The need to have a strong social media presence has grown over recent years, especially when it comes to visual content dominating much of the social media landscape that we know of in today's age. With this, however, comes optimizing your brand and personal profiles with high-quality content.
So, whether you design your social media images through applications like Canva or PhotoShop, use free stock photos or take your own photos using a camera, social media images are key to engaging with your audience, getting your brand message across and ultimately standing out visually.
From profile pictures, Twitter headers, to cover photos and thumbnails, it has become important for brands and people to effectively convey themselves through the use of good quality images. No two platforms are the same though, so when it comes to using images across different platforms, here is your ultimate guide to social media picture sizes for 2021 with the specific dimensions and tips to help you choose the right image.
1. Facebook Image Sizes for 2021
2. LinkedIn Image Sizes for 2021
3. Twitter Image Sizes for 2021
4. YouTube Image Sizes for 2021
5. Instagram Image Sizes for 2021
6. Pinterest Image Sizes for 2021
As the world's largest social media platform, Facebook is a channel where you can reach and engage audiences if you are sharing high-quality, relevant content. However, before you share anything, you need to verify the image sizes on Facebook to make sure that the aspect ratio is correct and you're optimizing for viewing across multiple devices.
Note: The type of device you are using impacts how users will see your images on their timeline.
Profile Photo: 180x180 pixels
This is the main, square image that represents your brand or personal profile and appears layered over your cover photo. This also appears when you post over Facebook page walls or when you comment on various posts. There are, however, a few more things that you need to know about the social media dimensions that you should use for your Facebook profile picture:
Business Page Profile Photo: 360x360 pixels
There are a few similarities between a personal Facebook profile picture and one for your Business Page but with Facebook's recent updates, there are certain characteristics that will make your Business Page profile picture stand out more on the platform:
Cover Photos: 820x312 pixels
A cover photo will only appear on your specific Facebook timeline and is layered behind your profile picture. While your profile picture may be an image of yourself or your brand logo, your cover photo is a space where you can get creative and include your brand tagline, a product photo or anything else that speaks to who you are.
Shared Image: 1200x630 pixels
As one of the common ways of sharing content on Facebook, shared images will always appear on your timeline and should ideally show up in most of your followers’ news feeds — although, with the decrease in organic reach, it’s not likely that everyone will see your post. However, the more people engage with your shared post, the more likely it is that the rest of your followers and their followers will see that activity.
Shared Link: 1200x628 pixels
Facebook also allows you to share a link with a small square image to the left and text on the right, or with a larger rectangular image on top with text underneath.
Highlighted Image: 1200x717 pixels
If you want to celebrate a particular milestone, whether that's personal or business-related, a highlighted image will appear on your personal timeline, but will also take up more space than a shared link or image.
Event Image: 1920x1080 pixels
Having an image to accompany your Facebook Event will help gain your audiences' attention. Reminders are sent to audiences who show interest in your event so make sure that you have the right image for the Facebook Event cover photo.
As the world's largest professional social media network (with over 700 million users), LinkedIn has become a great platform to not only find jobs and employment but to connect with thought leaders, gain expert insights and create B2B Marketing campaigns. If you don't have the time or resources to create your own images for LinkedIn, use stock photography sites, like Unsplash, to get free social media images that you can use as part of your B2B content marketing strategy.
Personal Profile Photo: 400x400 pixels
This is the main image that represents you on your personal LinkedIn account so whenever someone is viewing your profile, this is one of the first images they will see so you want to get this one right.
Personal Background Image: 1,584x396 pixels
Similar to the cover photo that appears behind your profile picture on your Facebook feed, this personal background or header image will also appear behind your personal profile image.
Company Profile Photo: 300x300 pixels
This image will appear right next to your company or brand name on your LinkedIn homepage. This image also appears in the “Companies you may want to follow” section, so the more enticing and high quality this image is, the better to attract audiences to your page.
Company Cover Image: 1,128x191 pixels
This image differs from your personal profile company photo because company covers will take up the entire top space of the page. The cover, or header image, will appear larger than the personal dimensions, which gives companies a bit more space to showcase themselves.
Shared Image or Link: 1,200x627 pixels
This image resolution works for LinkedIn posts that share a photo or contain a link to a blog post or news article that has a photo.
Hero Image: 1,128x376 pixels
This photo is where you can provide a more in-depth look at the day-to-day experiences of your company’s employees. The hero photo also sits as a banner at the top of your company page and is usually larger than other LinkedIn photos.
Square Logo: 60x60 pixels
This is the company or brand image that appears when you are being searched, and because it is so smaller in photo size, you want to make sure that the photo you use is still recognizable and eye-catching to your audience or potential job candidates.
Business Banner Image: 646x220 pixels
These types of images are more prominent to use because they appear whenever a user visits your company or brand page. With this image located on your homepage, this is a great way to engage with your user, who has most likely been actively searching for you.
