Howdy guys,
As promised, here’s my very first DIY Online piece to aid businesses to become better communicators. I thought I’d start with one of my greatest pet peeves on Facebook. I’ve seen so many blurry cover and profile pictures from both businesses and individuals that I thought I’d compile a short, guide as to how to size your pictures when loading them onto Facebook. If you’ve been struggling with a blurry cover or profile picture, then this is a def must-read piece for you.
Pictures play an integral part in building an audience when starting your business’s Facebook page. And because pictures are visual, they are much more pleasing to the eye then just words on a blank piece of paper. People are more likely to click on a gallery or album than read long paragraphs of texts. I cannot overemphasize the importance of adding pictures daily to your company’s Facebook page. So go ahead and post some, your audience will lovit!
Working out what image sizes to use on Facebook isn’t as easy as it could be and involves some wrangling to get the result you want. Each type of image on a page, profile, and timeline has its own size and quirks, making it very difficult to memorise of all the various sizes.
What makes things even more fun is that Facebook changes things from time to time. Sometimes it’s a small, incremental tweak. Sometimes it’s an entire overhaul (like the new timelines that were introduced). So it’s always a bit of a moving target. And there always seems to be a new system just around the corner.
In March 2014, Facebook announced a new layout for the timeline of business pages. As of June, most pages were switched over. I’ve updated the information below to reflect the new layout. There’s a single column at the right with updates. The narrower column at left is for admin features and static information.
The new layout for business pages looks like this;
So lets start with the sizes of the cover picture on your Facebook page;
The Facebook Cover Photo is the large panoramic image space at the top of the timeline.
The image you upload must be at least 399px wide–one that’s at least 720px wide will work best. You can upload a photo already cropped and resized to precisely those sizes. Or you can upload a larger image, in which case you’ll be given a chance to move the image to choose the crop you’d like displayed.
To get the fastest loading times, upload a JPG file that’s 851 pixels wide, 315 pixels tall and less than 100 kilobytes.
Onto the profile picture.
You have to upload an image at least 180px by 180px. It’s displayed at 160px by 160px. The thin white border is added automatically and there’s no way to remove it.
Tip: If you find that your resulting profile picture, after it’s downsized in Facebook, is blurry, try uploading an image twice the size of the downsized image (that is, an image that is 320px by 320px). That should give a sharper result.
Below is a quick cheat sheet you can consult when you need to resize and load a picture onto Facebook quickly. You can download and save this cheat sheet for when you need it. It’s pretty straightforward and simple.
Do you experience any difficulties when uploading pictures onto your Facebook page? Tell me about it in my comments section. I’d like to remind business of the a great platform social media, and Facebook in particular is to communicate with your target audience. Besides for being cost-effective, its instant and it provides an informal platform to communicate with your customers. Please make use of this wonderful tool to reach your customers.
Happy Facebooking everyone!
Till next time,
xoxo…
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