BRINK is a creative digital agency pushing boundaries in web, mobile, social, video, and even indie film.
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For those unaware, whose day jobs don’t require the production of vast amounts of high-performing, creative social content, Facebook changes its design and policies ALL THE TIME. Agile marketers have to keep up with the shifting tides. One of the latest is a rule about text overlays on images. Facebook says:

“Images in your ads, sponsored stories and cover photo for your Page can include text that meets our general Advertising Guidelines. Images may not include more than 20% text.

Examples of promoted content this applies to include:

  • Promoted Page posts

  • Offers

  • App install ads

  • Cover photo of your Page

  • Other ad or sponsored story with placement in News Feed

For example, event ads use the event’s photo for its image, so your event’s photo should not have more than 20% text if you plan to promote it in people’s News Feeds.”

We’ve found adding text overlays really does pump up posts, making them quickly-consumable, sharable nuggets. Add a paid promotion to that and you get a huge boost to overall impressions and PTAT score (people talking about this). But now, you can only pump up your carefully-crafted posts if they comply with this 20% rule. To catch any schemers trying to slip text-filled images by the social media Gods, Facebook runs promoted posts through a little grid test. Text that takes up to 5 squares passes, cross into 6 and you’ve got a no-go.

So how do you test posts? To make sure text only takes up 20% we created a PNG of their same grid overlay to slap onto images in Photoshop, then we toy with the text and any logos or watermarks (they count too, remember) and ultimately decide how an image will look its best. If it fits, it ships, to quote that wonderful shipping tagline.

We have made this nifty tool available for you. Download the PNG.

Because this 5 boxes good, 6 boxes bad system does not exactly really mean 20%, it can mess with design in irritating ways. Text done in the same font size and style can be moved slightly (maybe to a more attractive position) and suddenly become out-of-line with Facebook’s 20% rule.

If an image uploaded to Facebook is square, it’ll the whole image will be smooshed down to fit in a 403 x 403 pixel block in Timeline view. But if it is not square, FB crops it to 403 x 403 pixels, lopping off the sides (landscape images) or top and/or bottom (portrait images). That means, you could potentially upload a portrait or large image (FB’s max photo size is 2048x2048 pixels) add a bunch of text in the center of the image (maybe even taking up 403 x 403 pixels!) and create an image that would crop to look as if it was all text. Of course, it would still have to look stylish in all viewing formats (note: most people will see your posts in their news feed, mobile is huge and only first time viewers and hardcore fans will check in on your timeline - sandboxing is key!) but we think there is some room for experimentation here.

There is another proviso to the rule, in that “The 20% text policy doesn’t apply to pictures of products that include text on the actual product.” That means you can showcase a retail bottle of shampoo, not that you can artificially edit the product with your tagline, smart guy. But then again, what if your product is an image created by text? Those possibilities are cool, and Facebook has yet to slam the gavel down on that one. Anyway, these things are ever change, the only thing we are sure of it that Facebook will throw out even more stipulations and make content creators like us scramble, and then innovate.

Facebook Targeting Feature is Live Today, some of the pages we manage got access to the (possibly game-changing) new targeting possibilities Facebook began rolling out earlier this month. I got to play around with the newfangled posting options a bit today, and from a marketing perspective there are lots of cool possibilities there. In the past, some content we’d like to post just wouldn’t resonant well with or be suited for our total audience, so we skip it. Now that’s no longer a problem. For that reason and others the new feature has been called a “boon” for small businesses, and Brian Carter over at Mashable is even speculating it could help your EdgeRank.  From a regular old Facebook user perspective, I know I’m interested to see what I will be getting in my personal Facebook News Feed now that I can be targeted based on my gender, relationship status, age, education and interests (in addition to location and language - which were already possible targeting features). How do you plan to use this new capability for yourself or a brand/band/artist/non-profit who’s profile you manage? Are you nervous that you’ll be bombarded with crap that people think you’d like because you fit certain criteria?  -Caroline Jackson, Social Media Manager 

Facebook Targeting Feature is Live

Today, some of the pages we manage got access to the (possibly game-changing) new targeting possibilities Facebook began rolling out earlier this month. I got to play around with the newfangled posting options a bit today, and from a marketing perspective there are lots of cool possibilities there. In the past, some content we’d like to post just wouldn’t resonant well with or be suited for our total audience, so we skip it. Now that’s no longer a problem. For that reason and others the new feature has been called a “boon” for small businesses, and Brian Carter over at Mashable is even speculating it could help your EdgeRank. 

From a regular old Facebook user perspective, I know I’m interested to see what I will be getting in my personal Facebook News Feed now that I can be targeted based on my gender, relationship status, age, education and interests (in addition to location and language - which were already possible targeting features).

How do you plan to use this new capability for yourself or a brand/band/artist/non-profit who’s profile you manage? Are you nervous that you’ll be bombarded with crap that people think you’d like because you fit certain criteria? 

-Caroline Jackson, Social Media Manager 

Your Brand Can’t Skimp on Visuals - Social Media Giants and Mere Humans Demand Them Are you on Facebook? Twitter? Then you know full well how much competition exists for every second of your day in the social sphere. Throw in frequent e-mail checking and simultaneous device use, and we have a landscape where grabbing – and keeping – user attention is harder than ever. This onslaught is quite possibly re-wiring our brains, reducing attention spans by more than 50% in the last 10 years. How can brands cut through social noise? The answer is simple: Content that is VISUAL, CREATIVE and ORIGINAL is what gets people talking - and (what you really need) sharing. You probably already know this intuitively (just think of what you click on when you scroll through your news feeds). But the proof is in the data. Across industries, rich media (photos, videos) is far more likely to be shared on Facebook than status updates or links alone. But it’s not just about natural preference for visuals.  Facebook Timeline and EdgeRank are giving increasing weight to visual content. Twitter too, has begun to place a higher emphasis on images, debuting user galleries last year, and serving up photos in hashtag search results. And then there’s Pinterest (no clarification needed). So go ahead. Use a graphic designer. Combine graphics, data and messaging that people will want to share around the web. That’ll give your content – and your brand - legs. -Marta Grecchi, strategist

Your Brand Can’t Skimp on Visuals -

Social Media Giants and Mere Humans Demand Them

Are you on Facebook? Twitter? Then you know full well how much competition exists for every second of your day in the social sphere.


Throw in frequent e-mail checking and simultaneous device use, and we have a landscape where grabbing – and keeping – user attention is harder than ever. This onslaught is quite possibly re-wiring our brains, reducing attention spans by more than 50% in the last 10 years.

How can brands cut through social noise? The answer is simple: Content that is VISUAL, CREATIVE and ORIGINAL is what gets people talking - and (what you really need) sharing.

You probably already know this intuitively (just think of what you click on when you scroll through your news feeds). But the proof is in the data. Across industries, rich media (photos, videos) is far more likely to be shared on Facebook than status updates or links alone.

But it’s not just about natural preference for visuals.  Facebook Timeline and EdgeRank are giving increasing weight to visual content. Twitter too, has begun to place a higher emphasis on images, debuting user galleries last year, and serving up photos in hashtag search results. And then there’s Pinterest (no clarification needed).

So go ahead. Use a graphic designer. Combine graphics, data and messaging that people will want to share around the web. That’ll give your content – and your brand - legs.

-Marta Grecchi, strategist