Recently, some of my clients have been getting snagged on one particular issue; taking or choosing images to use online for their marketing.
Say you are thinking of designing a marketing campaign for sharing on multiple platforms and need to look for the right stock image or take suitable product photos.
Say you wrote a blog and created a great cover image for it but now you need to share that blog and image on multiple social media platforms – tweet it, create a Facebook or Instagram post or story, a Pin, a Google My Business post…
Why might any of that be challenging, you might well ask?
Well because each different platform and post type requires different image dimensions so finding one image that works across all platforms and for all purposes can be less of a science and more of a black art.
See what I mean?
Different shapes and sizes mean that fitting all of the elements of the image that you want to include (particularly if it’s not just a photo, but an advert or infographic that contains text) requires some prior planning.
Say this is the image you had chosen – would you still choose it after seeing it used on each canvas size? It helps you to choose the right image in the first place if you consider the applications of it.
This disparity across various platforms doesn’t just mean you should carefully consider choosing an image that works for all platforms, it’s also why posting custom-sized images natively to each site instead of cross-posting between platforms or using sharing apps to share the same image makes a huge difference to the finished result.
Say you shared an image of a product and Facebook keeps nagging you to boost it or turn it into an advert.
Facebook hosts images in a library once you have uploaded them but don’t make the mistake of uploading one image and using it for various purposes, use graphic design tools such as Canva to create an image with the correct dimensions for each purpose before uploading it.
See below as an example – the image you uploaded for a post probably isn’t going to work once Facebook has warped and stretched it for an ad or event cover image.
Facebook images
I hope this gives you food for thought, but if you are already finding your marketing a bit labour intensive and could do with some support to create some great content, you know where to find me.
Butterflump 