Having the right social media image sizes for each platform is a key part of creating visually appealing posts.
Highlights:
- Each social media platform has its own set of image guidelines.
- Choosing the right social media image sizes ensures that your content is as visually appealing as possible.
- We like Canva Pro for quick resizing of images and graphics.
Social media is all about the visual. Whether it’s Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, having the right image can make or break the effectiveness of a post. Social media image size might seem like a relatively unimportant facet of choosing an effective image for a post. But you might be surprised to discover how important it can be.
An incorrect social media image size can make your post less visually appealing than it could be, and it can even erode how the number of impressions a post receives. Because each platform has its guidelines for sizes — and because each image type (profile picture, cover photo, etc.) has different size restrictions — determining correct social media image size is no easy task.
The infographic below gives you a complete guide to the various image size requirements on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Once you know the correct social media image sizes, you can set your photo editing software to the correct dimensions.
Social media image sizes: by the network
Facebook is perhaps the crown jewel of social media platforms, boasting 1.5 billion daily active users. While the platform is text-friendly, images are key to creating engaging content on the platform. An important thing to remember when it comes to images on Facebook is that they will display differently on your page’s timeline as compared to a user’s newsfeed. This means that your choice of image dimensions should be based on where you want your viewers to see your image.
Image dimensions:
- Cover image: 800 x 312
- Profile image: 180 x 180 (though it will display as 170 x 170 on desktop, and 32 x 32 as a thumbnail)
- Shared post image: 1200 x 630
- Shared link preview image: 1200 x 628
- Event image: 1920 x 1080
- Highlighted image: 1200 x 717
Instagram is all about the visual – which means that it’s crucial that your brand’s presence on the platform is driven by high-quality images. As a rule, the platform scales down photos to 612 x 612, but it’s still recommended that shared images be set to 1080 x 1080 to optimize quality.
Image dimensions:
- Profile image: 110 x 110
- Image thumbnail: 161 x 161
- Shared photos: 1080 x 1080
- Shared videos: 1080 pixels wide
- Instagram Stories: 1080 x 1920 (minimum 600 x 1067); maximum 4 GB
Twitter has 313 billion monthly active users and has recently updated its image guidelines.
Image dimensions:
- Header image: 1500 x 500; maximum 5 MB
- Profile image: 400 x 400; maximum 2 MB
- In-stream image: 440 x 220
While the network may not be thought of as a highly visual platform, images on LinkedIn make a big difference in terms of post engagement. With 467 million registered users, it’s the world’s largest professional network. Having polished, well-sized images on the platform can go a long way toward maximizing its potential for professional networking and industry visibility.
Image dimensions:
- Banner image: 1584 x 396; maximum 4 MB
- Profile image: 400 x 400 (minimum 200 x 200); maximum 10 MB
- Company Cover image: 1536 x 768
- Shared image: 350 pixels wide
- Shared link preview: 180 x 110
- Company logo image: 300 x 300; maximum 4 MB
- Company cover image: 1536 x 768 (minimum 1192 x 220); maximum 4 MB
- Company page banner image: 646 x 220; maximum 2 MB
- Square logo (appears in company searches): 60 x 60; maximum 2 MB
An insider trick for quick and easy resizing
As you can see, there is quite a bit of variability in social media image sizes. You could spend hours resizing graphics or images for the same post across multiple platforms… Or, you could do what we do, and try a design platform like Canva. Not only does it already have all the proper dimensions available as templates, Canva Pro lets you change the size of graphics you created in a single click. It definitely makes life a lot easier.
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