Social media has come a long way when it comes to content formatting. Gone are those days when there was a preset format on each network and you hardly could do anything to change your post appearance. Things are not the same today. Social networks like Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter and LinkedIn offer many formatting options to make your posts look better.
Here is a brief guide for you to explore various formatting options on different social networking platforms.
Facebook: If images play an important role in Facebook marketing, then Aspect Ratio of images plays the protagonist. Ideally, the width of a Facebook post image should be 1.91 times the height.
Facebook recommended image size for desktop news feed and mobile is 400×209 pixels and 560×292 pixels respectively.
Image source: Jon Loomer
Next up is link post image. Have you noticed the drill with link posts on Facebook? If you are not happy with the default image, you can replace it with any existing one.
Always go for a bigger image (at least 377 × 197 pixels). Facebook advised image size for link posts and image posts are 1200×627 and 1200×1200 respectively. If smaller than the recommended size, the image will not be visible enough.
Image source: Jon Loomer
However, Facebook features the larger image automatically. But there is a catch! What if the article doesn’t have one single image that matches up to the required dimension?
Here’s a trick that I often use to share my blog posts on Facebook. Upload a large image on Facebook to make the room and it will show the large thumbnail instantly. Let me show you the difference.
The first post is done with a smaller image. The moment I had uploaded a bigger one on Facebook via the ‘Upload Image’ option, the larger image showed up.
You also can add a bigger image to your blog post to get the same result. But sometimes, this trick doesn’t work with your old blog posts. Blame it on Facebook’s cache that no matter how hard you try to show a bigger image, it doesn’t work. Facebook Debugger is here to the rescue.
Copy and paste the URL. Hit ‘Debug’ and you are good to post your blog on Facebook. The bigger thumbnail will show up.
Now comes the text formatting on Facebook. You can change the entire post, from heading to the body of the post. You can cleverly distribute all the keywords throughout the editable spaces.
Google Plus: Unlike Facebook, Google Plus does not offer a multitude of formatting options but it does provide you with options to make your texts stand out. In other words, your dream to make some keywords prominent on social media comes true with G+.
Image source: Social Media Examiner
Try it with a G+ post. It’s working! Isn’t it?
Google Plus just rolled out a new link post image formatting option. Now bigger thumbnails will appear with your posts on G+, like Facebook. You just need to make sure that the post contains at least on big image, as Google Plus does not allow you to upload new images.
Here is a comparative view of two posts on Google Plus.
The first post does not have a bigger thumbnail like the second one. The result is clearly visible here. Oh, have you noticed the zigzag bottom of the second post thumbnail? Isn’t it looking cool?
LinkedIn: LinkedIn’s post formatting works much like that of Facebook’s. It too provides you with options to alter the text of description and headline.
Although, it doesn’t offer any choice to showcase any bigger image with your posts like Facebook, but you can pick and choose from different images, provided you have more than one image in the post.
The best size for LinkedIn post image is 180×110, as all the images are resized, irrespective of their dimensions.
With personal profiles, there is no option to upload new images with your updates but the liberty is there for company business pages.
Twitter: Many of you would agree with me that Twitter is the toughest platform to get attention for your updates. The main reason is, there are constant flows of updates that keep on coming every minute. But you can draw interest towards your tweets by using symbols in them.
Sites like Panmental and Twitter Symbol, offer Twitter symbols to jazz up your tweets.
Wondering how do they work? Simple! Just click on any symbol you want to add to your tweet, write the text and off you go!
You can easily make your tweets look better with these icons.
Now it’s time for you to explore these formatting options and make your social media posts stand out in the crowd.