Lots of useful information about creating and using visuals as promotional tools to engage your audience and sell.
Resources
- Social Media Examiner: optimizing images for multiple social networks (Nov 20, 2014) / How to Optimize Social Media Images (Apr 2, 2015)
- Highly recommended! Image creation and sizing for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
- Infographics guide by Social Media Examiner
- Facebook image dimensions: "Sizes and Dimensions" page!
- Page header, Dec 2016: 851x315 px
- Comprehensive guide to Facebook photo sizes
- by Miranda Miller, Search Engine Watch, Dec 31, 2013
- Youtube's channel art help page
General Notes
- For SEO: ensure file names are descriptive
- Keywords!
- Use hyphens, underscores in file names, not spaces
- SME recommends: always use lossless compression! (Apr 2, 2015)
- Add alt tags and other metadata
- Alt tags: no more than 125 chars
- WordPress: title (60 chars), description (155), caption, alt tag (125)
- Human brain apparently processes pictures 60.000 times faster than words (according to SME)
- User-generated: invite users to share content! Anything that shows how they use my product
- Give them an easy option to submit photos
- Use Infographics and Slideshare to publish and disseminate your content!
- Make collages if I have more than 1 good image (Service: Pic Collage)
Technical Info
Always Up-To-Date Image Size Guide - Sprout Social
General
- Google+, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn: optimal choice: horizontalimages!
- Ideal resolution: 1280x720 (16:9)
- Image dimensions:
- Profile portrait image: 160x160 px (Aug 34, 2014)
- Profile and page cover image: 851x315 px (Aug 4, 2014)
- Group cover image: 785x250 px (as of July 4, 2014)
- Event cover image: 785x295 px (measured by me, Aug 4, 2014)
- Timeline linked article preview: 1200x630 px (reference: Facebook's guidelines)
- Use this for your blog posts' featured images!
- For FB ads: only 20% of image can be text! (5x5 grid - use grid tool!)
- Twitter header image (since May 2014 redesign): 1500x500 ratio (also works with larger actual resolutions)
- Image size/dimensions cheat sheet (Aug 2014)
Youtube
- Aug 4, 2014: refer to Youtube's template!
- Channel art: 2560x1440 px
- Text and Logo: 1546x423 px in middle center of image
- Header as visible on PC browser: 2440x423 px across middle of image
- Tall images perform best
- Optimal size: 735x1102
- This will grab most screen real estate!
- Also good for Google+
- Images have to be square!
- At least 900x900 pixels
- Recommended: larger
- Also good for Google+, Facebook
General
- Make your image larger than the dimensions (e.g. 200x200 instead of 160x160 for FB profile pic), then let the website scale it down
- Best image resolution: 72 dpi for web use / 300 dpi for print
Creating Visual Content
- GOLDMINE article! Types:
- Images
- Video
- Infographics (graphs, charts)
- Presentations (SlideShare)
- 10 visual design tools: includes "Pictaculous" for finding best colours for img overlay text
- Draw it yourself, by hand!
Visual Storytelling
- Visual Storytelling on Social Media: pictures are really important! Use:
- Clever photo collections, (current world issues combined with my business)
- Create stand-alone visual campaigns: "Market" - "Meerkat" example: their mascot has his own FB page and his ongoing story keeps attracting customers
- Tell any story: e.g. behind my logo, location, anything unique!
- Develop community around a charity: share my company's passion
- Incorporate fan-generated content. Find user images to share by asking them to use a specific hashtag
- Share your history
- More on this:
- Lifestyle angle: share hi-quality pictures with relation to people's lives ("how does this fit into your lifestyle?")
- Show my product in use in real life
- Show the human side of my product (share informal moments!), the real people and work behind it
- Celebrate my audience's passions: highlight what they love, show what inspires me
- Videos: create stories around my product features
- "Meet the Staff" or "Behind the Scenes" videos
- Testimonial videos
- How-to videos
- Parodies of popular material
- Set up channels for niche audiences: don't use a one-size-fits-all approach. Have fun with specific content, drive them back to your site
- Create memes
- Featured customers (e.g. most loyal)
- "Now trending"
- Comics
- Lifestyle angle: share hi-quality pictures with relation to people's lives ("how does this fit into your lifestyle?")
