Blog

What’s the biggest social media platform? We all know that; it’s Facebook! As of the second quarter of 2018, Facebook reached the number of 2.23 billion monthly active users.

The community is growing by the day, and the opportunities for businesses to promote themselves on Facebook grow as well.

When you start a business page, you have to keep in mind that Facebook users favor visual content.

With the latest updates that favor community posts, it’s important for brands to gain visibility through impressive visual content. Clickbaits no longer work, and even business page posts barely work.

Businesses have to invest in ads and post high-quality content more than ever before.

Oh; let’s not forget the 360-degree photos that Facebook recently introduced. You can use them in various ad formats, so you’ll engage your audience on a whole other level.

One feature after another, it gets kind of difficult to realize how to properly format the visual content. What worked before may not work now. Image sizes and dimensions, in particular, should be a straightforward issue.

After all, Facebook will automatically fit any image to the required format, right?

Wrong!

If the image is badly cropped or stretched out the ad or the entire page will look like it’s under construction. You don’t want blurry visual content that doesn’t make your brand look professional enough. As if you didn’t have enough details to pay attention to, now this? Well, the good news is that we created the definitive Facebook image size and dimensions guide for you.

All you need to do is take a look at these numbers and your visual content will be good to go.

The Profile Picture Size

When someone lands at your profile, it’s the cover photo that gets the most attention (just look at the screenshot above and everything is clear).

The profile picture, however, is still crucially important. In fact, it represents your brand and it’s what people see when your posts and ads appear in their timelines.

Most brands opt for their logos.

That’s a good approach since it clarifies who the post is from. If you take a look at the Barnes & Noble profile photo, however, you’ll notice it doesn’t read that well when showed in the circle ahead of a post. It’s impossible to crop it well enough so it would fit in that circle.

So you have to be mindful of the way your profile photo would look in a square and a circle. That being said, these are the dimensions to keep in mind:

• The recommended size for a profile photo is 180 x 180 pixels. Pretty simple. The image will appear 128 x 128 pixels on smartphones and 170 x 170 pixels on desktop.
• The photo thumbnail will appear at 32 x 32 pixels.

You probably noticed that on a business page, the profile photo appears on the left side, and the cover photo is entirely visible. That’s different from a personal account, where the profile image is positioned over the cover image. The purpose is to differentiate business pages from personal pages, but the sizes still remain the same.

The Cover Photo Size

The cover photo is the most prominent part of your Facebook page. It’s way bigger than the profile picture, and it’s not something your brand is necessarily recognized for.

It’s not recommended to change the profile photo that often since it appears all over Facebook and it’s good when people remember it. The cover photo is a different issue.

I mean; you could change it quite often, so you’ll promote different products or campaigns.

It has to be very catchy, and it needs to convey the vibe of your brand.

As for the size, these are Facebook’s recommendations to consider:

• It must be at least 400 x 150 pixels. But if you go for this size, Facebook will automatically stretch it out.
• The cover photo displays at 820 x 312 pixels on desktop and 640 x 360 pixels on smartphones.                                                  

Those are the acceptable dimensions. But what’s the recommended size? The one that loads fastest, of course! Facebook gives you such a recommendation: the cover photo loads fastest at 851 x 315 pixels in sRGB JPG format, less than 100 kB size.                                    

It doesn’t get any more straightforward than that.

Group Cover Photo Size

Facebook is all about community, so it’s no wonder why so many businesses are making efforts to bring their followers together in a group. In groups, the discussion runs more smoothly. Needless to say, you still have to make the cover photo stand out.

If you take a look at any group page, you’ll notice that there’s no profile picture, and the cover photo is larger.

Facebook recommends a different size for group cover photos: 1,640 x 856 pixels. In ratio, that would be 1.91:1.

On a mobile device, the users will see a narrower version of the image, which is why it’s important to avoid placing important information at the top and the bottom.

Ad Image Size

Businesses are practically forced to consider Facebook ads since their posts are less visible than they used to be. The latest updates made it difficult for a business to promote itself without any investment.

But what about the ad image? What size and format should it be?

• Facebook recommends 9:16 to 16:9 ratio for ad images.            
• The file should be uploaded in png or jpg format.
• You may include text of up to 125 characters.
• Use the highest resolution possible; there are no restrictions on that.
• Don’t use too much text in an ad, since it may experience less delivery if the text takes more than 20% of the ad. Facebook gives you a convenient tool to check the proportion of text to image.
• If you want to include a clickable link to the image, it will be cropped to 1.91:1 ratio. In that case, the minimum recommended image resolution is 1200 x 628 pixels.
• You’re allowed to use a headline of up to 25 characters and a link description of up to 30 characters.

Carousel Ads Image Size

Carousel ads are awesome because they give you more opportunities to represent an offer.

