Facebook Group Cover and Post Designs – Tips and Tools

There are some free tools and resources out there that can help you in creating a professional image of yourself and of your Facebook Group.  You'll be able to grow your Facebook Group faster, as your members and future members will see that you are putting some effort in creating content for them: you don't just post links or share text posts.

In a Facebook Group there are a bunch of uses for designs, but let's focus on the main ones. After that, I'll give you some tips and some resources you can use for free and by yourself.

It doesn't matter if you are a big company, a small one or an entrepreneur. When you want to create some designs for your Facebook Group community (or for whatever type of promotion), you have to have in mind some basic things:

• Color schemes;
• Free fonts;
• Combining fonts;
• Marvelous photos and designs.

I'll give you some tools for each of them later in this article. For now, let's point out some of the most important types of photos your Facebook Group will have.

One of the first things your members see when joining or visiting your group, is your Facebook Group cover photo. In my opinion, this is one of the most important parts of starting a Facebook Group. Why? Because your Facebook Group cover photo is the one that has to represent you/your company and your group. After seeing this, your future members will make their first-impression. And you want it to be great, as you want new members to join.

Let me tell you a few situations that you should avoid:

• a pixelated cover photo;
• one that has nothing to do with what the group is about;
• an offensive one.

Just think of what would you do. What would you like to see if you were to join a new Facebook Group? What wouldn't you like to see? Write your ideas down, do some brainstorming – it will help you a lot.

Gathering the information I wrote in my previous articles regarding Facebook Groups (see them here), I want to mark 3 things. It's basically some text analysis, because we love school. So your group cover photo should contain the following elements:

1. your group's name;
2. a representative design or photo;
3. the main ideas from your group's rules;
4. your name or your company's name.

Having all of these will help not only you and your group, but also your members. They'll immediately know who is behind this Facebook Group, and how should they behave. Rules added to a Facebook Group are crucial, as they are the pillar in organizing your group. Making them visible right from the start, will make your future members decide really quickly whether they should join or not.

OK, now you know what are the most important elements you should add to your group cover photo. But should know that there is a size. Keep it in mind, otherwise your cover photo will be cropped, pixelated, and it will not look good.

According to Facebook, the Facebook Group cover photo size should be 820 pixels wide by 462 pixels tall. It is fully visible on mobile, but on desktop news feed, it will be top and bottom cropped (the height will get to 250 pixels). So be sure to start with this dimensions, in order to have all of the information visible at any time.

One of the Facebook Group features is that you can create a Facebook Event right within the group. It is one of the ways you can engage with your community. Maybe you want to meet them face to face, or maybe you want to promote a future Live Video Broadcast. Whatever idea you choose, keep in mind the correct size for a Facebook Group Event Photo: it has to be a 16:9 ratio, 1920 width × 1080 height.

You must know that this photo will appear differently on various displays: from 470 × 174 px for desktop news feed, to 560 × 208 px on mobile. Try to squeeze in these sizes the most important information regarding your Facebook Group Event.

Content, content, content. Add the same amount of value, and this is what you should offer to your Facebook Group community. Right next to links (which are supposed to be the best type of Facebook post), there comes Photos.

If you have an idea, some information, or an advice, try to add to your text post a photo. The post will become more visible, and your members will remember it more. Visual memory is the most common type of memory, so make use of this. Even when you are sharing links, Facebook automatically add the link's featured photo. Learn from this and add a relevant design or a photo to whatever you want to share with your community.

Regarding sizes, this is where you can mix things. Still, the most common and the recommended Facebook Group Post Photo is 1200 × 630 pixels, the same as in every Facebook Posts.

Great! Now that we've established some sizes and uses for Facebook Group Photos, let's go further. I mention right at the beginning of the article that there are some things you should have in mind when creating a design or a photo post (color schemes, fonts, designs). Basically, you should create and use your own style.

On of the best practices regarding online promotion or marketing is using a color scheme. Now, I believe that you can have a main color scheme, but also a few secondary ones. Of course, you can choose to have only one color scheme, but one that has a lot more colors and shades. It's up to you.

Why is it important to have a color scheme? For brand awareness. When people will see a design, even if it's not shared by you, they'll know that you are the author.

