Facebook events are seeing more upgrades than ever before. With the added ability to upload a Facebook Event cover image, you can now make your events more appealing and eye catching. But before you start creating your banner image, you may want to optimize the graphic first so its thumbnail displays correctly across the platform.

Adding a Facebook Cover image is relatively easy, however, when it comes to optimizing your event image to display in ads or as a page post you can run into a few problems.

SEE ALSO: How to Add a Facebook Group Cover Photo

Creating an optimized photo does takes extra time that you may not want to spend, however as you’ll see in the examples below the results will look polished, more professional, and show your fans you care about their experience with your page.

Walkthrough:

1) Log into your Facebook page/business page.

2) Create a new Facebook event by filling in dates, times, and description. *Note: You can navigate to www.facebook.com/PAGENAME/events to easily access and create events.*

3) Once your event is created locate the “Add Event Photo” at the top right corner of your new event page.

4) Follow the examples below to create an optimized Facebook Event cover photo to display correctly across the platform.

Bad Example:

Take this image for example, here’s what the cover photo looks like when uploaded:

Example Facebook Event Cover Image

The following photos show the thumbnail for the event…not too pretty, right?

As page post:

Event shown as a Page Post

Displayed on Timeline:

How the event looks on the Timeline

Displayed as Facebook Ad:

Event thumbnail as a Facebook Ad

Displayed in Facebook Events Tab

How your event appears listed

Good Example:

I found this very helpful template from another social media blogger, Michael Curry, who provides an excellent example on his Facebook page:

Click on this image for the full-size Template

By including the text within the 176×264 center block, I can be sure the thumbnail for the event will not cut off any words. Here’s what the event looks like with a new optimized Facebook Event cover image.

Optimized Facebook Event Thumbnail

Take away

Facebook has focused more attention on events which is great news! But they failed to include the best practices regarding the right dimensions to have your event cover image thumbnail display properly across the platform.

When you take the time to optimize your Facebook Event cover photo, you not only make the event more visually appealing but it puts a much more professional polish to your page.

The post How to Add and Optimize a Facebook Event Cover Image appeared first on Jacob Curtis | Social Media Tutorial Videos.

What is your Facebook pages activity log? Well, it’s exactly what you think! It’s a tool that archives your Facebook Fan Page’s history of posts, videos, comments, events, and much more.

However using it to your advantage is a whole nother story!

See Also: See Who Likes Your Fan Page

Page admins can access their activity log by selecting “Edit Page” in their admin panel.

Access your Activity Log by selecting Edit Page

Watch the helpful video below for a full walk-through:

Video Tutorial:

Now here’s where the Facebook Activity Log comes in handy, not only can you see previous posts as well as scheduled posts if you have any, but the activity manager also has its own set of filters.

Types of Filters:

• Posts and Apps
• Photos
• Spam
• Video
• Your Posts
• Comments
• Posts by Others
• Questions
• Notes
• Events
• Offers
• About

Using the Activity Log for Recent Posts By Others

For those of you were referred here by my Recent Post by Other tutorial asking why Recent Posts by Others are not showing up on your page — the Activity Log could provide you the answer you’ve been looking for. My friend Hugh Briss over at Social Identities helped me out with his insight.

First of all, if a page is tagged from a within a personal profile update it does not show up, but if the personal profile posts directly to your fan page it does appear.

Now if the posts on your Fan Page made by others are not showing up they may be getting flagged as SPAM! As far as I know all posts from others should show up. Check the SPAM section in your Activity Log. Depending on what people are posting (pictures, links, etc.) Facebook could be seeing it as spam and hiding it from appearing on your Fan Page.

Once you’re in the SPAM section of your Activity Log all you’ll need to do is un-hide the posts and they’ll show up. Also, by doing that it will train the system to stop seeing those types of posts as spam.

One last thing, whenever you hide a post from your own fan page, you can undo that action from your Activity Log. You can also choose to highlight stories from within your Facebook Activity Log as well.

