. You make a lot of sense in that it’s social so make a profile picture that has your face. I always thought it was add to reply to a comment as a logo. Thanks for enlightening us.

Sarah B says:

January 10, 2012 at 2:05 am

hi everyone,

i am designing a facebook banner in photoshop and it is really crips and clear, but when i save it as a JPG and upload to facebook profile picture it loses its sharpness.
After reading above, is the simply answer just to save it as a PNG instead?? or is there more to it than that? for example, what resolution/dpi should i be using etc?

hoping you can help.

cheers. sarah.

Eric Quakenbush
Twitter: ShakyPlanet
says:

December 16, 2011 at 10:55 pm

Thanks for the dimensions, our FB fan page finally has a tall banner-
http://www.facebook.com/ShakyPlanet

we tried this months ago and gave up, it went in through the thumbnail upload without a hitch this time. We are about to offer our first Facebook-only gift for fans, we’ll have to see if they are ready to use a QR code.

ofsahin
Twitter: 0101110011
says:

December 12, 2011 at 2:22 am

well, if you get the square picture warning try this: upload the wannabe profile picture to your “wall photos” album. then open the picture’s page on facebook, and “make it a profile picture”. it works just as you want it to. 1 to 3 ratio.

cheers

- Jorgen says:
  
  December 22, 2011 at 3:55 pm
  
  Hi Ofsahin,
  
  I have uploaded the new profile picture and can see it under ‘photos’ However, I can not find out how to find the ‘make it a profile picture’.
  
  Can you please help.
  
  Thanks
  
  - ofsahin
    Twitter: 0101110011
    says:
    
    December 22, 2011 at 4:31 pm
    
    see here:
    http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/256/44060828.jpg/
    
Dave Keays says:

December 12, 2011 at 12:18 am

And the first 180 pixels are what will be used on wall posts (to the left of the text)?

William says:

December 11, 2011 at 7:19 am

Facebook doesn’t seem to let me put a larger picture on as a profile pic. I keep getting a message about using something more square. How is this done? I have a vision for my Facebook page that I can not seem to accomplish. HELP.

Gary says:

December 6, 2011 at 5:37 pm

Hi Tina, I have used this posting to instruct me on how to size my profile pic in the past but in trying to do it this morning I received a facebook note telling me to select a square pic (in other words, the site would not accept my 180×540 submission.) Have we lost the ability to do this now? Any suggestion for how to get around it? Thank you.

- Gary says:
  
  December 6, 2011 at 5:48 pm
  
  This is the actual language that facebook uses: “Your picture is too tall or too wide.
  Try to pick something closer to a square.” Thankfully I was able to return to my old 180×540 profile pic, at least.
  
Laura says:

December 6, 2011 at 5:30 pm

Hi, how do you upload a profile picture of 180 X 540 into your company fb page? FB only appears to allow you to upload 180 X 180? I have been searching for answers on this all day and now pulling my hair out!

- David
  Twitter: davidsyw
  says:
  
  December 11, 2011 at 8:03 am
  
  I first learned of the ability to include large rectangular images for my Facebook (fan) page from this site, thanks to Tina. I can confirm that as of 2 days ago, I was able to submit a 200×488 PNG file for my page http://goo.gl/uYmfj. I had to change my picture.
  
  Since joining Google+, I have seen the differences in image handling. Facebook messes up the clarity of submitted images while Google+ preserves the clarity. Of course when it comes to clarity, I have not seen clearer pictures than that ones provided by Tina on this site.
  
  I just uploaded my 200×488 image and Facebook accepted it.
  
David
Twitter: davidsyw
says:

November 14, 2011 at 4:31 am

Very nice site with clear-sharp images. Although I had seen the vertical banners on other Facebook fan pages, I did not think to use it until I came across your web page. Thanks for the great information.

My fan page is new so effort will be needed to build it. And until I get more Likes, I won’t have a vanity URL. http://goo.gl/uYmfj

I do see artifacts in my logo image in Facebook. I am using the PNG format. The same logo used elsewhere is very smooth with no artifacts.

- Tina Cook
  Twitter: TinaCook
  says:
  
  November 17, 2011 at 2:37 pm
  
  Congrats for setting up your new Facebook Page David. If you aren’t experiencing the same issue with your logo image elsewhere, then could be a Facebook issue. Interesting.
  
  - David
    Twitter: davidsyw
    says:
    
    November 17, 2011 at 4:32 pm
    
    Thanks for your reply Tina. On another fan page, I have noticed similar artifacts. But when I use the same image on my website, they are perfectly clean. I agree with your assessment that it is a Facebook issue. I’ve tried on occasion to contact Facebook about issues and I’ve never gotten a response back.
    
    - David
      Twitter: davidsyw
      says:
      
      December 2, 2011 at 6:06 pm
      
      Hi Tina. I want to share information on a discovery with the image artifacts issue. By accident, I discovered that changing my green color to a darker green removed the artifacts. I did this to make my icon look better on the smartphone display and to my surprise, it fixed the Facebook issue.
      
      On another topic, I am having problems accessing some of your other pages from Firefox. I even upgraded from Firefox 7 to 8 and still the same problem. It hangs my Firefox browser session. I can view those pages with no problem in Chrome 15.
      
Ian Davis
Twitter: gazaian1
says:

November 13, 2011 at 8:32 am

This website is great all i was looking for is the size of a Facebook fan page pic and i found lots more. Thanks a lot!

- Tina Cook
  Twitter: TinaCook
  says:
  
  November 13, 2011 at 10:27 pm
  
  Pleasure Ian, thanks for stopping by.
  
Andrew Moore says:

November 9, 2011 at 7:00 am

This was great. I started my first iteration of the logoand it is WAY better than what I had started with. Thank you!!

http://www.facebook.com/poormoores

- Tina Cook
  Twitter: TinaCook
  says:
  
  November 13, 2011 at 12:08 am
  
  Looks very good Andrew! Hope your new Facebook Page grows as well as your wonderful plants!
  
Robin says:

October 20, 2011 at 11:20 pm

This is great, but can you add the “how to” part of using Aviary? Went to the site and it’s not user-friendly.
Thanks,
Robin

TychoV says:

October 18, 2011 at 3:11 pm

PNG or JPG depends on your photo itself.
The common rule is that use use jpg if it is a real life photo and png for images.

- Tina Cook
  Twitter: TinaCook
  says:
  
  October 22, 2011 at 5:24 pm
  
  Thank you Tycho, that’s useful to know.
  
ADAM says:

October 18, 2011 at 10:55 am

I HOPE TO BE WINNER

James Winsoar says:

October 15, 2011 at 12:25 pm

Hi,

Do you have any idea if PNG graphics are accepted by Facebook as when I try to save with a JPG image I’m getting some artifacts in the picture. The PNG is totally crisp.

- Tina Cook
  Twitter: TinaCook
  says:
  
  October 15, 2011 at 10:38 pm
  
  Hi James,
  Yes, I use PNG always. You can upload to Facebook.
  Thanks for stopping by,
  Best, Tina