For Facebook Groups you can either use the:

• same color scheme to all of your posts;
• main color scheme for when you are promoting your new articles, products, and secondary color schemes* for everything else.

*Secondary color schemes should contain different shades than the ones from the main colors schemes. Keeping the same vibe and style means that you should not use completely different colors (than the ones from the main scheme).

The quickest places to look for Color Schemes are Pinterest and Coolors.

Pinterest - Color Schemes for Facebook Groups

For Pinterest, you need an account, but who doesn't have one these days? Just type in the search bar the keyword “color schemes” and see what Pinterest has to offer you.

You can use Pinterest on your desktop, but also on your mobile device.

Coolors - Color Schemes for Facebook Groups

The first time you enter this website, you'll be able to watch a nice tutorial. You can Generate color schemes with 5 colors. For something random, just press Space. If you know one of the colors you'd like to use, you can lock it, and pressing Space will only change the other ones. You can toggle various shades of every color in your color scheme. It is pretty fun to use, so give it a try! Besides, if you want inspiration, you can click on Explore, and find what others created.

Part of your style is Fonts. Exactly like Color Schemes, you should also use a Font Scheme for your Facebook Group.

I like to use a few font websites. Each of them has categories that you can use for inspiration. If I know exactly the font I want, I just Google it. These are the websites I use:

• fontsquirrel;
• dafont;
• 1001freefonts.

Font choosing is easy, but what about font pairing? There are online courses for this, so it's not that easy as you'd think. It depends a lot on the fonts style and type. Until you have the time and resources to follow a course for font pairing, take into consideration reading these two articles: https://www.skillshare.com/classes/Font-Pairing-Fundamentals-for-Non-Designers/536498962 + https://www.canva.com/learn/font-pairing-basics/

And you can also use the following free tools:

• typ.io;
• fontpair;
• fontjoy.

Typ.io

Typ.io has a tab for inspiration and a tab for Lists, both for you to make an idea of what others are using and how. You can also type the exact font you like, and they'll return a nice paragraph, with some explanations and details regarding pairing and using. Check the photo below:

Fontpair

I use this website quite a lot, as I'm not good with decisions (it has a smaller database). It doesn't let you find a font pairing based on a font you chose. It has categories like Serif/Serif, Serif/Sans and so on.

If you think you created a great font pair, you can suggest it to them.

Fontjoy

Another tool that I like is Fonjoy. It has a similar interface with Coolors, simple and efficient. You choose the level of contrast you'd like between your fonts. You are able to lock the font you like the most, and then generate font pairs. They offer you a default text, but you can also change it, and write your own. One thing that makes Fonjoy different from the others is that you can create a font pair from 3 fonts!

You now know why should you add photos to your Facebook Group posts, the Facebook Group cover photo size, and why should you use color schemes and font pairs. Let's go further and let me tell you some great tools for finding and creating photos and designs for your Facebook posts.

I discovered Piktab a year ago and now I can't leave without it. It is a Chrome extension that searches in lot of websites for free photos and designs. It is basically a niche Google, helping you find photos, designs, mock-ups, icons, tutorials, and everything you need.

• Pixabay;
• Flaticon;
• Mockupworld;
• Freepik;
• Unsplash;
• and 34 more websites.

I tell you, it's a gift from God (or whatever you believe in; or from the ones that created it). All of these types of resources have a limited use policy: they are free, but you have to specify the author. Which is not bad at all. You'll do some good to others. I think it's the biggest and greatest tool, not only for beginners, but also for advanced users.

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It's simple to use: type in something you are searching for (though don't be very specific, as you won't find any results). Either leave all the sources and the tags, either select exactly what you are looking for. Piktab will do the work for you and search for the perfect free photos, from all of the known photos resources websites. Just imagine the time you are saving not having to search on every website you know for some design inspiration or for some photo! Everything you need is in one place, and it is so convenient!

After you've found the perfect photo or the perfect design, you may want to personalize it: add some text, add your logo, write something. If you want some quick online tools for editing your photos for your Facebook Group, let's go further.

This is a small tool that offers you the ability to create an Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest design. It's straightforward, just click on get started and choose what you want, without having to create an account.

They have a nice stock photo and pattern library, but you can also upload your own photo. Add some filters to it (or make you own edit), change its position, add borders.

