The right image size for social media

Okay, I know I’m biased as a graphic designer, but sharing images on social media is a really important part of a social media plan. And there’s plenty of objective proof!

For example, on Facebook, we typically see about ten times the organic reach of posts that are primarily an image when compared to posts that are mostly text.

But if you’ve ever tried to add images on social media, you’ve probably noticed you really need a different size image for each social media platform!

In fact, some platforms have wildly different image size needs—you’ll notice that most platforms tend to favor a landscape image but Pinterest prefers one in portrait orientation.

You may not be able to use the same image with the same success on ALL platforms, but I can help you out with three of the most used ones.

There are three social media platforms that make sense for almost all our clients and have similar-enough image size and orientation requirements that we can use one size for all three.

First, here’s what each platform recommends for images:

• Twitter: 2:1 ratio, 1024 x 512 pixel image
• Facebook: 1200 x 630 pixel image
• Google Plus: 345 x 195 pixel image

Although the display of each platform is slightly different, optimizing the image to a size that works for all three platforms means that the posts are all consistent.

Want to know what the magic number is? Well, you’ve made it this far.

It’s 1600 pixels wide by 800 pixels high.

It’s also a good idea to include some non-essential space as padding on the left and right of the image—about 160 pixels. That way, if some of your image gets cut off, it won’t be the most important part.

Creating our images to those specifications from the get-go makes them consistent across all three of those platforms. And it definitely saves me the time it would take to create an individual graphic for each platform!