Fitting you up for Facebook

Here at Inspire IT we often get asked for help setting up professional-looking Facebook pages for businesses, and a pile of photos arrives for us to fit in where we can.  We’re happy to help but it isn’t always easy.

Facebook has very specific requirements when it comes to image sizes, so I thought it would be useful to clarify what’s needed.

For a start, your cover photo: the image that represents you and your business.  It has to be 851 pixels (px) by 315 px.  That’s not a standard size for a photo, which means your image has to be either stretched, squashed or designed from scratch.  Near the bottom left corner sits your profile picture, 23 px from the left edge, 210 px from the top; it has to be uploaded as a 180 x 180 px file even though it appears only 160 x 160 in the final arrangement.  And it had better be a clear photo or logo, because it shrinks to a tiny 32 x 32 px when it appears on your timeline.

Moving down to your “About Us” blurb, you have a maximum of 255 characters (including punctuation and spaces) to tell the reader all he or she needs to know.  Thumbnails of photos have a 111 x 74 px allowance, as do images for your apps; with an 8 px gap between each one, you can fit a maximum of 3 app images into the available space.

Pictures on your timeline preview are 403 px squares, but video previews are 403 x 26 px.  If you share a link, the relevant cover photo will be small, at 156 x 116 px, but you’ll have a huge 63,206 characters to play with for your comment.

In your News Feed, you can have a profile picture of 50 px square and as much text as necessary – though it’s worth getting your main message into the first five lines as Faceboook will put “see more...” after that.

When you want to highlight one of your posts or milestones the image grows to 843 x 403 px, nearly the same size as your cover photo – unless it’s a video, in which case you have 843 x 475 px.  Confused?  There’s more...

When it comes to advert image sizes, things become even more complicated. A URL ad allows you a 25 character title and a thumbnail picture 100 x 72 px; for a page ad you get text for the page name and a profile picture 50 x 50 px; for a page post ad you get the page name and a picture 32 x 32 px.  And so it goes on.

So next time you want us to make your Facebook page fabulous, you’ll know that we’re not asking for specific image sizes just to be difficult.  If you don’t want your photo to look fuzzy, distorted or even unrecognisable, we need it as near the required size as possible.  

All pixelled out?  Leave it to Inspire IT!

David Dwyer is Managing Director of Inspire Web Development. He has years of experience in a range of web and IT roles plus seven years in sales and marketing in a blue-chip FMCG company. David’s academic and professional qualifications include a BA (Hons) in Business Economics (Personnel & Ergonomics) from the University of Paisley, an MSc in Information Technology (Systems) from Heriot-Watt University and PRINCE2 Practitioner-level certification. He is also an active member of the British Computer Society, Entrepreneurial Exchange and Business for Scotland.

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