Platform: Desktop (Online)

Crello offers a bit more flexibility when it comes to the types of designs you want to create:

• social media;
• digital ads;
• print;
• animated designs;
• and many others.

After you click on Create a Design, you'll see a page where you can choose a predefined format, input specific dimensions and inspire from other's designs.

In edit mode, you are able to do the following:

• choose a free template;
• create from scratch;
• upload your files;
• add text;
• quickly resize your design;
• search elements by keywords;
• search by categories;
• share directly on a social media account;
• create an embed;
• save your favorite photos in a Favorite list;
• share a link.

Platform: Desktop (Online)

Pixlr is a far more complex and powerful tool than the others. But this doesn't mean it is hard to use.

The interface for both of the tools is really similar to Adobe Photoshop. Even the key shortcuts are the same. Even the features are almost the same. Let me give you some examples (from Pixlr Editor):

• rotate images;
• spot healing tool;
• sponge, blur, sharpen tool;
• layers;
• filters (blur, noise, pixelate, heat map, emboss etc.);
• adjustments (brightness, contracts, hue, exposure, desaturation etc.);
• and more.

There are so many features, you won't believe your eyes! I tell you, that was my first feeling, too. To use it, you can upload your own photo, search for one in the library, or use an URL.

It is safe to say that it will be a bit more complicated for a beginner to use it, but it won't be hard. I recommend this platform if you just started your Facebook Group community and you are not ready to invest in an Adobe Photoshop license.

Platform: You can use Pixlr online, or on your mobile device (it won't have that many features, but it will sure be a great help on the go).

As Photoshop has its Illustrator, Pixlr has its Vectr. An online vector editing platform.

Here are some of the features:

• work with layers;
• use a pen tool;
• upload images;
• use a pencil tool;
• add pages;
• quickly change dimensions;
• export as svg, png or jpg:
• share to Facebook or Twitter;
• export for print;
• and many more.

Test it out yourself. You have to create an account only if you want to download and save you work. This is great if you just want to explore its feature and to see if it fits your needs.

You've reached to the end! In order to help you memorize what you've read, I'll make a short summary:

• focus you attention to your Facebook Group Cover (size 820 pixels wide by 462 pixels tall) and Photo Posts;
• create a color scheme with the help of Pinterest and/or Coolors.co;
• download and create font schemes using dafont, fontsquirrel, fontpair and fontjoy;
• search for every design resource you want with Piktab;
• edit photos and create design with these free platforms: graphic.io, crello, pixlr, vectr.

Venngage is an online tool that I discovered a while back. Not sure how or where. Still, I was right in a period where I was discovering some new tools that helped me to improve my social media skills. Venngage was truly useful and easy to use.

One purpose of Venngage is to help you create beautiful infographics. That's how I used it. Infographics are visual images that you can use to make your audience better understand some of your topics. They are usually long images that are colorful, and that contain icons, shapes, and little text. Infographics are made for people to easily understand a certain topic, and for marketers to really express things and make people remember them.

Venngage also allows people to easily create beautiful designs using ready-made, highly customizable templates. You can design a mind map, create a poster with the poster maker, and create a brochure with brochure templates and more.

Marketers are using infographics as freebies or simply on Pinterest, the land of visual images. You can use them in your Facebook Group - make a day out of this!

Venngage offers you a wide selection of photos (stock), shapes, fonts, icons - everything you need for an amazing infographic.

In case you're feeling a little uninspired, you can always use some of their templates. It will be a tremendous tool for you to use, in order to grow your Facebook Group's engagement.

The feature I was most excited about was the one where you can use data (input in a small table) to represent maps and charts. I didn't find any other tool that could help me with this, so

To complete this nice package, Venngage also offers you the possibility of creating social media graphics. Now, this is a great way of managing your time: using just one tool for your whole social media graphics needs.

Therefore, you can create your Facebook Group's cover with it super-easy. It does have premium packages, but for the main features, you can sign-up and use it for free. Here's a whole article to inspire you to use Venngage for your Facebook Group's graphic designs.

Using all of these will make your Facebook Group be professional. Of course, you can use all of these for every type of promotion you can think of.

If you use other free tools or have tips that somebody can use for creating Facebook Group posts and others, feel free to share them with us.