Facebook for Beginners: How to Use Pic Monkey & Create a Highlighted Update on Facebook

Many thanks to Sue of Quirki Stuff who asked us how she could display a ‘Before and After’ photograph of one of their painted items of furniture on facebook.

First of all, if you wish to incorporate 2 or 3 before and after photographs into a collage or display a wide photograph in order to give it more presence on Facebook, you need to be aware of the dimensions that Facebook allows for these photos.  Highlighted and ‘Milestone’ photographs have dimensions of 843 x 403. If the photo is not this size, it will be ‘stretched’ to fit so may not appear as you had hoped.

To create a collage, a handy free tool is Pic Monkey. Simply opt for the ‘create a collage’ option and decide which layout you would like.

You can choose to upload photos from your computer and all the photos you wish to use will stack in the box on the left side. You can then move them to the collage one at a time or all at once. It is easy to change them from one box to another too.  You will notice in the photographs below that the cabinet cannot be seen in its entirety, hence the boxes need to be enlarged.

Place the cursor on the outer edges of the collage and pull them outwards to enlarge the photograph. You can see the total size of the photograph at the bottom and as you can see, it is larger than the required 843 x 403 for Facebook requirements.

By manipulating the outer edges of the collage again, it is possible to reduce the total size of the image to 843 x 403, the desired dimensions. This can be a bit finicky so don’t worry if it isn’t exact, it just means that Facebook will either stretch or hide a tiny bit of the photo.

Then, simply name the photograph and save it to the desired location on your computer.

Next, you need to upload the photograph to facebook. Do check out our previous post on how to upload a photograph to facebook if you don’t know how to do this.

As you can see in the screenshot above, the collage had been cut to 403 x 403 so part of it is obscured. By clicking on the little star (highlight button) on the top right to the photograph, this changes it to 843 x 403 and gives it more prominence across the page – perfect for showing off a ‘before/after’ transformation.

Marie and I offer training session in groups and as one to ones so if you feel that you really need to get to grips with facebook or any of the other social meda and would like some help, do get in touch.

Next up – how to create a long, tall, skinny photograph for Pinterest.

Facebook for Beginners: How To Upload A Photo and What Size?

In our second ‘Facebook for Beginners’ series of posts, we are going to look at how to upload a photograph onto your facebook business page.

Instead of writing a status update, click on ‘Photo/Video’ and a drop box will open up. For now, in order to upload a photo from your computer, click the ‘upload photo/video’ button. (We’ll cover the photo album in another post).

Write in the text that you would like to put with the photograph, click ‘choose file’ and choose a photograph from your computer.

Once you see the name of the photograph, you can click ‘post’ and the photo will be published.

The measurements for ‘ordinary photos’ in terms of the space that Facebook allows is 403 x 403. If your photos are larger than this, they may not be positioned as you would like.  If you wish to reposition the photograph so that a particular product or person is visible and central in the photograph, simply click the ‘pencil’ button on the top right (it will show when you hover the cursor over it), click on ‘reposition photo’ and move the photo around until you are happy with its position and then click ‘save’.

More tips on facebook photos coming up in the next blog post. If you have any questions, do leave them in the comment box.

Facebook for Beginners: How To Write An Update on Facebook

Teaching facebook, twitter and pinterest to some new clients recently, I’ve decided to create some ‘beginner’ blog posts which they can refer to for a reminder. I’d love to know if you find these useful too.

This one will cover the basics in how to write a facebook update and how to encourage comments, likes and shares.

Simply type in the text into the status box and then paste (Ctrl and V) in the url that you copied from the address bar. As you can see below, the linked page will come up underneath.

Once the link page is visible, you can delete the url from the descriptor (as it can look a bit messy and untidy). You can also choose which image you would like displayed with the text by scrolling through the thumbnail choices.

We recommend posting to Facebook once or twice a day. You can schedule your updates if you know you are going to be away by clicking on the clock icon in the bottom left and then choosing the date and time. Then click ‘schedule’.

To encourage likes, do choose a nice photograph from the thumbnails on offer in the link.  As you can see above, I could have picked from one of 17 photographs and chose to use the dominant photograph in the blog post.

To encourage comments, do ask a question such as ‘Looking for ideas for decorating girls’ bedrooms?’ or ‘Do you like our attempt at creating a moodboard?’

To encourage others to share your post, you could ask others to ‘share if they like it’ and you may see other pages doing this. However, I would recommend that you use this very sparingly. If people really like it, they will share it and while asking them occasionally will product results, I think I would become annoyed by a page administrator who overdid the requests. (More on sharing in an upcoming post)

Next up will be a post showing you how to upload a photograph to your facebook page including editing it using free tools.  Have you any questions regarding your own facebook page that you would like us to answer? Do ask in the comments below.