Facebook rules for Pages change again
Last year, AGBeat outlined the rules for Facebook Pages, as the social media giant had gotten extremely strict on enforcement, deleting brands’ Facebook Pages without warning, and without any option to restore the pages, even for the slightest infractions like having a phone number as part of the Page’s cover photo image.
Various people like known Facebook expert Mari Smith noticed this week that roughly nine weeks ago, Facebook quietly changed their rules with very few people noticing, allowing Pages to adhere to far fewer restrictions.
Now, one important section of the extensive rules has changed, primarily rules concerning cover photos. Facebook terms now state, “All covers are public. This means that anyone who visits your Page will be able to see your cover. Covers can’t be deceptive, misleading, or infringe on anyone else’s copyright. You may not encourage people to upload your cover to their personal timelines. Covers may not include images with more than 20% text.”
Additionally, all Facebook Page owners must adhere to the Facebook ad guidelines which are more stringent, but do not adjust the cover photo rules.
What the Facebook Page rules use to be
Formerly, the rules included all of the following, and any infraction would result in permanent deletion of your Facebook Page:
- No calls to action. You can’t say “get yours now” or “tell a friend” or anything like that in your cover photo.
- No contact information. You can’t list your website, phone number, email, address, or anything that Facebook believes should be in your “About” section.”
- No purchase information. You can’t say “40% off,” or “$99 special,” or “get yours now on our site.”
- No references to Facebook features or actions. You can’t tell people to “like” or “share” or put an arrow pointing from the cover photo to any of these features.
- No images you do not own or have the right to use. Also, no deception or misleading visitors.
- No encouraging users to upload your cover image to their personal timeline.
By adjusting these rules to simply say no more than 20 percent of an image can be text, Facebook has opened the door to Pages being more spammy, and while it will help some brands to legitimately expand and we don’t foresee any explosion in spam, Facebook is simply saying they don’t care. So welcome to the new era of “call me at 555-555-5555,” “get 40% off of my dumb product by doing the Hokey Pokey” and endless size 8 font crammed into the picture so as not to consume more than 20 percent of the image. Enjoy.
