Facebook Timeline Cover Optimization for Local Marketing
The new Facebook Timeline has completely revamped the business page layout. From the new cover image to the removal of welcome tabs, Facebook is constantly changing, making it very important for businesses to stay up to date to maximize social engagement.
In this post we will cover optimization for the cover image. In future posts we will cover everything from Facebook apps to using sticky posts to drive awareness.
Editor’s Note (2026): Facebook has since removed the cover photo restrictions described below. Businesses can now use cover images for calls-to-action and promotional content. The visual design principles in this post remain relevant for any social media cover image.
Who should read this post: business owners that are looking to improve the quality of their brand on Facebook
What you will learn: absolutely everything about optimizing the cover image for the Facebook Timeline
⚡ Speed Run Notes
- The cover photo is the only billboard on Facebook a brand gets for free. It's prime visual real estate above the fold. Treating it as decoration is like owning a highway billboard and leaving it blank.
- A cover photo should answer one question: “why does this place exist?” Not specials, not discounts — identity. Identity is what pulls visitors into the page content; specials are what pulls existing followers into a transaction. The cover serves acquisition, not conversion.
- CD1 (Epic Meaning) is the right drive to design a cover for. Show the mission, not the menu. Mission images create curiosity; menu images create “I'll come back later” which never happens.
- The cover should change seasonally but not weekly. Seasonal changes keep the page feeling alive. Weekly changes signal inconsistency. The cadence is a design decision that most businesses don't plan.
- The deepest move: treat the cover photo as the single most important creative asset the business will ever commission. It will be seen more times than any other brand asset in a given year. Spending agency money on it is not extravagance — it is the cheapest per-impression creative on earth.
Author Credibility: Yu-kai Chou
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Google Scholar — with 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
Facebook cover specs and dimensions
Facebook timeline cover specs:
- 851px wide
- 315px tall
Very, very strange dimensions, right?
Because of this strange dimension, it makes it very difficult to use a regular digital camera photo. Let’s take a look at some examples of photos that just don’t come out right.
Take a look at the Quickly cover image below.
You can tell what they were trying to do:
- Show happy customers at the restaurant
- Capture a long line so that it demonstrates that Quickly is popular
- Demonstrate customers drinking to entice Facebook users to want a boba drink
The idea was good, but the execution is poor. Not only is the image inside the store too dim, but it’s highly crowded, making it difficult for the user to focus on just one element. Also, you can see how using a digital camera photo looks awkward – the image comes out very skinny, making it difficult to see what’s actually going on in the photo.
Get creative and use the resources available to you
Free People South Coast Plaza is an example of the right idea but with average execution.
Though the image is taken from a digital camera, the photographer was able to capture a well-lit entrance, welcoming the user to the Facebook Page. The image of an entrance is decent at best. Your Facebook Fans already know what your entrance looks like because they’ve been to your store. Instead of the entrance, a far better image to display is an image capturing your in-store brand.
I quickly made my own cover image for Free People South Coast Plaza using the images that the employees have already uploaded to the Facebook Page.
I quickly made this in about 5 minutes using Photoshop. I know I’m not the best designer in the world, but you can see from my revision how the store can welcome customers with an image of their in-store brand: friendly, fashionable employees that are here to help you with your shopping needs. What better way to connect with your fans on Facebook than to empower your employees and to make them feel recognized on your Facebook Page — using Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession to build brand loyalty.
Free People might even consider taking pictures of customers inside of the store and requesting permission to post their image on Facebook. They can then select the best images and recognize their customers on a collage on their Facebook Timeline Cover.
Make your fans crave your product
If you’re a restaurant, then the cover image is a great place to make your customers crave your food.
What NOT to do:
Oink a Doodle Moo presents us with another awkward digital camera photo.
I understand that they want to welcome you to their page with open arms, but a restaurant needs to show fans the food. The food is the reason that customers love your restaurant in the first place, so show them an enticing photo.
Which of the two images below makes you crave their yogurt:
or
Yogurtland effectively uses an image of a person thinking about their yogurt. The Yogurtland image provokes a much more emotional response than the image that Red Mango uses.
My two favorite cover images for restaurants
These images are perfect:
- Just look at the succulent burgers – it makes me want to go to an Elevation Burger or Smash Burger right now to eat the food
- Elevation Burger directly tells you what they’re about: 100% organic beef
- Smash Burger uses their cover image to promote their new burger
If you’re a restaurant owner, then these are the images that you need to model.
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use the above techniques to create your perfect Facebook Timeline Cover. Once you’ve created it, attach a link to your Facebook page in the comments section so that we can take a look and provide our feedback.
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
- What is Gamification? Definition, Examples & Framework
- Top 10 Marketing Gamification Cases
- Top 10 eCommerce Gamification Examples
- 90+ Gamification Examples & Cases with ROI Stats
- Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges & Leaderboards