Social Media Branding and Photo Size Roundup

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:

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.