Granted, this might be a little bit of a dry read but it is designed as more of a cheat sheet for reference as and when you decide to refresh your social media presence.

For certain businesses it’s vital to have a social media presence to interact with current and prospective clients. Because of this, the way you come across on the various social media channels is of the utmost importance. The first thing people see (and therefore the first impression you give) is via the profile and cover photo images that you use. If a low quality, pixelated image is used then you are likely to portray yourself as unprofessional.  It’s also a good idea to try to present a consistent message over all of the different social media channels and align your branding with your website and offline advertising, providing a united front and engender user trust.

The below cheat sheet shows the sizes required for each of the social media platforms. If you don’t have a photo editing tool on your PC then you can make use of this online image editing tool:

https://pixlr.com/editor/

Profile Image

This is typically a square image in the top left of your profile, although just to keep us on our toes Facebook have updated theirs to a round image when shown on the feed. Thankfully this doesn’t mean you need to recreate your image as a circle. In most cases I would recommend popping your logo in this slot unless of course you offer a very personal service in which case you could use this for a headshot.

Cover Image

Generally these are the rectangular images across the top of your page and are much larger than the profile image.

A good thing to remember is that the image could be covered or cropped by other elements on the social networking site therefore you want to make sure your design or key message is in the centre.

There are several ways to use your cover photo and here are some ideas:

1. Key message or selling point – Pop your tagline, definition of what you do or your main selling point into the design for your cover photo.
2. Have some fun – Get across your personality and show off what your business is all about by using an image that aligns with how you present yourself in other areas of the web.
3. Sell, Sell, Sell – Put your best selling product front and centre and inspire users to engage and purchase the product.
4. In it to win it – Dream up a competition and advertise it using your cover photo. This way you can push users to interact with your page and grow your followers.

Content Images When Posting

Posting an update to your followers using an image has been shown to increase engagement. For example, tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than tweets without images (source).

By making sure your image is the right size when you upload it you can decrease the chances of it being cropped in the wrong place and avoid any unnecessary distortion.

Obviously, any of these social sites could move the goal posts at any time, but these sizes are correct at time of writing. We’ll try to keep them up to date for you as well. We’re so nice 🙂