You’ve heard the term. You’ve seen the statistics. You know that it’s time: you’re ready to dive into Visual Content Marketing. But with so many social media channels out there, how can you maximize your impact? We’ve covered Five Tips for Creating Visual Content That Works – now let’s get a little more specific.
The best images sizes for sharing on social media
Kissmetrics describes six types of Visual Content: images, videos, infographics, memes, presentations, and screen shots. Here we focus on optimizing the photos, graphics, and memes that you will share on major social media networks. While we’ll discuss size for desktop viewing, they should look great on mobile devices as well. (For a more comprehensive list of sizes for social media graphics, including cover photos, headers, and more, be sure to reference our infographic Social Media Image Sizes: Your Guide to Social Design.)
So how do you get your images to look their best when viewed in a stream, timeline, or newsfeed?
Ideally, your graphic will take up as much space as the social media channel allows. Hey, it’s prime marketing real estate – why not take full advantage of it? Besides, an improperly sized image may be cropped, stretched, or fit awkwardly in the available space.
Unfortunately, when it comes to image sharing, one size does not fit all, but we’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting for you here. Just follow this guide to find the perfect images sizes for sharing on your favorite social media channels.
Note: the upload size of the graphics will typically be much higher than the display size. While this helps to ensure good image quality, it is only a good rule of thumb and a recommended best practice – not a requirement.
The perfect image sizes for sharing on Facebook
Perfect size for shared images
Images uploaded to Facebook will scale to a maximum height and width, and the orientation of the image will determine how it displays in a Facebook feed. To take full advantage of available space, we suggest a large, square image of 1200 x 1200 pixels.
Perfect size for shared links
The featured image that appears with a shared link will scale to 470 pixels wide by 246 pixels high. An ideal upload size is 1200 pixels wide by 630 pixels tall.
The perfect image sizes for sharing on Twitter
Twitter requires image sizes with a 2:1 ratio and in horizontal (landscape) format for them to appear fully intact. That means for every two pixels wide it should be one pixel tall. The image will display in-stream on a desktop at 506 pixels wide by 253 pixels high.
The perfect image sizes for sharing on LinkedIn
Perfect size for shared images
Images that are uploaded directly to LinkedIn will appear 530 pixels wide by 400 pixels high.
Perfect size for shared links
When you share a link on LinkedIn, the featured image will be displayed as a thumbnail of 164 pixels wide by 99 pixels high. LinkedIn will pull an image from the web page or blog that you’re sharing.
The perfect image sizes for sharing on Google+
Images that are uploaded directly to Google+ will appear at a maximum width of 426 pixels, and the height will scale to fit with a maximum height of 928 pixels. An image that is 1200 pixels wide can be as tall as 2620 pixels and still fit perfectly in a Google+ feed. This makes Google+ somewhat unique in that a vertical (portrait) image will look great here, but not on most other social channels.
You may be wondering, then, why we’re recommending an upload size of 1200 x 1200 pixels. The first reason is that it will save you time because you can repurpose the same image you created for Facebook. The second reason is that an image that is too tall may not fit on your reader’s screen without scrolling.
If you want to upload a vertical image, we suggest a maximum of 1200 pixels wide by 1600 pixels high.
The perfect image sizes for sharing on Pinterest
Images that are uploaded or shared to Pinterest will appear in the feed at a width of 236 pixels. Expanded images will open to a width of 736 pixels. Pinterest has no known maximum height (although it’s possible that one exists, we’ve yet to find it!). Because it’s so flexible, just about any image dimensions will work great as long it’s at least 736 pixels wide.
The perfect image sizes for sharing on Instagram
Images that are uploaded to Instagram will appear in the feed at 510 pixels wide by 510 pixels high. Easy peasy. While the recommended size is 1080 x 1080 pixels, you can upload the same 1200 pixel square image that you created for Facebook.
Yikes! That’s too much information!
We totally understand. Here’s a shortcut! If you create your images, shareables, and memes using these size guidelines you can get the best results on all channels with only two to three different graphics sizes.
Shared Images
1200 x 1200 pixels
Facebook
Google+
Instagram
Pinterest
1024 x 512
Twitter
1024 x 768
LinkedIn (or you can repurpose the 1024 x 512 graphic you created for Twitter. It will just take up a little less space than is allowed.)
That’s still too much work. Make it easier!
If you’d like to create one image that will work on all social media channels, the smart folks at Buffer recommend two favorite image sizes that work reasonably well on most channels.
Landscape (horizontal)
1024 x 512 pixels
Best on Facebook and Twitter
Portrait (vertical)
800 x 1200 pixels
Best on Googe+ and Pinterest
We hope this information helps to inspire some creative social media sharing. We’d love to see what you produce! As always, we’re here if you have any questions.
Now go create!
Get our Social Media Image Sizes: Your Guide to Social Design Infographic!
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