I came across the following Facebook profile banner to my utmost surprise this morning.

Why? It definitely did capture my attention. The first thing it hit my mind was that it certainly serves as an effective yet FREE advertising or publicity platform.

After trying to figure out how it can be done and some research, here is how:

1. “Profile Banner” application

This Facebook application basically does everything for you. And what you need to do is to provide and upload your banner and that’s it!

Remmeber the banner must be 493px x 68px, no bigger than 2MB and in .jpg extension.

The good thing about this application is that it is super user-friendly, does everything for you, comes with free template banners, as well as allows you to stretch, scale, crop, and rotate your banner.

The downside? When you click into individual images that form the whole profile banner, the tag “profilebanner.com” appears below them.

Which I think is fair enough. You’re using their application, and therefore have to credit them. At least you don’t see their tag on the Facebook profile banner it self.

2. The DIY method

Alternatively, you could chop your images into 5 different parts each measuring 130px × 98px.

Upload the five photos to Facebook and tag yourself on each of the photos. However, it needs to be noted that the 5 photos needs to be tagged in a reversed fashion.

Besides doing a profile banner, you could also experiment with this:

Very cool, isn’t it?

This is a guest post by John K. Taylor.

There’s a reason that online dating websites encourage their members to upload a selection of good quality photographs to complement their profile information – because it’s hard to sell anything with a line-drawing or blurry 10-year-old ‘happy snap’.

If you want people to fall in love with your company or products you’ll also need to consider how professional photography can give your online identity an expert appearance and your website broader appeal.

Images are absorbed faster by the eye than text so the photographs on your website really are the first thing that gives your customers a feel for your company.

As the saying goes, “you never get a second chance to make a good first impression”, and a high standard of photography will immediately gain the trust of your potential customers in a way that diagrams or quick pics from a basic, single-lens camera never can.

Although you might think that you have a great eye for the perfect shot, without a professional standard of equipment and expert training, your images are likely to appear too dark, too bright or have the wrong aspect ratio for use on a website.

Mastering the techniques of photographic lighting and composition requires years of study and experience that a professional photographer can bring to the presentation of your company.

A photographer familiar with web design will also know what kind of shots work best online and where they should be placed on the page to catch the attention of potential customers.

As well as making the appearance of your website more attractive, professional photographic services can also make it an interactive experience. New technology allows 360-degree rotation and exploration of still image galleries, giving your customers a detailed and experiential impression of your product or business environment.

John has been working as a freelance writer for Infinite IT Solutions that has been providing excellent web development and web design Melbourne services to a wide range of clients for a decade now.