If you are serious about your website or blog, you cannot simply ignore social media . The problem is that each of these platforms has different requirements for cover photos, profile picture, article cover, etc .
This makes it very confusing for new users to get started .
What if there was a complete social media photo sizing guide that you could follow to set up all your social media profiles quickly, the right way ?
Something that acts as a social media checklist for image sizes, image sharing, automated posts, etc .
In this article, we are going to give you a comprehensive guide to social media image sizes and the goal is to help you quickly manage your social media settings without distractions .
Why do you need the Comprehensive Guide to Social Media Image Sizes ?
If you are associating social media with your blog or website, you will notice that each platform has different requirements .
For example, Facebook image size has specific requirements while Pinterest requires completely different proportions .
It can be difficult to remember all of this information when creating social media images for your articles or profile .
The guide helps you quickly look through all of these options . It will also ensure that you don’t miss out on anything important when creating your social media profile or publishing a new article on your website .
Choose your social media platforms
There are many social media sites out there, but not all of them are helpful in growing your business or bringing traffic to your website .
Apart from the bigger sites like Facebook and Twitter, you can choose niche platforms that work best with the target audience of your website.
For example, if you run a fashion blog, you may want to use Instagram to promote your content.
Food and recipe bloggers may want to focus on YouTube and Yummly .
A home decorator or DIY website might find Pinterest more helpful in finding the right audience .
Choosing the right platforms for your target audience will help you create an effective social media marketing strategy to grow your business .
Checklist of social media image sizes
To promote your blog or business on social media, you will need to set up profiles, upload your website logo, cover photo, and create images for your articles .
The problem now is that every social media platform has specific requirements for these photos. Not using the correct size will make your images look skewed or stretched .
Here’s our quick and up-to-date guide to social media image sizes you can use when creating images for your social accounts .
Facebook photo sizes
Facebook has specific recommendations for images to use in different areas .
Cover image : 820 x 312 pixels. Cover photos must be less than 100 KB in size. It can be in jpeg or png file format. You can create a larger image while maintaining the same aspect ratio, and Facebook will automatically create smaller sizes for mobile display .
Profile photo : A square photo of at least 180 x 180 pixels. For business pages, this is the perfect place to display your custom logo. This image will be cropped to display in a circle .
Shared image : 1200 x 630 pixels. This image will display on your page with a maximum width of 470 pixels and a maximum feed width of 504 pixels .
Group cover photo : 1640 x 856 pixels .
Twitter image sizes
Below are some of the pictures shown for you to have a chance to introduce them to you .
Title image : 1500 x 500 pixels .
This full-width image appears as the cover photo for your Twitter profile page .
Profile picture : 400 x 400 pixels .
This square image has been cropped to display in a circular format .
Broadcast image : 440 x 220 pixels .
This image is displayed when you share an article, retweet, embed a tweet, upload photos, and more. If you already use Twitter Cards, Twitter will be able to choose the correct image to display along with your article description and title .
Instagram photo sizes
The main content on Instagram is already in a visual format. If you’re uploading photos directly from your phone using the Instagram app, it will automatically take care of the right photo sizes for you .
For other uploads, you can follow Instagram’s photo size recommendations for best results .
Profile picture : 110 x 110 pixels .
You can use larger image dimensions as long as it is a square image .
Thumbnail : 161 x 161 pixels .
This image displays as thumbnails of your photos .
Shared images : 1080 x 1080 pixels .
You can use a high-resolution image as long as it’s a square image .
Shared videos : 1080p wide .
Instagram Stories : 1080 x 1920 pixels or 600 x 1067 pixels minimum .
The file size cannot exceed 4 GB which is quite a lot for high quality videos .
YouTube image sizes
YouTube is not only the second most popular social media platform but also the second most popular search engine . Your YouTube channel art, cover art, and video thumbnails are essential in getting more views for your videos .
YouTube channel cover image : 2560 x 1440 pixels .
You need to make sure that the image is centered horizontally so that it looks good on mobile devices as YouTube may crop the image to fit screen size .
Channel code : 800 x 800 pixels .
This image is displayed as your channel icon and may sometimes be cropped as a circular image .
Video thumbnail : 1280 x 720 pixels .
Ask any YouTube creator and they’ll tell you that the video thumbnail is the most important part of YouTube video optimization .
This is what YouTubers will see on their homepage, in search, and in other areas. Highly optimized video thumbnail helps you get more views and grow your channel .
