Visual Design Can Improve Your Social Media Marketing

Essential guide for Google +, Facebook and Twitter

2014 media sizes of cover photos for social networks, including backgrounds, profile pictures. This article isn’t only to present you with information about social media image dimensions, and give you practical advice to optimize your your social media pages, and improve its overall image throughout different social networks. In 2014 with all social media networks in competition for your attention you can’t afford to waste opportunities to attract new audiences.

The first impression of a business must be powerful and convincing in a matter of seconds. Social media image sizes 2014 – guide for Google +, Facebook and Twitter

Here are the latest sizes of images for the different social networks in September 2014.

Facebook Photos Size Guide / 2014 Layout

Facebook was all about text and links. But as it has grown up, images have become more and more important. They’re now more important for design and identity on the user interface, like your profile picture or cover photo. Working out what image sizes to use on Facebook isn’t as easy as it should be, each type of image, profile, and timeline has its own specific dimensions, and Facebook never has been very good about making its help pages easy to find.

The latest layout brings pages in line with personal profiles. There’s a single column at the right with updates. The narrower column at left is for admin features and static information.

Here is a preview of the 2014 Facebook profile layout:

Facebook Page profile and cover pictures are square and display at 160×160 pixels on your Page. The photo you upload must be at least 180×180 pixels. We recommend uploading a square image. Rectangular images will be cropped to fit a square. Your Page’s profile picture will also display next to your Page’s name around Facebook to represent your Page. Timeline image, recommended dimensions 851×315 pixels.

You can be creative with how your Page’s profile picture and cover photo go together. On your Page, the profile picture is located 16 pixels from the left side of your cover photo and 176 pixels from the top of your cover photo.

Once you’ve added your photo, you can change it easily. When you’re logged in to your account and on the Timeline view, if you hover the mouse over the Cover Photo you should get a “Change Cover” button at the bottom right of the Cover Photo. Click on that and you’ll get the menu item to choose where photo comes from. You can choose from existing photos you’ve uploaded to Facebook or upload a new one. And if you decide you want to reposition or remove the photo, you can use the same menu.

Facebook offers this advice: “To get the fastest load times for your Page, upload an sRGB JPG file that’s 851 pixels wide, 315 pixels tall and less than 100 kilobytes. For images with your logo or text-based content, you may get a higher quality result by using a PNG file.”

Image quality

Something to be aware of is that Facebook compresses some images pretty aggressively when you upload and display them.

It makes sense–naturally, they want to speed page loads and reduce bandwidth by applying as much compression as they can get away with. To my mind, they compress too much, but how noticeable it is will depend on whether things like the range of colors in your image and amount of detail in your photo.

Twitter’s cover dimensions –  2014

Social network Twitter launched its new profile experience to users all around the world. It’s appearance has changed dramatically: real changes that are far from the original structure. Twitter has swapped the aspects that made it so unique for a similar Facebook style. These changes, and other changes that they made in 2013, to give more importance to pictures and buttons. Twitter also optimized the navigation for Android and iOS devices which resulted in it being simpler to see, share, and tweet. The new Twitter is now available for all users.

You can customize your profile by selecting unique profile and header images, by pinning a Tweet, and by adding a name, bio, location, website and theme color that other users will see when they visit your profile page. Click the camera icon over your profile image to change your profile photo. Select to Upload photo or Remove, or simply drag and drop a photo into this section. Change header button to change your header photo. You’ll be given the option to upload a photo or remove your existing photo.

Twitter offer this advise: they suggest the following dimensions: Profile pic: 400×400 px and the Cover photo: 1500×500 px.

Profile picture: 400px by 400px. It’s displayed as a square image with rounded corners (the corners are applied automatically) and a thin white border. If you upload an image that isn’t a square, you’re given the option to reposition or zoom in when you upload. When the browser window resizes, the profile picture size stays constant.

Profile Header: 1500px by 500px. Panoramas work well. While 1500px x 500px is the recommended size, if you don’t want Twitter to resize the image, you can get away with 1263px x 421px. But even when it’s not being resized, it’ll still get crunched with heavy JPEG compression.

Google+’s cover dimensions 2014

Google + decided to change its cover photo and optimize it at the request of users who didn’t really like the huge picture they used to have. Google+’s latest design is fully responsive, your pictures will automatically adapt to different devices, androids, tablets and desktops. If you want to ensure maximum quality on all screens, tablets, or smartphones, we recommend you upload them with a size of at least 920×250 px but not more than 1080×608 px.

Google+ is the social media platform to show off. Its the most influential in positioning and ranking for all major search engines and  a must for any respectful company’s SEO and SEM strategy.

Important! create a Google+ page and professional profile if you want them to be found and well ranked in the results of search engines. If you want to optimize a picture for your brand or for your professional profile we recommend you use the 1080×608 px resolution, which keeps the most important information in the center.

Are you on Facebook, YouTube or Twitter? Make sure you’re getting the most out of your social media by getting your brand to stand out. We hope that this post has helped with your social media styling, We are here to help you with your brand the way you feel most comfortable.