Michelle Brown, part of the marketing team at BestEssays, explains how useful carousel ads are: “We love these because they allow us to feature several promotions in a single ad. Instead of creating different ads for research papers, essays, and dissertations, we launch a single ad that encompasses all these services. You just have to make it attractive enough, so it will engage the users to hit the arrow and see what else there is.”

These ads are a bit tricky for beginners, but you’ll do just fine if you follow the recommendations.  

• You may use a minimum of 2 and maximum of 10 cards in the carousel ad.
• The supported image formats are png and jpg, but supported video files are also good for carousel ads.
• The recommended ratio for a carousel ad image is 1:1. Yup, it should be a square.
• The minimum recommended resolution is 1080 x 1080 pixels.
• The maximum image file size is 30 MB.                             

Shared Image Size

This is one of the most common types of content you’re going to share on Facebook. Yes; businesses are now paying to get their content promoted across the network, but that’s not what their activity is limited to. In fact, we encourage you to share more content and work on its quality more than ever. Native engagement still works, and you can still make it happen.

But what kinds of images should you share? – Good ones! As for the format and dimensions, these are the recommendations to follow:

• The recommended upload size is 1,200 x 630 pixels.      
• Facebook will automatically resize and format your photos once you upload them. Since you don’t want them butchered, it’s best to resize the photo to a supporting width, which may be 720, 960, or 2048 pixels.
• On your page, the image will appear at maximum width of 504 pixels.
• In people’s feeds, the image will appear at maximum width of 470 pixels.
• The recommended format is JPEG with sRGB color profile.
• The file size should be smaller than 100 kB, so you’ll avoid compression.        
• To make sure you’re always uploading high-quality photos, go to your account settings in the Facebook app and choose to always upload photos in HD. It will be the default option, so you won’t have to worry about it.

Event Post Image Size

If you want to invite your followers to attend an important event, you’ll create an event on Facebook. All your followers will see it as a suggestion, and the friends of those who are interested in your event will also get a notification. That’s a great way to expand your reach.

This image will be displayed as a thumbnail in the upcoming events section of your followers. Facebook will show it in large format on the event page, too.

Of course, you’ll need a cover photo for your event, too. It should convey the purpose of the event, clarifying what it’s about. However, it should also make the page look attractive.

• For the best possible results, Facebook recommends you to upload a photo or video that’s about 2:1 in ratio.
• The recommended size for photos is 1,200 x 628 pixels.
• If you upload a video, the recommended length is from 30 seconds to 5 minutes.

Shared Link Image Size

Since Facebook allows you to share any links, that’s a great opportunity to promote your blog posts and website content. When you create that content, however, you have to be aware of the way it will appear on Facebook.

Screenshot 7

Facebook recommends some best practices for sharing. First of all, you have to make sure the Facebook Crawler can access your site. Then, you may worry about optimizing the images, so the link will have an ideal preview when it shows up in people’s Facebook feeds.

• The minimum recommended size for ideal display is 1200 x 630 pixels.                       
• To display link page posts with larger images, you should use images that are at least 600 x 315 pixels. As for the size, the images can be up to 8 MB.
• The image will still appear in the linked post if it’s smaller, but it won’t be attractive at all. It will be too small for people to notice.          

Facebook Panoramas Size

360 photos, also known as Facebook panoramas, are great for engaging your audience with an interactive experience. Their curiosity will be triggered, so they will certainly want to explore the environment you’ve captured in the panorama.

Facebook recognizes these photos and processes them through the camera-specific metadata that’s already available in photos taken in this format.

Needless to say, some guidelines are necessary:

• This photo must have 2:1 ratio; there’s no flexibility about it.
• The 360 photo must be less than 135,000,000 pixels in total size, and less than 30,000 pixels in any dimension.
• Since mobile uploads come with stricter limitations, it’s best to upload from web if you want to get close to the maximum size.

Facebook Canvas Size

This mobile-only feature allows businesses to engage their audience on a whole other level. The Canvas is an expanded in-feed story, which your followers see on full screen. They can watch great photos and videos, explore tagged products, and swipe through carousels. The Canvas loads really quickly, and it’s quite easy to create. You just have to be aware of the recommendations.

Facebook gives you a great guide to creating Canvas, so check it out before you start developing such content.

• The main image (called Hero) has to be of 16:9 ratio, and it has to be 1,200 x 628 pixels in size. There’s no flexibility here.   
• Below the Hero, the Canvas will show four other images in thumbnails. By default, Facebook sets the thumbnail as the center square of the chosen image. If you want to adjust the thumbnail, you can choose any square section that’s 100 x 100 pixels in size.

 

There you have it!

That was the ultimate guide to Facebook image sizes for businesses. It covers most types of images you’ll need to use for your Facebook marketing campaign.

You’re basically ready to start!  

 

The post The Definitive Facebook Image Sizes and Dimensions Guide appeared first on Unamo Blog.