Have you ever got into a situation where you couldn’t figure out what image size you should be picking up for the social post? If yes, this blog is for you.

Social media platforms now are gaining popularity more than ever and it doesn’t look like the numbers are gonna slow down anytime soon. As per a report, there were 3.6 million users combined who were active on these platforms. If you are one among these, that’s a lot of eyes on your posts.

Now the question is, how to make sure that your content stands out among all others?

“Content”. Yes, content strategy plays a very crucial role in how your posts perform. People love engaging and informative content. But at the same time what they want is the same content delivered in great consumable quality.

Various studies have demonstrated that the same content when published in two different quality and aspect ratios, their performance had significant changes. If you are someone who is managing the accounts for a brand or working on personal branding, effort should be done on publishing your content in optimum size & ratio which can get the user’s attention.

So, what are the ideal size and dimensions for the images & videos to post on these platforms? Let’s understand

 

1. Image & Video Size for Facebook (Image & Video)

One of the widely used social platforms, Facebook has been a marketers paradise when it comes to generating leads in social media for their brand.

While setting up an account for yourself or for a brand, you might have wondered, what’s the best Facebook cover photo size or best Facebook profile picture size. Let’s crack it here-

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Profile picture: Very often the first image that visitors encounter when they visit the profile. Brand managers have to be careful while they upload the image as the dimensions at which the image is shown in different devices varies.

A preferred way is to upload images in 1:1 aspect ratio, ideally the size of 100kb or below. Facebook delivers profile pictures as 170*170 px on computers and 128*128 px on smartphones

Recommended: Aspect ratio 1:1 | Dimension min of 170*170 px

Cover photo: Another image which the visitors observe while on your profile. The image should be Minimum 400 pixels wide and 150 pixels tall. The cover picture is Displayed at 820 pixels wide by 312 pixels tall on your Page on computers and 640 pixels wide by 360 pixels tall on smartphones.

Recommended: Aspect ratio 16:9 | Dimension min of 400*150 px

For the timeline: In various instances, Facebook automatically resizes the uploaded images on the timeline to fit the 1.91:1 aspect ratio. People often make the mistake of uploading images whose dimensions are less than 600×315 pixels which result in a pixelated image affecting its performance over the platform.

Ideal Facebook image sizes are:

Recommended size: Aspect ratio 1.91:1 | Dimensions 1200 x 630 pixels

If you are managing profile for a business and have to upload images in carousel format, images should be in 1:1 aspect ratio at the size should be 1200*1200

Facebook event page cover:

Recommended: Aspect ratio 1.91*1 px | Dimensions 1200*628

Facebook stories:

Recommended: Aspect ratio of 9:16 | Dimensions 1080*1920 px

Apart from these regular images marketers also need to make sure that the creatives used for the Facebook ads are according to their guidelines which vary for each ad. Complete list of ad type and the dimension can be availed in the official business guide.

 

2. Image & Video Size for Instagram (Image & Video)

Instagram is all about showing the world what your personal brand or business is about via images and videos. While you do this, you must ensure that the media files are apt for the platform and don’t clutter the space making people avoid your brand. Let’s understand what is the best image size for Instagram.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by CrayonPanda Digital Studio (@crayonpanda.io)

Feed Images:

Instagram lets you add the images to your feed in 3 main formats and we will discuss the ideal dimensions for these different formats below

 For Square images: Recommended resolution: 1200*1200 px  

For Landscape (Horizontal) Image: Recommended resolution: 1200 x 628 px

Portrait (Vertical) Image: Recommended resolution 1080 x 1350 px

 

Stories:

Instagram stories have been grabbing the attention of the users and businesses use this particular format to get the users attention, keep them on their toes and direct the traffic to their website. So, how and in what dimension would one create the graphics to have users attention on your brand, let’s see-

Recommended Resolution: 1080 x 1920 pixels

Max Aspect Ratio: 9:16

Minimum Aspect Ratio: 16:9 to 4:5

Max Image File Size: 30 MB

 

3. Image & Video Size for Twitter (Image & Video)

The platform that was primarily built for microblogging, sharing news/thoughts in a short version, it soon caught the attention and grew big. Though it is built for the textual content, images & videos always grab attention here and help businesses get significant traffic to their website.

So what should be the specifications of the media files to get the attention of Twitter users? Let’s see

Sharing a single image: 1,200*675 px

Sharing multiple images: 1,200*675 px

Sharing links with an image: 800*418 px

One might have observed that when the images are uploaded on Twitter, they are automatically resized by chopping off a portion from top or bottom. Though this might worry few there is nothing much to be disappointed about. Twitter uses machine learning to crop out the part of images that are less likely to engaging and keep the content that has important information visible.

 

Conclusion:

The social media platforms can be a game-changer if the brands can deliver the content that keeps their users engaged. And to keep the users engaged one should also put effort delivering the content in great quality. Though the dimensions of the media content don’t have any direct significant effect, it will have a psychometric effect helping brands to position themselves.

Also, it should be noted that the above-mentioned dimension worked best for most of the brands and are used as industry standards. However, if you feel that the brand is generating enough traction with images of varied sizes, do follow them. Keep on experimenting with your content and analyze which suits your brand the best.