How to Size Your Social Media Images for Max Impact

Love it or hate it, social media is the easiest way to promote your gigs when you don’t have marketing megabucks. But in today’s age of mobile-first and shorter than ever attention spans, slapping a band poster on a Facebook post isn’t going to cut it. To get fans to pay attention, it needs to look good and be easily read. That means no weird fonts (no, you can’t even use Papyrus ironically) and getting your dimensions right on each platform.

Annoyingly, these dimensions change a lot too. Every time a social media platform refreshes their look, the dimensions change. What you used last year, might not look so hot now. With that in mind, here’s a end of 2020-fresh round up of all the dimensions you’re going to need for event banners and promo images on social media:

Facebook Dimensions

Facebook Pages Cover Photo

Your Facebook Cover image is the first impression on your profile, so the ideal image is something that makes a strong impact, with little to no text. Facebook has recently introduced cover videos too, which means you can also use clips from past shows or events. If you’re using a logo or text, keep lots of space around the edges so it can be easily seen on any device. Here’s a look at ours on mobile as an example:

It’s really tempting for events, especially shows with multiple acts, to try and use their poster or lineup in the cover images. But overloading your image with text is likely to look weird on some devices or get cut off completely.

Here’s an example of Beyond The Valley’s current video cover photo, vs a cover image from their 2019 event with the acts listed:

As you can see, the image on the right is cut off at the bottom and edges. It probably looked great on a computer, but is harder to read on mobile. The left hand image shows a clip from the event to entice new fans to their next show.

As for dimensions, the Facebook Cover page image is rectangle, displayed at 820 pixels wide x 312 pixels high on a desktop and 640W x 360H pixels on smartphones. You should aim for an image ratio around 16:9. Your image can be any size, but it should be at least 400W x 150 H pixels (8:3 ratio) to show up.

Facebook Pages Profile Picture

The profile pic is that little square pic that represents your brand — ideal for an artist headshot or venue logo. These images display at 170W x 170H pixels (1:1 ratio) on computers, 128W x 128H pixels on smartphones. This is the image that gets cropped into a circular shape in ads, mobile pages, and posts — so make sure you keep your image centred and don’t run logos edge-to-edge.

Facebook Events Cover Photo

Just when you thought you nailed your cover photo, you discover that the Facebook Events dimensions are different! Facebook event cover photo dimensions are 1200W x 628H pixels (2:1 ratio). So if you’re listing a headliner or tagline for your event in your main image, make sure you create the right size and use the space effectively. Here’s a great example that uses a strong image and space around the text to make an impact:

Instagram Dimensions

Instagram Stories

Generally these aren’t too tricky as the stories will fit to the screen of the user, but the recommended sizing is a portrait image of 1080W x 1920H pixels (9:16 ratio).

Instagram Post

There are three sizing options for Instagram posts:

Instagram’s default square: 1080W x 1080H pixels (1:1 ratio).
Portrait: 1080W x 1350H pixels (4:5 ratio), ideal for band poster style images
Landscape: 1080W x 608H pixels (1.91:1) which works well for traditional photos and filmed shots

Spotify

Spotify Profile Image

The main image used on your Spotify artist or event profile should be 750W x 750H pixels (1:1 ratio), which will be cropped as a circle, much like the Facebook profile images.

Spotify Cover Photo

The recommended sizing for a Spotify cover is 2660W x 1140H pixels (7:3 ratio) and Spotify recommends you don’t include any text, just an image that will make an impact.

Creating images to promote your gigs on social media

If you’re the kind of person whose graphic design skills capped out at Microsoft Paint, you’re in luck. You don’t need professional programs like Photoshop to create decent looking images to promote your events. Most image viewers (like Apple’s Preview) now offer the option to resize your images to any custom size and add some basic markups like text.

There are also plenty of free tools around to help you create images at just the right size, like Canva, Pablo, and Landscape. The template-based sites are especially handy if you want text or don’t have amazing imagery to start with. They will also help you create all the variations you need so you have consistent images for each platform.

If you’re a promoter running multiple social media accounts for events and artists, you can also check out social media management tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite that have image resizing tools included.

Targeting fans on social media

Once you’ve given your profiles a makeover, check out our latest post on how to use retargeting to advertise to the fans you didn’t know you had.