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When you’re selecting cover photos, shared images, and other social media assets, knowing the basic image dimensions might not cut it.

What if you want to make sure a certain part of your cover photo isn’t obstructed by your profile photo? And what’s the difference between shared link thumbnails, or in-stream photos — are the dimensions different for those?

As it turns out, sizing images correctly for social media is no simple task. Even just for Facebook marketing, photo dimensions vary according to where and how it’s shared — from cover photos, to timeline images, to profile pictures.

But if you’re looking for a detailed guide on social media image sizes, you’re in luck — this infographic from Spredfast has you covered. It’s a valuable resource to keep on-hand for the next time you’re designing or selecting visual content for your social channels. And for quicker reference, scroll down to see a written list of essential social media image dimensions.

So, without further ado — let’s get visual.

Social Media Image Sizes: Quick Reference

All dimensions below are in pixels, width x height.

Facebook

With
2 billion daily active users, Facebook continues to
outpace other social media channels. The images you use here are crucial — choosing a lower-quality one can make or break your engagement. Pro tip: The way images display on your
own timeline might look different.

• Cover image: 828 x 315
• Profile image: ≥180 x 180
• Shared image: 1200 x 900
• Shared link preview image: 1200 x 628

Twitter

Twitter, meanwhile, is often the social network of choice for users to talk
about you. It’s where customers ask questions, leave praise, and request help. But, the format and display have changed several times in the course of its history, so here are the image dimensions you need to know.

• Header image: 1500 x 500
• Profile image: 400 x 400
• Timeline image: 506 x 253

Google+

Don’t be fooled: Google+ is still an important place for brands to maintain a consistent presence, even if you think it might not get as much attention as other social media channels. The last thing you want to do is to have users stumble upon your profile there, only to find months (or more) of radio silence and distorted visual content. Plus, remember: Where there’s Google+, there is Google, indicating a connection to the search giant itself. Here’s how to visually optimize that presence.

• Profile image: 250 x 250
• Cover image: 1080 x 608
• Shared image: 506 pixels wide
• Shared video: ≥506 x 284
• Shared link image thumbnail: 150 x 150

Instagram

Given that Instagram’s bread-and-butter is visual content, you’ll want your presence on this channel to match that foundation, especially in terms of quality. And with over
700 million daily active users, you’ll want to look your best. Here are the dimensions that can help.

• Profile image: 110 x 110
• Image thumbnail: 161 x 161
• Shared images: 1080 x 1080
• Shared videos: 1080 pixels wide

Pinterest Image Sizes

Here’s a fun fact:
90% of content posted on Pinterest consists of external links. For that reason, it’s worthwhile to leverage Pinterest for referral traffic — but it still has to catch your audience’s eyes. Here are the dimensions to make sure your Pinterest presence maintains visual quality.

• Profile image: 180 x 180
• Board cover image: 214 x 100
• Pin preview: 238 pixels wide

LinkedIn

Love it or hate it, LinkedIn is
the social channel for digital professional networking. And depending on your industry, it can still be a good vehicle for traffic and discovery, especially within the B2B sector. Plus, if you’re using it for recruiting purposes, it’s important to present well on a job that several people use for research on job listings, as well as employer culture, location, and more.

• Banner image: 1850 x 200
• Profile image: 400 x 400
• Cover image: 1536 x 768
• Shared image: 350 pixels wide
• Shared link preview: 180 x 110
• Logo image: 400 x 400

YouTube

Here’s another network where visual content reigns supreme — not to mention, one with more than
one billion users. Make sure your own visual assets match that underlying purpose and philosophy — not just with the videos you share on there, but with the profile presence you maintain.

• Channel cover images: Varies by viewing platform
• Channel icon: 800 x 800
• Video thumbnail: 1280 x 720

Tumblr

Tumblr has been called many things: a blogging platform, a social network, and a content-sharing center where marketers and consumers alike can, well, share whatever they want. And with
372.5 million blogs currently registered on the site, you’ve got company — so shape up and make sure your visuals fit the right dimensions.

• Profile image: 128 x 128
• Image post: 500 x 750 | 1280 x 1920 maximum

Snapchat

At long last, we arrive at Snapchat: yet another social media channel known primarily for its visual assets. When it comes to using this network for marketing purposes, dimensions are fairly uniform, whether you’re simply looking to use a geofilter, or you’re hoping to share an
ad or sponsored lens.

• Geofilters, ads, and lenses: 1080 x 1920

First and foremost, I need to give credit where credit is due.

The idea for this post spawned from Steve Rayson’s incredibly interesting and well-researched post, “We Analyzed 100 Million Headlines. Here’s What We Learned.”