If you want to meaningfully engage with your audience, and see what your customers are saying about you, Twitter is the platform to keep your eye on. With recent updates made not just to the user experience and interface of the platform but also the layout, here are some guidelines to using social media images on Twitter.
Profile Photo: 400x400 pixels
Your Twitter profile picture is the main image that presents you or your brand and is displayed at 200x200 px in a round format but 400x400 px as a square image. The maximum twitter profile photo image size for is 2MB and the image types are limited to PNG, JPG or GIF. In addition to this, there are 3 different places that your profile photo can appear on Twitter:
Header Photo: 1,500x500 pixels
Your Twitter header image is the photo that appears at the top of your Twitter profile page and is layered behind your profile photo. Because this header photo is slightly larger than your profile photo, make sure you save it at the highest resolution possible. This will give you room to get creative with the image you use for your header and is also one of the first images that followers will see when they come across your profile page.
In-Stream Photo: 1,024x512 pixels
Twitter users are able to include social media images or even social media infographics to any of their tweets without the photos affecting their tweet character count. Uploaded photos will appear in your followers’ streams and the streams of their followers, if they have retweeted your content.
The platform, however, may collapse your Twitter images into smaller sizes or dimensions in order to fit the user's stream, so make sure that you set your Twitter to display the part of the photo that you want followers to see. You can do this by setting the width of your image to fit the minimum requirements, and horizontally centering your content so the most important elements of the image are visible in the collapsed version.
YouTube has presented itself as a phenomenal platform on social media for brands to reach their audiences through social video content, and with over 1 billion unique users, it's understandable why standing out on this platform with good quality images is important.
Channel Profile Picture: 800x800 pixels
While YouTube does allow you to select different profile image borders (square or circle), the dimensions stay the same so make sure that your YouTube has a profile picture set up before you select your border.
Channel Cover Photo: 2,560x1,440 pixels
Known as your "channel art", this cover photo can act as a way for viewers to stay longer on your channel and view more of your content if the channel art is highly visual. Use websites, like Canva, to help you create free channel art.
One important thing to remember, though, is that because viewers are watching YouTube content on various devices, the size of this channel cover photo will change in aspect ratios and dimensions. Make sure that you have optimized this particular image for each streaming device.
Video Uploads: 1,280x720 (Minimum HD)
Your YouTube channel is incomplete until you start uploading your video content to the social platform, which is one of the most important parts of establishing your online presence on the site. Videos can tell viewers something about you as a person or highlight a product or service that your business is offering.
When it comes to showcasing your visual creativity, no other photo-sharing social network is as popular for this as Instagram. With over 500 million users, what is the ideal social media image sizes for your content on this platform?
Profile Picture: 110x110 pixels
With Instagram being a visually-based platform, using the right social media image for your profile picture is where it all begins to ensure that audiences can easily recognize you or find you through the Explore tab.
Photo Thumbnails: 161x161 pixels
When a user goes to your page, your content is presented to them in a format known as "The Grid," which is all of your images and videos arranged in rows of thumbnails. These smaller versions of your images and videos will then expand once a user clicks on the content piece and includes a place for people to comment.
Photo Size: 1,080x1,080 pixels
Once a user has clicked into a thumbnail of your photo or video, the photo size increases or is enlarged for the user to view. This is where you want to ensure that you upload content at it's highest resolution as Instagram can decrease the resolution of content slightly when it hasn't been taken natively on the app.
Instagram Stories: 1,080x1,920 pixels
Instagram Stories has become a popular way of sharing more visual content onto the social network with both video and image options available to users to publish.
As a marketing tool, Pinterest can be an amazing social network to help drive referral traffic to your website because of how the platform is predominately comprised of external links.
So when using this tool as part of your marketing strategy, make sure that you optimize your Pinterest page constantly and use the right social media images for your pins.
Profile Photo: 165x165 pixels
If you choose to set up your Pinterest account through Facebook, Twitter or email, the platform will use those profile photos from those accounts for your Pinterest page. If, however, you want to set up a new profile picture, you'll need to upload a square image that Pinterest will then resize to fit.
Pin Image Size: 1,000x1500 pixels
When you're adding a pin to your board, you need to remember that Pinterest puts a limit on the width of the image you pin but not the length, which is great if you want to share social media infographics as pins. This gives you the chance to add an image that is square or one that will scale to be even taller. Just make sure that you create social media images for this platform because they add more value to the user.
When it comes to Pinterest, creating boards is one of the most important parts of the platform in order to organize your pins and help drive traffic to your website. When creating boards, make sure that you use social media images that fit the size criteria perfectly. Not only is it important to choose a photo that is enticing to your audience, it’s important to choose one that’s relevant to that particular board.
Whether you choose to go landscape or portrait, upload to Facebook or Twitter, make sure you follow this guide to take away the guesswork in figuring out which social media image sizes for 2021 work best on which platforms. Bookmark this post to save it as a reference for when you create images for social media, and sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date with our latest content.