The Cover photo on Dallas' Granada Theater's Facebook page features some of the staff on Halloween.
Facebook and other social networks have become a necessity for marketing at venues — so much so that Venues Today even created the SMP 100 chart to rank social media presence in the industry. Now the cover photo, one of the most visible images on your Facebook page, has one big restriction: no more than 20 percent text.
The restriction has actually been in place since December 2012, but was part of a list of rules that has been pared down. The previous rules also included bans on pricing information and contact information.
“I don’t think people realized there are those rules,” said Andy Sternberg, chief innovation officer at Adler Integrated. “They were there to set guidelines, but Facebook never really took the time to enforce them.”
“I think it’s a good thing that they made the rules more realistic,” he added.
Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia has traditionally kept the same format for its cover photo, said Cody Snider, marketing manager for Comcast-Spectacor, which manages the facility. The right side of the cover image has the logos of the three franchise teams at the building, and there are three photos of upcoming bands or events with small text underneath.
“Certainly the rule is going to be an adjustment for everybody, but we’re in a lucky position in that a lot of what we do is based on images, anyway,” said Snider.
“We’ve stuck to images because visually, it makes sense,” he added. “People see the logos and the colors in them and immediately associate them with the teams.”
One time the marketing team did change the entire cover photo on the Wells Fargo Center’s Facebook page. The switch involved their Big Ticket promotion, in which the building gave away a prize of two tickets to every event at the building for 2013. The contest was based on the social networking site and generated 22,436 new fans on their Facebook, an increase of 49 percent.
“When we had the Big Ticket promotion or if we have some huge, unexpected concert we make it our cover photo, but the majority of the time we keep the same format and change what’s being featured in it,” he clarified.
Gavin Mulloy, marketing manager at the Granada Theater in Dallas, said that he hasn’t noticed any enforcement of Facebook restrictions regarding cover photo content.
“We’ve used images with almost 90 percent text and kept them there for a long time, and no one’s ever contacted us about it,” he said. “A lot of times, we have photos up that don’t necessarily tie in to an upcoming event. Like right now, it’s a Halloween photo of a bunch of girls who work at the theater.”
Facebook has started pushing promoted posts, where pages can pay to have certain status updates or photos shown to more users. Mulloy said that the restrictions seem to be a way to encourage users to buy ads instead of using their cover photo as an advertisement.
“We don’t even use promoted posts,” Mulloy added. “We’ve tried to use them, but it didn’t really do anything for us.”
The Granada Theater doesn’t usually use text-heavy photos for their cover. Occasionally, the image will be a photo of the building marquee, which will have text on it.
Sternberg said that the rule clarification serves as Facebook's way of encouraging its users to properly use the site. Fans don’t want to constantly feel marketed to, which can happen if the cover photo is an advertisement.
“You don’t want to annoy your fans. You don’t want to sound desperate, and you don’t want to plead with them or patronize them,” he advised. “First and foremost, your fan page is a community-building tool and a place for fans to congregate, comment and react.”
He pointed out that Belly Up in Aspen, Colo., changes its cover photo fairly regularly, but does so in a way that doesn’t feel like it’s pushing an ad onto the fans. Sometimes, the photo includes no text at all.
“A lot of times, they’ll change their cover photo into a picture of the band that’s playing that night,” he said. “By changing the cover photo, all of their fans get a notification that it’s been updated.”
Sternberg recommended changing the cover photo regularly, but keeping a venue’s Facebook profile photo as a static image.
“The profile photo is something you always want to keep steady as the way to represent your identity across Facebook. That’s your brand,” he said.
Mulloy said that Granada Theater actually looked to the Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood, Calif., the flagship project of the Adler Integrated team, as a great example of how to use social media. Based on the Sunset Strip theater’s example, Granada Theater uses its Facebook page as sort of a content farm.
‘”We’re not just telling people what’s going on at our venue, but what’s happening around the area,” said Mulloy. “If we tell everybody about everything, more people will want to come to our page.”
The Granada Theater changes its cover photo at least once a week.
Snider said he sees the rule clarification as a good thing if it shifts the focus more toward visual images, which historically have higher interaction rates.
“Images engage people. We get a lot better interactions through images when we look at the analytics,” he said. “They’re enormously more potent than the average text.”
Sternberg also sees the restriction in a positive light.
“The cover photo is one of the greatest tools that Facebook offers on the fan-facing side,” he said. “The more people that know the rules, the more that will use their cover photo really creatively in a way that will benefit their community-building.”
Interviewed for this story: Gavin Mulloy, (214) 824-9933; Cody Snider, (215) 952-5441; Andy Sternberg, (213) 444-1330