Yes — I even borrowed the headline structure.

But if you haven’t read Steve’s post, I suggest doing so immediately. It offers excellent insights and data points on not only headlines and their importance, but also, on content marketing and social media in general.

In addition to all the valuable and actionable information about headlines, I was struck by how much we can learn from analyzing chunks of data like this. Couple this new zeal for writing a data-backed piece with our goal of getting published on the HubSpot Marketing Blog, and here we are: analyzing the 39 most-shared HubSpot Blog posts over the last year, and sharing what we found.

Couple that new zeal for writing a data-backed piece with our goal of getting published on the HubSpot Marketing Blog, and here we are. Over the past year, my team at WSI analyzed HubSpot’s 39 most-shared blog posts — and now, I’m sharing what we found.

What We Learned From the HubSpot Blog’s Most-Shared Posts in 2017

Marketing Reigns Supreme

As many consumers of HubSpot content know, the company separates its blog into three main categories: marketing, sales, and customer success.

It’s probably no surprise, but of HubSpot’s 39 most-shared posts of the last year, 38 of them come from within the marketing category. A single post from the sales blog made it onto the list, coming in as the 13th-most-shared HubSpot blog post in the last 12 months. 

The folks at HubSpot likely already know this about their blog. Readers and potential customers, in turn, learn that at HubSpot’s core is the concept of inbound marketing — and the Marketing Blog serves as a go-to resource for this type of information.

The takeaway here for businesses, agencies, and marketers is to become acutely aware of which content your audience is most interested in reading. Which type of content and topics does this audience engage with and share the most? If you don’t know, find out. Then, create more of that goodness.

Numbers, and Years, and Words … Oh, My

If you thought I was going to link and talk about Rayson’s excellent post on headlines — and not discuss headlines — you were way off.

At WSI, we analyzed a much smaller dataset than Rayson did, but still got some fascinating results — specifically, around certain attributes.

Those attributes include numbers, years, and total words — as evidenced by the above section header. Of the 39 posts in question, just under half contained a number in the headline. Seventeen posts had nine words or fewer in the headline, and 11 used a year. 

The longtail: It lives.

Perhaps more telling, however, is the fact that only seven posts had none of these characteristics. Here’s the breakdown:

As you can see from the chart above, out of the 39 most-shared HubSpot blog posts of the year, very few contained no year or number, and had more than nine words in their headline. Fourteen posts included at least one of the headline attributes — a number, a year, or fewer than nine words in their respective headlines. And, 18 out of the 39 most shared blog post headlines combine at least two of these three headline attributes.

Want to see similar results? Consider crafting post headlines with numbers, years and fewer than nine words. Have a look at the title of this blog — you might notice that we included two out of the three.

The Infographic Lives

Perhaps you’ve heard rumors that infographics are dead. Whether it’s because they’ve been overdone or have just lost their luster, we’ve personally noticed that people seem to love talking about the downfall of the infographic.

But based on our analysis of HubSpot’s 39 most-shared posts of the year, I think the rumors of the infographic’s demise are greatly exaggerated. 

Here’s my proof: 13 of the top 39 most-shared HubSpot posts — just over 33% — included infographics. I don’t know about you, but to me, it sounds like readers still like to digest facts and data via infographic format … and share them, too.

Specifically, if you have plans to include guest blogs on your site, try to target those who are offering infographics, as many of the ones published on HubSpot blogs are from third parties.

In the End …

I hope you take away at least two things after reading this post.

1) Actionable Insights

After analyzing HubSpot’s most-shared blog posts, we were able to determine some common elements that you can leverage within your blogging strategy, to help make a difference in shares and engagement. Hopefully, the process of reviewing HubSpot’s 39 most-shared posts of the year has shown you what works well on an industry-leading blog, and how you can find out what’s working on your blog, too. And, seeing as blog.hubspot.com has 4.5 million monthly views, we’d like to think this outlet leads by example.

2) Inspiration

Second, I hope you feel motivated to create a similar analysis, and a blog post based on the results. When creating this post, we saw how much can be learned from some research and graphs.

Using BuzzSumo, for example — which we’ve used on the WSI blog before — to gather the social share and engagement data, and Canva to make the charts, you, too, can share some actionable best practices with your fellow marketers.

Make no mistake: I’m not saying it’s easy to put a post like this together. But, it’s not as daunting as it might seem.

If there are any other patterns or trends you’ve noticed that can make a blog post more engaging, feel free reach out to WSI on Twitter or Facebook — we’d love to hear about it.