Social Media Branding and Photo Size Roundup

October 22, 2012 1 Comment

Maintaining consistent branding across your social media and web marketing presences is important to your overall brand strategy. Here’s the first in a series of articles on each social media platform and how to make the best use of the tools there to maintain a solid, consistent brand. Let’s begin with a roundup of photo sizes, rules and updates you’ll need to keep your accounts looking sharp and up-to-date.

Facebook Timeline Cover and Profile Photos

Facebook Profile Picture Size

For Facebook brand page profile pictures upload a square image of your brand’s logo or use another square image that represents your brand. The display size for the profile picture on a Facebook Timeline brand page is 160 x 160 pixels. Uploaded images must be at least 180 x 180 pixels and will be cropped to fit.   On your Page’s cover photo the profile picture displays 23 pixels from the left side and 210 pixels from the top. Read Facebook’s full detailed post on cover photos here for more details.

Facebook Timeline Cover Photo Size

Facebook Timeline cover photos are 851 wide by 315 pixels tall. Images smaller than this will be stretched to fit, which could affect the quality. Use a high quality image in this space to welcome your fans, but make sure you follow the rules and regulations for Timeline cover photos. Cover photos can not contain references to discounts, contact information or calls to action such as “get it now” or “become a fan.”

To add a cover photo to your Facebook Timeline, hover over the cover photo area and click “choose cover.” From there you can upload a photo from your computer or choose a photo from your Facebook photo albums. Either way, choose an image that represents your brand and your personality.

Facebook gives you the details on cover photo sizes here.

Here’s how both the cover photo and the Timeline photo are placed on the page:

Facebook Timeline photo placement

From Facebook.com/help

Google + Profile Settings

Google Plus profile pictures should be 250 pixels x 250 pixels. Google will ask you to crop images larger than that to fit upon upload. Cover images should be 940 x 180 pixels or you can use the thumbnail images as an option, which are each 112 x 112 pixels. Unlike Facebook, Google (currently) doesn’t have the same restrictions for branding and CTAs in cover photos so brand away!

YouTube Brand Channel

Unless you have an official  brand channel, your YouTube profile photo is the same as your Google profile. The current wisdom for a YouTube background image is 970 pixels wide; however, YouTube offers a lot more options through it’s official brand channels. Brand channels have a 970 pixels wide x 150-pixel-high banner which supports an image map so you can add links to your image. There is a 640-pixel-wide video player in the main content area and a 310-pixel-wide sidebar for displaying stats about your channel and links to your other social media accounts. On YouTube brand channels your image avatar should be 1600px by 1600px and should be a JPG, GIF, BMP, or PNG. For a complete guide to setting up an official YouTube branded channel visit their how-to page here. 

Twitter Profile Branding

Twitter background images should be no more than 90 pixels maximum on the left and must be in PNG, GIF, or JPG format, smaller than 800k. For your Twitter header image, use an image 1252×626 pixels (with a maximum file size of 5MB). Upload this image in the “design” section of your profile.

LinkedIn Branding

If you’ve made a company page for your business on LinkedIn, there are more options for branding available. Minimum size for the header image is 646 x 220 pixels but LinkedIn will allow you to crop a larger image once you’ve uploaded it. Logo images should be 100 x 60 pixels. If you’re adding banner images under the products and services pages, those images should be 640 x 220. LinkedIn allows company pages up to three banner images. Use this space to highlight your most important products. 

I’ll continue this series with in-depth instructions for each platform, but for now let this serve as a cheat sheet of sorts. Do you have any suggestions for branding your pages? Leave them here in the comments or on my Facebook page.

Filed under Business, Facebook, social media, Twitter Tagged with , , , , , ,

LinkedIn Company Page Settings Updates

June 21, 2012 2 Comments

LinkedIn made a few changes and updates to their company pages recently. If you haven’t updated your page in awhile, or if you haven’t set one up yet for your company, here’s what you need to know.

LinkedIn Targeted Status Updates

Launched in April with a test group of pages, targeted status updates are now available to all LinkedIn Company pages. According to their blog post, “companies can now  communicate with their followers in a very personalized way and provide content tailored to specific audiences.”  Here’s their official video telling you all about it.

