As the landscape of social media continues to constantly change, the image sizes for these apps change as well. With the aspects of your profile extremely influential on how consumers will react to your business, it is important that all of your content is visually pleasing and leaves a positive lasting impression on users. Your business’ visual presence is the first and potentially only glimpse that people get of your business, so it must count and be memorable. Visuals on social media can dictate how users view your brand, value your expertise, and determine their buying decision.
Although image sizes seem minuscule in the big scheme of things, especially with all of the ins and outs of social media, they play a key role in effectively conveying your content’s message and value to your target audience. Not paying attention to image sizing could lead to profile pictures and posts that look incorrect or pixelated, which negatively impacts your brand authority on social media and how users will respond. With all of the work that you put into high quality and engaging content, there is no point wasting all of your hard work simply because of a size error.
To help with your visual appeal on social media, we have broken down the most recent Image Size Guidelines for each Social Media Platform:
Profile Picture: Facebook profile picture size: 170 x 170 pixels (on most computers)
This profile picture is the small photo that appears on your timeline below your cover photo. When you post to other walls or comment, users will also be able to view this photo. Your business profile picture represents your brand, so most opt for their profile photo to be an image of their brand logo.
Cover Photo: 820 x 312
Although your Facebook cover photo only shows up on your timeline, it is much bigger than your profile picture. This size gives you more leeway to choose an image that is creative or attention grabbing to consumers. For example, your profile picture could be a picture of your brand logo, this image space could be utilized to showcase your team or something that speaks to your brand’s voice as a business.
Shared Image: 1200 x 630
Shared images are the type of images that come to mind when you think about sizing images. As you know, these images will always be on your timeline, and show up in your followers’ Feeds as the content your business posts. The better quality the post is, through elements such as its sizing, there is greater potential for users to engage with the post and take interest in your brand.
Profile Photo: 400 x 400 (Displays 200 x 200)
Just like Facebook, your Twitter profile photo represents your brand. It can be seen on your page, in-stream when you tweet and others retweet your posts, and in the “Who to follow” box.
Header Image: 1500 x 500
Your header photo covers the top of your profile page, right behind your profile photo. It is much larger than your profile photo, so choose something meaningful to your brand, and also use a very high resolution photo to avoid pixelation.
Shared Image: Standard 4:3 or 16:9 Dimensions
Alongside tweets with just text, you can also attach photos to your posts. Unfortunately with Twitter, the number of photos determines the way the app crops them to fit and display in-stream. To eliminate any extra cropping on wider and/or taller images, use close to the standard of 4:3 or 16:9 dimensions, that way you do not have to worry about centering images correctly around this cropping.
Profile Picture: 110 x 110
The purpose of this profile image is the same as any other social media platform. Make sure your image is recognizable so that your target audience can find you through the search and explore features on Instagram.
Photo Thumbnails: 161 x 161
One unique part about Instagram is the grid, where users can see all of your posts at once in thumbnails. These thumbnails are smaller versions of your images and videos, which expand to the entire post when clicked on. Creativity with your thumbnails is endless, as you can create different themes and variations that make your entire profile attention-grabbing and visually appealing.
Photo Size: 1080 x 1080
This image size is what your post looks like when the user clicks on it from its thumbnail. Apart from the square posts, Instagram also allows portrait and landscape photos. Be mindful when creating a carousel of pictures that portrait and landscape photos can not be put in the same collection.
Profile Image: 300 x 300
Although repetitive, it is important that the sizing of your profile image is correct for every social media platform that your business is present on. This image represents your profile and how visitors initially perceive your brand, so make it count by creating a profile picture with the correct sizing.
Personal Background Image: 1584 x 396
Although it may be more complicated to find a wider image that fits this space, make sure that you are not stretching a regular sized photo too much to fit. Along with pixelated and cropped images, stretching an image can lead to distortion and lack of visual appeal.
Shared Image: 1200 x 627
This shared image size is for LinkedIn posts when you share photos, links with an image, or articles to a page’s feed. These are the posts that draw users to visit your profile, so ensure that they are captivating by utilizing this specific size for LinkedIn.
To download our social media image size guide, click here.
Image Sizing in Social Rotation
In all of our templated content packs and posts, Social Rotation utilizes the most up to date image sizing to eliminate cropping, pixelated, and off-center errors. Visual appeal can either get consumers to click on your business to learn more, or continue scrolling to the next brand on social media. Image sizing is one of the easiest aspects of creating a successful brand online, but its importance is not small. Through the Social Rotation software, your business not only has to worry about getting the image sizes correct, but all of the content to post on your social media is already generated for you specific to your niche. Get ahead of all of your competitors on social media by creating a visual appeal to consumers that is unbeatable.
To learn more about image sizing and what Social Rotation could offer as an opportunity to streamline business' content posting and social media strategy, click here to schedule a personalized one-on-one demo with our team.
