2020 Social Media Image and Video Size Guide
Written for Hearst Bay Area by Janine Perri
So you’ve created your social media marketing strategy and organized your content calendar. Now it’s time to start scheduling your posts!
Even though it can be hard to keep up with ever-evolving social media trends, there’s one principle that hasn’t changed much over time: a picture is worth a thousand words.
Adding images to your social channels follows the age-old mantra of “show, don’t tell.” And marketers who incorporate images into their social posts tend to see increased engagement across the board.
Here’s what we mean.
Why Visuals Increase Engagement on Social Media
Research from BuzzSumo revealed that Facebook posts with images receive 2.3 times more engagement than those without images. Similarly, data analyzed by Buffer found that tweets that included images received 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites, and 150% more retweets than tweets that were text-only.
These increased results are due to the fact that humans are visual creatures. Our brains are wired to process visual imagery and we rely heavily on our sense of site to keep us alive from an evolutionary standpoint. We are attracted to color, and we like things to be displayed to us in an easy-to-digest manner.
And for highly visual platforms like Pinterest, Snapchat, and Instagram, it’s all about having quality images to tell the story of your brand.
However, there is one important caveat.
Social Media Images Aren’t One Size Fits All
Unfortunately, when it comes to social media images, one size does not fit all. Before you invest time into creating content, be sure to know the sizes your images should be for each social media platform.
Things to Know About Social Media Image Sizes
There are several key differences between posting images on Facebook vs. Instagram (including Instagram’s overall focus on content with vertical dimensions to accommodate most smartphone screens).
To make matters even more complicated, individual social media channels can have different size requirements for different types of posts.
Best sizing practices for Instagram Stories are not necessarily the same as best practices for regular image posts.
Social media image sizes depend on factors like where the image appears on the feed, the intended aspect ratio or orientation (square vs. landscape vs. portrait), whether the image is intended for a personal page or a business page, and whether the content is meant to be for organic posts or social media marketing.
Images are not the only form of visual content that requires an extra level of care.
Things to Know About Social Media Video Sizes
Growth in video marketing has exploded across social media channels in recent years and has become an incredibly powerful tool for content marketers.
Video advertising increases purchase intent by 97% and brand association by 139%.
Keep in mind the size and length of your videos will vary across platforms, too. Videos between 15–30 seconds tend to perform best on Instagram, while the top-performing videos on Facebook average around 1-minute. Similarly, video content might require different specs depending on if it’s being posted from a YouTube link, uploaded as a file, or live-streamed.
Sounds like a lot to remember, doesn’t it?
When building your brand, it’s important to make sure your creative is clean and consistent across platforms. The last thing you want is for your images to look distorted because they’re not sized correctly, or your videos to get cut off because they’re too long.
This social media image size guide has the most up-to-date specifications for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Bookmark this guide so you can reference it when you’re creating content!
- Profile Photo: 180 x 180px
- Cover Photo: 820 x 312px — Displays as 640 x 360px on smartphones
- Video: Minimum Width 600px
- Shared Image: 1200 x 630px
- Shared Link: 1200 x 628px
- Event Image: 1920 x 1080px
- Sponsored Ad Image: 1200 x 628px
- Sponsored Ad Video: resolution 600 x 315 px for landscape or 600 x 600px for square — Max file size 4GB
- Profile Photo: 400 x 400px — Max file size 4MB
- Company Logo: 300 x 300px
- Background Photo: 1536 x 768px — Max file size 4MB
- Square logo for search: 60 x 60px
- Shared Image: 1104 x 736px
- Hero Image: 1128 x 376px — Max file size 2MB
- Business Banner Image: 646 x 220px — Max file size 2MB
- Sponsored Content (Image & Video): 1200 x 627px — YouTube and Vimeo links are supported for video
- Profile Photo: 400 x 400px — Max file size 2MB
- Cover Photo: 1500 x 500px — Max file size 5MB
- Image Post: 440 x 220px — Max file size 5 MB
- Website or app card ad: 800 x 418px for landscape, 800 x 800 for square
- Single and multi-image tweets: Minimum 600 x 335 pixels
- Videos and Sponsored Video Ads: Max file size 512MB — Max length 2 min 20 seconds
- Profile Image: 110 x 110px
- Photo Thumbnails: 161 x 161px
- Photo Posts: 1080 x 1080px
- Landscape Posts: 1080 x 566px
- Portrait Posts: 1080 x 1350px
- Instagram Stories: 1080 x 1920px
- Landscape Video: Minimum 600 x 315px — Max length 1 minute
- Square Video: Minimum 600 x 600px — Max length 1 minute
- Vertical video: Minimum 600 x 750px — Max length 1 minute
- Videos for Instagram Stories: Minimum resolution is 600 x 1067px — Max length 15 seconds
- Profile Image: 165 x 165px
- Board Display: 222 x 150px
- Small Thumbnails: 55 x 55px
- Pins: 236px wide (height is scaled)
After you’ve optimized your social media image sizes, it’s important to keep track of what’s working and what’s not.
Whenever you launch a social media strategy, make sure you set goals and KPIs at the outset in order to measure effectiveness.
For example, is there one type of image, video, or post that tends to garner the highest response from your audience? What’s your sweet spot for video length? Further iterating on your insights can help you optimize the user experience on your social channels.
Remember to keep this social media image size guide 2020 handy when creating content for social media. And always put your best foot forward when it comes to brand marketing.
2020 Social Media Visual Guide — Key Takeaways:
- Visual content, such as images and videos, are known to increase important factors like audience engagement, purchase intent, and brand association.
- Size matters, especially when you’re sharing images and videos across social media channels. Size can refer to elements like the dimensions, aspect ratio, display (such as on a desktop vs a smartphone), and file size. Note that sizes not only differ between different platforms, but even within platforms depending on the type of content that is being shared or where it will appear.
- Even if the specifications for video content have long maximum lengths (like 10 minutes), in general, video ads need to be short and sweet in order to capture viewers’ attention right away.
- Tailoring images and videos to each social media platform’s unique specifications will help your brand resonate with an audience, since you will be producing clean and consistent creative across multiple channels.