All in all your Facebook pages Activity Log is a great way to keep track of the activity on your fan page. Especially if you’ve hired somebody to manage it.

Have you ever used Facebook’s Activity Log?

The post Facebook Activity Log Overview appeared first on Jacob Curtis | Social Media Tutorial Videos.

So by now you probably have more than a few friends on Facebook. But the more friends you have, the more noise there is.

Luckily there’s a way to filter out the noise and increase productivity on the platform and it’s by creating a Facebook Friends List.

SEE ALSO: Using Facebook View Profile As to Check Privacy

You can make numerous Facebook Lists depending on your Goals

Watch the helpful video below for a full walk-through.

Video Tutorial

Never Miss an Update

After you’ve created your Facebook Friends List you will be able to add specific friends to the list. Once those friends have been added you’ll then see all updates from ONLY those friends when accessing the list.

One particular feature I like is the ability to manage your Facebook Friends List and control which type of Friends updates you’ll see.

Types of Updates:

• Status Updates
• Photos
• Games
• Comments and Likes
• Music and Videos
• Other Activities

Update the Right People

The final benefit of creating a Facebook Friends List is that you can send an update out to that list and ONLY friends that are apart of the list will see it. This is awesome for those of you who play Facebook games, as you can send out game notifications to only those friends who you play with (after making a specific list for them of course).

Choose a specific list before sending out your update.

It’s very likely your family is on Facebook and some of your updates may not be appropriate for them to see or vice-versa; create a list for your family members or even your co-workers. There’s no end to the possibilities when it comes to Facebook Friends Lists.

What Type of Facebook Lists will you create?

The post How to Create a Facebook Friends List appeared first on Jacob Curtis | Social Media Tutorial Videos.

Thinking about deleting or removing a LinkedIn connection? Don’t worry there’s probably a good reason for it.

For example when I first set up my LinkedIn profile, I went through a phase of adding each and every college friend I knew and accepted connection requests from everyone and anyone who sent one my way — anything to get closer to 500+ contacts.

Well…now that I’ve accepted LinkedIn is not Facebook and realized it’s a platform for professionals to connect with other professionals to exchange services, ideas, common experiences, and even find jobs. It may be time for a little spring cleaning.

This week’s social media tutorial will cover how to delete or remove a LinkedIn connection.

SEE ALSO: How to Find a Job on LinkedIn

LinkedIn conveniently displays all of your contacts you can remove

When you find the connections manager, you’ll be able to filter connections based on the first letter of their last name. This is tremendously helpful when looking for specific connections and you can also select numerous connections to remove at a time.

Video Tutorial

Reasons why you may remove a LinkedIn Connection

Now you may have your own reasons for removing a LinkedIn connection but here’s a few reasons I’ve experienced.

1. Mistaken Identity: I once sent a request to a person I thought was a friend from college, only to find out it wasn’t even the same person! The fact that they had no profile picture didn’t help either.
2. Bad experience: If you’ve had a falling out with a co-worker or employer it may be best to part ways.
3. Not inline with your goals: Your LinkedIn profile should focus on benefiting your career path. That way the people you connect with can refer you to relevant jobs or share information about what you’re interested in. The sooner you have career goals the better.

What about hurt feelings?

One important thing to remember is that the connections you remove will not be notified that you’ve just removed them…which is probably a good thing. However they will be added to your list of contacts in case you want to re-invite them later. Of course if they look up your profile, they’ll see you are no longer connected.

Take time to consider whether or not to remove a connection. For example, I’m still relatively young in my career having recently graduated. Some of my connections aren’t focused on the same industry as I am, however as we grow up there’s no telling where they’ll end up and what opportunities may be passed my way in the future because of a connection I made today.

In the end, the choice is yours. But I’d like to know…

What are some other reasons you’d remove a LinkedIn Connection?

The post How to Remove a LinkedIn Connection appeared first on Jacob Curtis | Social Media Tutorial Videos.