Have you noticed that not all images on Facebook are created equal?
If you are marketing anything on Facebook, knowing the different image aspect ratio sizes for your Facebook page will allow you to take advantage of some marketing techniques that you may not have known where available to you.
Facebook will basically take your images and format them into 3 different image dimension sizes. Knowing what image dimension to use for what purpose, will help your brands exposure on Facebook tremendously.
There is a huge difference in how the image will look when you are sharing a link on Facebook vs when you are directly posting an image to Facebook. Let's go over the 3 different image aspect ratio sizes on Facebook and learn the differences.
Facebook Image Aspect Ratio A – The Square
When you post a square image DIRECTLY to Facebook, (in this example our image is 250px X 250px) It will look different after you post it than if you shared that exact same image from an article post online. (shared the article link directly)
Then there are TWO other aspect ratios, and this is where things can get real screwy
There is the 1200px X 800px (600px X 400px) aspect ratio and the 1200px X 630px (600 X 315) aspect ratio.
Facebook Image Aspect Ratio B – 600px X 400px
The only time you would ever want to use this image size is when posting directly to Facebook, such as a holiday card, or any image not linking anywhere. If you use this image size in one of your articles, when shared it is not going to fit correctly on Facebook.
Facebook Image Aspect Ratio C – 1200px X 630px
This is my favorite Facebook image size because of what you can do with it. Do not create and share this image size directly to Facebook, it will not fit correctly, however, when sharing a link from an article, THIS IS the IDEAL aspect ratio for creating unique Call to Action images to Facebook…. and here is how it is done.
1) Create a separate image in an aspect ratio of (600 X 315) (other than the one on your websites page already).
2) Paste the link to the page/post you want to send people to on your Facebook post.
3) Add the newly create (600 X 315) aspect ratio 'call to action' image.
4) Remove/delete the image Facebook pulled in by default
5) TAG it! #Tag it for the area you are in, tag it for the product, etc.
6) Post/Share it!
And here is a sample of what your new CTA image on Facebook will look like!
The other great thing about this image size is it also looks great on Google+ and Twitter as well.
The Most Sharable on Facebook
1024 x 512 – This size is great for Facebook, but not so much for sites like Pinterest.
Hope you can now see the potential in how you can now get Facebook images to work for you. All about knowing different aspect ratios for images on Facebook and how and when to create and use them!
