How To Make The Best Social Media Images The Easy Way (+ 84 Free Images)

The idea is pretty simple: Let’s combine two of your favorite, top-performing tools—social media and imagery—to produce the best social media images that’ll engage your audience.

Unfortunately, while the idea is simple, the application can be quite challenging since the visual options seem to be endless. But, today we have good news! With the correct sizes, best colors, and awesome imagery types, you’ll be well on your way to a successful social media image that will extend far beyond its initial post life.

How To Make The Best Social Media Images Step By Step (+ Free Photoshop Action)
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Are you ready to save hours of time!? Rather than designing custom images for each social network, simply use this Photoshop CC action that will size and save them all for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+! Not only that, but use the social media images infographic for every day reference, and enjoy these 14 images already sized for every single network!

1. Size Your Images For Optimal Attention

The very first step to creating the best social media images is by producing the correct size for each social network. You’re only given a limited space to capture your audience’s attention, so you’ll want to use every pixel you’re given.

This can get quite tricky when each network has different ratios and proportions, but if you know the posting sizes for each one, you’ll be off to a great start!

Below you’ll find all of the recommended sizes for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google+ with the preferred size for social posting. Here we go!

Facebook Image Sizes

Facebook is still the most popular social network today with over 1 billion users worldwide. With such a great audience, it’s essential to optimize every single post for top engagement.

Facebook images are known to get 2.3 times more engagement than that of a normal post, which is a perfectly great reason to start using social images for every single post.

Plus, they’ve found that 87% of a Facebook Page’s interaction comes solely from image posts.

In recent news, Facebook now allows you to post several images for one post, appearing as an album. There’s been some discussion whether a single image or multiple images perform better, but according to Convince and Convert, using multiple images can increase clicks by 1,290%!

Increase clicks by 1,290% when you use multiple images on #Facebook. #marketing
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Twitter Image Sizes

Twitter, one of my personal favorite networks, sends out 500 million tweets per day.

Adding images to your tweets not only gets you 18% more clicks, but also 89% more favorites, and 150% more retweets! Talk about an engagement boost!

Plus, Twitter has kept their network posting consistent in size, so there’s no question that a 440px by 220px image is the best size to reach the most people.

Use images on #Twitter to get 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites, 150% more retweets.
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LinkedIn Image Sizes

While LinkedIn is one of the older social networks, it has continued on throughout the years and thrives with its 414 million users. LinkedIn’s focus on business professionals creates a perfect space for business-specific content to be seen and viewed across the world.

Although, post with caution.

According to Jeff Bullas, being ‘too professional’ without first creating a relationship can actually be a common mistake when using LinkedIn. This idea seems to validate just how important using images can be for establishing that desired connection and relatability.

414 million #LinkedIn users engage best with images that are 531px wide.
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Pinterest Image Sizes

The average time spent on Pinterest per visit is 14.2 minutes! Multiply that by the 176 million registered users, and you’re looking at one very powerful source of information and inspiration. With all of that collective time spent on Pinterest, that also means it’s one of the fastest growing websites, creating the greatest opportunity for your business to grow along with it.

Similar to Instagram, Pinterest is highly visual, but rather with an emphasis in sharing content with strangers and friends alike. In order to have the best Pinterest images, avoid using faces, use red or orange, and rock a less distracting background.

176 million Pinners spend 14.2 minutes a day on #Pinterest. Best image sizes here:
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Instagram Image Sizes

Instagram is unique in that it solely allows photo-based posts. With an imagery-focused platform, it draws visual connections that make both a memorable and human impression.

“Instagram’s per-follower engagement rate for top brands is 58 times higher than on Facebook and 120 times higher than on Twitter,” according to Forrester, which might be why 85% of top brands are adopting it to grow their business.

Just recently, Instagram opened their strict square ratio image size up to a variety of landscape and portrait options in addition to increasing their resolution to 1080px for top clarity!

Surely, Instagram is a great place for both connection and business.

Instagram’s engagement rate is 120x higher than Twitter. Best #Instagram image sizes here:
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Google+ Image Sizes

While Google+ may very well be slowly disappearing, it still has a lot to offer if used correctly. After all, its partner in crime, Google, is our greatest source of information across the internet, one of the highest sources of revenue for a lot of businesses, and one of the greatest companies worldwide.

Everyone knows and loves Google. For that reason alone, it’s no surprise that Google+ has 375 million active members. With that large of an audience, it’s best that your images are set up for optimal performance.

Make perfect images for #Google+ to reach 375 million active users.
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There you have it! A complete guide to the best social image sizes, with the most important recommendations for each and every network.

Find the size you’re looking for, and use that when you begin the creation process with your images. Simply choosing the correct size at the beginning, will save you so much time when you’re ready to save and export your images for the world to see!

2. Use The Best Colors To Increase Your Engagement

While several factors go into making an image its very best, color is one of the most essential ingredients. Color psychology has proven time and time again that we can convey emotions simply by using a particular color!

Last year, I did a two-month study on the popularity of a given color in CoSchedule’s graphics. Since we typically use a three-color palette for our blog graphics, I was able to give appropriate rankings to each of the three colors used to see how they each performed.

I quickly realized that certain colors might be performing better simply because we use them more often, so I then compared the popularity percentage to the usage percentage to find an overall color grade.

Basically, I nerded out and used data to see what colors performed the best.

Use a graph like this to review and test your color schemes.

