Facebook Guidelines Change For Promoted Post Images

Even though it doesn’t come into force until January 15, it is always good to be prepared for any change in Facebook Guidelines. Facebook are cracking down on too much text in your Promoted Post and Page Post Ad Images. This is to prevent newsfeeds being littered with posts that look more like banner advertising than engaging and useful information, which is what they were intended.

Although Promoted Posts and Page Post Ads are a fantastic tool to grab more attention and engagement on Facebook, these new marketing tools have also aroused concern over impacting the user experience, which has always been a Facebook no-no.

Since the introduction of the Timeline format early this year, there have been restrictions on the amount of text you can use in your Timeline Cover Image.  Your text can take up no more than 20%, and it must not contain any website addresses or price or purchase information eg Get 20% Off at www.toysrus.com.

But now, given the rise in the use of News Feed Ads, where users pay to broadcast their ads with Promoted Posts or place Page Post Ads through Power Editor, Facebook are now applying the same 20% rule to these images too.

How you measure exactly 20% is unclear, but you need to ensure that the text you use from now on in your images for Promoted Posts and Page Post Ads is minimal, otherwise Facebook will not approve or pause them.

This will impact many of the quote style images that have become so prevalent, like this one:

Images Like This Will Not Be Allowed In Promoted Posts From 15 January 2013

Instead you should be using ones like this, which are much more in line with the engaging nature of capturing faces and feelings to get a message across, just like Facebook:

This image will be allowed as the text in the image is less than 20%

If you want a more sales oriented image, ask a question only and then include a link in text of the post that leads people to the answer to the question. Something like this should get you good results (with reduced text size):

This type of image is more likely to lead users to your Call To Action via a link included in the post text above. But, the text would need to be reduced to comply.

Keeping one step ahead of Facebook changes is difficult, but if you can start complying now, it means you don’t have to worry about getting your promotions stopped. Got more questions about this change or using Promoted Posts, check out my recent free video series here.