How to Share Different Image Sizes on Social Media With Nelio Content

Social networks are the perfect place to promote your content. The audience is there, so all you need to do is connect with them and invite them to visit your website. This is not easy, but some utilities like Nelio Content, our WordPress plugin, helps you share messages on social networks without the hassle and maximizing your resources.

When filling the timeline of social messages to promote your content on social networks with Nelio Content, you will create several types of messages, and some of them will share the featured image of your posts. The problem here is that each social network recommends using a different image size, so your featured image will not look the same when shared on Twitter as it does on Facebook or Instagram.

Even though the image won’t look bad anyway (unless you use very strange dimensions), if you want to achieve perfection you must use different versions of the same image to share in each social network, each with a different size. This way, the image is shared with a perfect size for each network, and your followers will enjoy a better user experience.

Let’s see how we can achieve this by simply extending Nelio Content without having programming skills.

Recommended Image Sizes For Each Social Network

Before we start, let’s see which image sizes are recommended in each social network. Keep in mind that social networks are in constant evolution and these sizes may no longer be valid in the future. But at the time of writing these lines, the sizes are as follows:

• Twitter: The recommended size is 1024×512 pixels. However, they will be shown in the feed reduced to 506×253 pixels.
• Facebook: The recommended size for the images we share on Facebook is 1200×630 pixels high. However, in the news feed that your audiences see, these images will be shown with a maximum of 470 pixels wide (scaling the original image while keeping the same proportion).
• LinkedIn: The images you share on LinkedIn must have a width of 520 pixels to be displayed optimally. This network requires landscape images with a height between 270 and 320 pixels.
• Instagram: Square images allow a side size of 1080 pixels, which will be reduced to 612 pixels and displayed in the feed with 510 pixels. You can also choose to use landscape images of 1080×566 pixels or portrait images of 1080×1350 pixels. In both cases they will also be scaled down when shown in your followers’ feed.
• Pinterest: When you add a pin to your board, it is important to remember that Pinterest sets a limit on the width of the image but not on the height. This gives you the opportunity to add a squared photo or one that is even larger in height. Images appear with a maximum width of 236 pixels. Aspect ratios of 2:3 or 1:3.5 are recommended.
• Tumblr: Images in Tumblr have a maximum size of 1280×1920 pixels, which are displayed in the feed downscaled to 500×750 pixels.

In addition to the previous recommendations, most social networks have restrictions on the maximum image you size can use. Given the above dimensions, you should try to keep the images you share on social networks below 250Kb in weight. For this purpose, websites like compressjpeg.com make it very easy for you to compress the images without losing (too much) quality.

Nelio Content

I’m so happy about Nelio Content that I will sound like a payed advocate… but here’s why you’ll love it: it works as promised, its auto-scheduling feature is top-notch, Nelio’s value for money is unmatched, and the support team feels like your own.

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Extending Nelio Content to Share Different Image Sizes

Now that you know the image sizes you should use, let’s see how to tell Nelio Content which specific image to use when sharing messages on social networks.

Nelio Content has a special filter called nelio_content_{network}_featured_image where {network} is replaced by the name of the social network where we want to put a different image that substitutes the default featured image.

Thanks to this we can create a plugin with the content you have below:

Copy the above content into a file called nelio-content-featured-image.php and upload it to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory of your WordPress installation. This creates a plugin that enables the functionality of replacing the URL of the featured image with a different URL in each social network.

To define which image you want to use in each network you can do two different things. The most direct but somewhat more complicated is to have a custom field in the post with the name nc-{network}-featured-image (again, replace {network} with the name of the network, as you see in the code above) that includes the identifier of the image you want to use (an image from your WordPress Media Library, of course).

But if you want it easy, just install the Advanced Custom Fields plugin that allows you to add custom fields to your content. Then, import the configuration that you will find in the acf-export.json file that you have in my GitHub. This will create the group of fields and add a metabox in the sidebar of your posts where you can indicate (just like you do with the featured image) which image you want to publish on each social network (see image below).

From now on, you can have different images to share in your social messages. Nelio Content will automatically take the alternative image if you selected it and create the messages automatically taking these images into account instead of the default featured image.

If you’re an image lover, you have no excuse for not using Nelio Content to automatically share your content on social networks. With this you will be able to specify an image for each social network with the size you want. Adapt your content better to the particularities of each network!

Featured image by Guilherme Vasconcelos on Unsplash.