Social Media Images: Nailing the Sizes Down

Fact: Social media images improve engagement.

Fact: Choosing the right social media images improves the shareability of your tweets, posts, and pins.

Sadly, though there’s another fact you need to be aware of with regards to social media images.

Fact: Every social network has different size standards for the images they allow you to post.

In essence, this means that the perfect shot you upload to Instagram might look horrible on Twitter, stretched on LinkedIn, and be cropped horribly if you try and upload it as a cover image to Facebook. It doesn’t make it easy for the social media manager tasked with creating picture-perfect profiles across a range of channels – but don’t despair: we’re here to help.

Infographic: Social Media Images

The team at Canva, one of the internet’s best-kept secrets for designers, has pulled together an infographic to help social media managers negotiate the social media images landscape. All of the major social networks are covered, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Note, too, that there are multiple guidelines for each of the social networks, and with good reason. Why? Because a Facebook profile picture is not the same size as a Facebook cover image, nor is it the optimal size for sharing in a post, either.

So, too, with Twitter, LinkedIn, and the other networks: deciding where the image is going to be used will make a difference when it comes to its size.

Luckily, resizing social media images in this day and age is not difficult. Whether you use Photoshop, GIMP, or another commercial or open-source  editing tool, one of the inbuilt tools on your computer, or even a design site like Canva to manipulate and resize your social media images, it usually doesn’t take more than a few seconds to crop and post.

Now Get Posting!

Using images as part of your social media strategy makes your posts more attractive to others and increases the chance of the post being widely shared significantly. If you are ready to go big – even viral – then it’s time to update and upload your social media images today. Go on: get posting!