In addition to targeted status updates, LinkedIn has also given their page insights an overhaul.

New LinkedIn Page Insights

LinkedIn also recently updated their page insights to include follower statistics, page statistics and insights. Follower statistics include charts and graphs on your total followers, follower demographics and on the engagement you’re getting from your company status updates. These stats also include a summary of the most recent follower profiles and total post impressions.

Page statistics include page views, page visitor demographics, unique visitors and product and service clicks. If you have the careers tab activated this is where that data will display as well.

Insights include “people who viewed this page also viewed” metrics, recent employee status changes, home city of employees, common employee skills and the employees with the most recommendations.

Follower Statistics LinkedIn

Do you have a company page on LinkedIn? How are you using it to engage your followers?

Filed under Business, LinkedIn, Marketing, social media Tagged with ,

How I’m Handling Copyright on Pinterest

May 23, 2012 3 Comments

I’m preparing for a web presentation on using Pinterest for business  and reflecting on how to answer the many questions that have come up lately surrounding the issue of copyright. Remember that what I advise below is not legal advice because I’m not a lawyer. Instead, I’m a social media professional trying to wade my way through the ever changing landscape of copyright (remember Napster?) and the virtual sharing of material online. Here’s what I’m doing to try to resolve the issue on my own blog and for my clients.

 

Opinions vary on this topic. There are some that have decided to delete their boards altogether, like Kirsten in this article:

A Lawyer Who is Also a Photographer Just Deleted All Her Pinterest Boards Out Of Fear - Business Insider Magazine

Curiously, I recently tried to visit the Pinterest account of Evan Sharp, Pinterest designer and Co-Founder and found this 404 not found message:

Pinterest 404

Hmmmm. Not sure if this is due to copyright issues or not, but curious nonetheless.

I was able to find plenty of articles that cautioned business owners yet still recommended ways to pin appropriately without violating copyright laws, such as:

What You Should Know About Pinterest and Copyright – PC World

Pinterest Copyright Legal Issues – Mashable

Here, Forbes Magazine weighs in on the Fair Use Defense argument for copyright issues.

So here’s what I’ve decided to do.

I’m going to continue pinning with caution. I’m creating my own content whenever possible and using the “when in doubt” rule. If I don’t have permission to use it on my blog, I’m not going to pin it on Pinterest either. I”m also making sure to comment on pins I’m sharing from original sources.

I’m thinking twice before repinning. When I first joined Pinterest I repinned with abandon – not thinking to click through each pin to make sure it lead to an original or credible source. If I liked the image I shared it. I learned my lesson when I repinned an image that led users back to an image with a virus. Thankfully a user pointed out my error, albeit on my client’s Facebook page. Duh! From that moment on I realized I should be checking each pin BEFORE mindlessly repinning it. Lesson learned.

I’m pinning from other sources I’ve created. For example, I have a photo blog on Tumblr that explores my passion for gardening. I’m pinning images from it more often.

I’m making sure the original source is credited. I share infographics on personal branding and social media best practices quite often as well and I’m taking more care to make sure they are pinned from the original source – or I’m repinning them from that source. If Mashable pins one of their images, for example, I’m repinning from their original pin, as I’m pretty sure they are ok with me sharing their content.

If the original site has a PinIt button I’m going to use it. Sites like Pottery Barn stand to benefit a great deal from users repinning their images.  Their website has a Pinterest button clearly displayed as one of their social connection methods and I’m going to assume that if a site includes a PinIt button they want you to use it. Although this doesn’t offer full protection against copyright issues, I’m going to guess that sites like these are probably not going to go after users of their content.

I’m going through my boards and removing images I’m not sure fit these rules. As I learn more I’m going to trim and delete until I’m comfortable with what I’ve shared. This will be an ongoing process as the landscape for social media sharing and copyright continues to change.

All that being said I’ve already written a couple posts on using Pinterest for Business and on how to schedule tweets from Pinterest if you’d like to learn more.

How are you handling copyright issues on your Pinterest boards? I’d appreciate your comments here.

Filed under Business, Pinterest, social media

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