Pinterest image sizes
Pinterest is a visual social sharing platform, which means that images play the most important role in increasing your Pinterest followers .
Profile picture: 165 x 165 pixels .
You can upload a high-resolution image with a maximum size of 10MB .
Profile Cover : Select a board to display as your profile cover .
Pinterest will automatically fetch Pins from that board to create your profile cover .
Painting cover photo : 222 x 150 pixels .
Pinterest lets you choose the cover art from the Pins you’ve saved for that board .
Pinned image preview : 236 pixels wide .
Pinterest automatically scales your Pins to fit its grid. For best results, you need to upload images with an aspect ratio of 2:3 to 1:3.5 .
LinkedIn image sizes
LinkedIn can be a great source of traffic, connections, and building a brand image .
It is a social networking platform for professionals and businesses, which makes it a powerful tool to help you grow your business .
Profile pictures : 400 x 400 pixels with a maximum image file size of 10MB .
Profile Banner Image : 1584 x 396 pixels with a maximum file size of 4MB .
Company cover photo : 1536 x 768 pixels .
Company logo : 300 x 300 pixels or higher resolution image with an aspect ratio of 1:1 .
Banner image for the company page : 646 x 220 pixels .
Setting up social media optimization for WordPress
Now that you know the appropriate social media image sizes .
The next step is to make sure your WordPress site is optimized for social media .
The most important aspect of this improvement is setting up automatic inclusion of open graph metadata . Open Graph metadata is a technology that allows you to include additional information on your web pages that is needed by social media and search engines .
First, you need to install and activate the All in One SEO plugin .
For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin .
AIOSEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin that helps you get more traffic from search engines. It is also a complete website optimization tool including support for social media platforms as well .
Upon activation, you need to visit the All in One SEO page Social Networks. From here, you first need to add your social media profile URLs under the Social Profiles tab .
You don’t need to add all the URLs, you can simply skip social media sites where you don’t have a profile .
After that, you need to switch to the Facebook tab. From here you can see that AIOSEO enables Open Graph metadata by default .
Below you need to provide an image, title and description for the front page of your website. The image you provide here will be displayed when someone shares your website’s front page or root URL on Facebook .
Next, switch to the Twitter tab. Here you can choose the default card view for your website .
The abstract with large image option will display your Twitter post’s image along with a summary of your article .
You can now switch to the Pinterest tab. From here you can add the Pinterest confirmation tag to your website . You can click on the link on the screen to claim your website and get a confirmation code .
Don’t forget to click the Save Changes button to store your settings .
Social media settings for WordPress posts and pages
Just like the SEO settings for posts and pages, you can also optimize it for social media .
The AIOSEO plugin allows you to easily set social options for your individual posts and pages .
Simply edit the blog post or page you want to optimize, then scroll down to the “AIOSEO Settings” section at the bottom of the editor .
Switch to the Social tab and you can upload a custom title and description as well as share the photo on Facebook and Twitter . You can also see a preview of what your post will look like when you share it on social media .
After that, you can save or publish your post .
Add social sharing buttons to your website
The easiest way to promote your website on social media is to encourage users to share your content. This can be achieved by adding social sharing buttons to your blog posts and pages .
First, you need to install and activate the Shared Counts plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin .
Shared Counts is the best social media plugin for WordPress . It allows you to easily add social sharing buttons to your WordPress blog posts .
Upon activation, just head to Settings » Shared Issues page to configure plugin settings .
From here you need to scroll down to the View section and select the social media sites you want to view .
Then you can choose the style of the button and the location where you want the buttons to be displayed .
Don’t forget to click the Save Changes button to store your settings .
You can now visit any post on your website to see the social sharing buttons in action .
Setting up automatic social sharing in WordPress
Social media platforms are great for building a following and driving more traffic to your website .
However, it takes a long time to share content across different platforms and interact with your audience .
Fortunately, there are many online tools you can use to automate the process .
- IFTTT — A popular free tool that allows you to connect your WordPress site to many popular social media platforms and share new content automatically .
- Revive Old Posts – This plugin allows you to automatically reshare old blog posts to your social media profiles at regular intervals .
- Buffer – Allows you to set up a queue of social media updates and post them on your preferred schedule .
- MonsterInsights – Helps you easily track your social media traffic with Google Analytics . This helps you see how your social media posts are performing .
We hope this complete guide to social media image sizing and optimization for WordPress will help you in the success of your social media marketing strategy .