At the end of my study, we found that blue and green were our highest performing colors! If we look at color psychology, both of these colors reflect a calm, clean, comforting presence which seems to be the perfect match to the experience we want our readers to have, especially if they’re new to the CoSchedule blog. Blue is also one of our brand colors.

The other two top-performing colors were none other then red and orange. While blue and green provide a safe, calm place for our readers, orange and red are perfect complements because they grab our audience’s attention and spark their interest.

Blue and green and orange and red are a dynamic set of colors that will help you succeed. #color
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Psychology tells us that red and orange represent passion, energy, and success. I couldn’t imagine a better pair for blue and green’s calm, comforting presence than the passion and success of orange and red. Together, they seemed to make a dynamic duo, so I tried using those color pairs over the past year…

Out of our top 10 posts, 8 of them have either blue or green as the main color. The remaining two blog posts have orange as their main color. Absolutely none of our top performing posts contain any other main colors! By understanding which colors performed better, we were able to help increase our page views by 833.76%!

While everyone has different colors that match their brand and audience demographics, it’s essential to test out the waters and find the colors that work best for you! But when in doubt… use blue or green.

3. Use The Types Of Social Media Images That Get The Most Attention

Now that you know your target image size and top-performing colors, it’s time to decide what type of image to use. While almost anything can be an image—screenshots, illustrations, photos, quotes, GIFs—there are a few standout images you can depend upon to receive the most engagement.

Quotes

Quotes come in all shapes and sizes. Maybe it’s from a speaker, conference, or a book that you’ve recently read. Or, maybe it’s from an article or blog online. No matter the form or social network, quotes can be an excellent way to reach your audience with images.

Simply find a quote you like and pair it with a color or simple background. The dynamic duo will allow your readers to ponder, identify with, and in return, share your quote.

For example, at CoSchedule we started sharing quotes from our blog authors on Facebook, and we received 98% growth in engagements and 91% growth in clickthroughs. Facebook isn’t alone!

Here’s another example from Twitter:

20 Ways To Be Creative When You Don't Feel Inspired https://t.co/JS5YcKZFoQ pic.twitter.com/hRaof4lPfV

— CoSchedule (@CoSchedule) January 16, 2016

This tweet received 2,107 impressions and 38 engagements because the quote had insight, intrigue, and direct application. It not only complemented the content topic of creativity, but gave further information that could be easily shared with their family and friends.

Quote images are a perfect way to give something to your audience that they can share and be proud of, all the while giving your content more traction. Try them out!

GIFs

GIFs are one of the CoSchedule office’s favorite things both in our work chats and on social media because they perform well, all while bringing a smile. Even in challenging situations, GIFs can bring a delight to those who would rather be frustrated.

Here’s an example:

Uh, oh. #facebookdown In the meantime, enjoy a cat gif! pic.twitter.com/34o2LYk61a

— CoSchedule (@CoSchedule) September 28, 2015

By using a GIF and bringing a humorous moment to a normal circumstance, we received 15,953 impressions and 381 engagements! We’ve also found that tweets with GIFs tend to get 22.3% more engagement than tweets with plain images.

Here’s an example:

Are You Excited? You Can Now Pin To Pinterest With CoSchedule https://t.co/014yRye9xG pic.twitter.com/uo6Kenojn6

— CoSchedule (@CoSchedule) March 8, 2016

Just by turning a static image into a motion-filled GIF, the tweet received 1,328 impressions, 77 views, and 15 engagements! Plus, this tweet isn’t alone! When tweets contain GIFs, they get 166.6% more clickthroughs. GIFs allow motion to make your social posts stand out, get even more attention, and bring delight.

What are some of your favorite GIFs?

Infographics

At this point, it’s no secret that infographics are one of the most popular and highest shared content types in today’s digital world. Not only do they get shared more often, but they’re also 30 times more likely to be read than a purely textual article!

If that wasn’t good enough, infographics are also the perfect pair for one of the top-performing visual bookmarking site: Pinterest.

Infographics get a lot of attention on Pinterest because they tend to be longer in format, which fits Pinterest’s 4:5 image ratio that receives 60% more Repins. Here’s an example of our top-performing pin:

Is it a surprise that it happens to be an infographic? I think not.

Titles

You work really hard to find the perfect headline for your content. You search for keywords, words filled with emotion, then use the headline analyzer to find the precise, most-effective title. So why not take advantage of that in your social image?

At CoSchedule, we reviewed some of our top-performing tweets, and found that they all included a title image. Our top tweet in December received 2,280 impressions and 12 engagements, our top tweet in January had 3,486 impressions and 51 engagements, and in February our top tweet got a total of 5,419 impressions and 79 engagements all with title graphics. That’s an average of 3,727 impressions and 30 engagements from using a title graphic within the tweet.

As you can see, titles extend beyond the written context, and can certainly be effective within the graphic itself. Find the title of your blog, announcement, or event, and use that in the image to see the top performance.

Now You Know How To Make Successful Social Media Images

Social media images can take quite a few different forms, colors, and sizes—but with this data, you’ve found exactly what equation works best for each social network.

If you happen to be in a rush or maybe you’re just starting out, use a 2:1 ratio for your image size, incorporate blue or green with a pop of orange or red in your color scheme, and stick to the four main image types: GIFs, quotes, titles, and infographics.

Without much time at all, you’ll be on your way to success!

What colors, sizes, and image types have worked best for you? Share below!

How To Make The Best #SocialMedia Images The Easy Way (+ Free Images)
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