In yesterday’s post I mentioned that the Facebook photo strip along the top of business fan pages offers a good branding opportunity and can also be used to effectively market or promote a product or service. Up until recently, we at Outskirts Press were only using the photo strips for the first part of that equation — branding. And we were losing the opportunity to market or promote when someone clicked on the image for a closer look.
Realizing the potential for what can be done with these images required first realizing that Facebook doesn’t “thumbnail” images in the traditional way. Typically, when an image is “thumbnailed” (meaning, made smaller), the thumbnail image is an exact duplicate of the “larger” image, just at a reduced size. But Facebook does something different, as seen by their use of the Profile Picture along the left-hand column, which also contains the square “avatar” picture. In other words, the Thumbnail for the Profile picture is NOT an exact duplicate of the image, but rather a pre-defined section of the larger image.
The Photo strip images work the same way. The thumbnail images shown along the top of the fan page are pre-determined sections of the larger version of the image that is viewed when the thumbnail is clicked. In fact, when an image is created correctly, the same image can be both a successful, “clean” thumbnail image AND a more promotional image.
For instance, with our 5 package graphics, I wanted to maintain the look and feel of the 5 gemstones in a row (shown below)…
… and at the same time, I wanted the user to see a more branded graphic for each package when viewing the larger image. I even wanted to include a “call to action.” All it took was determining the optimal image specs for both the “large” version of the graphic and the “thumbnail” portion of the same graphic.
And I’ll reveal what those settings are tomorrow…
President of Outskirts Press 