Best Image Sizes for Each Social Media Channel

There are many different social media platforms these days, each with its individualized format of sharing content. It is important to share high quality content on each platform to boost engagement with your brand or company. Some formats allow users to only share videos, photos, or typed messages, while others allow individuals to share a mix of these formats. It can also become especially challenging when it comes to sharing photos on different social media channels. Here we have created a guide to creating the best image sizes for social media. 

Instagram is the most popular platform for sharing photos as it was originally a photo-only platform. Today photos can be posted on your feed, your story, cover photos for reels, ads, and profile photos, which makes it important to know all of the different image sizes for social media. First, feed photos should be 1080 x 566 pixels for landscape, 1080 x 1350 pixels for portraits, and 1080 x 1080 pixels for square photos. Story and reel photos should be 1080 x 1920 pixels, which is an aspect ratio of 9:16. Instagram ad photos should be 1080 x 566 pixels for landscape and 1080 x 1080 pixels for square. They should also have a minimum width of 320 pixels and a maximum width of 1080 pixels.

Twitter also has different sizes for profile photos, header photos, and photos used in tweets. For profile photos, it is recommended that the photo is 400 x 400 pixels. Twitter is special in the fact that the majority of photos on the platform are horizontally oriented. This includes header photos, which are recommended to be 1500 x 500 pixels, and feed photos, which are to be 1600 x 1900 pixels.

Facebook, similar to Instagram, has many different sizes for photos on its platform. Photos can be used as profile pictures, cover photos, feed photos, as well as stories. Profile photos on Facebook should be 170 x 170 pixels and  cover photos should be 1200 x 628 pixels. Photos used in feed posts are recommended to be 1200 x 630 pixels and photos used in  stories should be 1080 x 1920 pixels.

Another main image-based platform is Pinterest. The recommended size for a profile photo is 165 x 165 pixels and the recommended size for a cover photo is a minimum of 800 x 450 pixels. When it comes to the sizes of pins, they can be 1000 x 1000 pixels, but it is recommended to be 1000 x 1500 pixels. For stories on Pinterest, photos should be 1080 x 1920 pixels, and fleets should be 1080 x 1920 pixels. 

LinkedIn and Snapchat each only have a few ideal image sizes to keep in mind when creating content for these platforms. The recommended size for profile photos on LinkedIn is 400 x 400 pixels and cover photos should be 1584 x 396 pixels. Meanwhile, feed post photos are recommended to be 1200 x 627 pixels. Even though Snapchat is a photo-based social media platform, it only has two sizes for photos that companies or brands should know. Ads on Snapchat should be 1080 x 1920 pixels and if making a geofilter, make it 120 x 120 pixels, at least.

The two mainly video-based platforms, Youtube and TikTok, only have a few sizes for photos on their sites. A profile photo on Youtube should be 800 x 800 pixels, a banner should be 2048 x 1152 pixels, and the thumbnail photo and video itself should both be sized at 1280 x 720 pixels. Lastly, on TikTok, a profile photo should be 20 x 20 pixels and a video should be sized at 1080 x 1920 pixels. 
Overall, no matter if the social media channel  is mainly photo-based or not, each site has individual recommendations for the best image sizes for social media. Brands and companies should keep track of these sizes and ratios to ensure that they are putting out the best quality content to their audience. This helps not only to catch the eye of new customers but also to remind current customers of their brand or company.