Guide to Facebook Marketing Optimization in 2022

Nov 21, 2021 | 5  min
author Bonnie Horner
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Facebook has the largest number of social media users with over 2.89 billion monthly active users ranging from 13-65 years old as of 2021, making it a great platform to reach a wide audience. However, Facebook is constantly changing and continues to challenge marketers with new algorithms and ad management. One of the biggest challenges for social media marketers is having a well-optimized post to reach the 1.82 billion daily active users on Facebook. This includes optimizing posts with the correct photo size, using high-volume hashtags, creating well-crafted captions, adding image alt text, and utilizing Facebook Stories.

Facebook Photo Sizes

To ensure your pictures are optimized for Facebook and appear in high resolution, it’s essential to make sure they are the correct size. That’s why we put together this handy guide, so you have the proper height, width, and orientation for each image position on Facebook.

Facebook Cover Photo

The cover photo is the large landscape image that appears at the top of your Facebook profile, page, group, or event. Although the minimum required size is 400 x 150 pixels, it is displayed at 820 x 312 pixels for desktop and 640 x 360 on a smartphone. Facebook will stretch anything less than that to fill the space. Any images with text or a logo should be saved as a PNG file to avoid pixelation.

Profile Picture

This profile photo is a critical photo to get right. If we have a nickel for every time we’ve seen a company with a pixelated profile picture, well, we’d have a lot of nickels. Your page’s profile picture will display on your actual page at approximately 170 x 170 pixels (and 128 x 128 on smartphones). However, we recommend your existing photo file be at least 340 x 340 in a square ratio to avoid pixelation.

facebook photo sizes

Image Posts

The orientation (landscape, portrait, or square) will decide how Facebook chooses to crop your image.

Landscape (or horizontal) photos will be scaled to 476 pixels wide, and the height will be adjusted to maintain the aspect ratio.

When you share a link from your website to your Facebook timeline, the platform will scale the associated image to 476 pixels wide by 249 pixels tall in a feed and 484 x 252 pixels on a page. These posts pull from the link’s Open Graph tags. Facebook looks at the: image tag, which tells the platform which image to use in the news feed. It’s then cropped from the top and bottom to meet the 476-pixel height. To ensure your image renders appropriately on Facebook, you need to set its parameters in your website’s code, a task that might require a more developer-minded marketer.

Portrait (or vertical) photos will be scaled to 394 pixels tall, aligned to the left with white space on the right side. The width is then adjusted to keep the aspect ratio the same.

Finally, square photos are scaled to 476 pixels on all sides, regardless of the original size. Don’t upload anything smaller than 476 pixels since Facebook will scale the size up, leading to a pixelated image. For example, the photo below is featured on our Pyxl Facebook page.

Link Posts

There are a lot of different numbers here to keep track of, so here they are distilled in one place:

  • Cover Photo: 820 x 312
  • Profile Picture: Should be at least 340 x 340, displays at 170 x 170
  • Image Post: Scaled to 476 pixels wide (landscape), 394 pixels tall (portrait), or 476 x 476 square
  • Link Post: Scaled to 476 x 249 pixels
  • We recommend uploading a photo file of 2MB or less.
link post

Hashtags

Social media allows you to target your audience with hashtags. With the wide range of various posts, it is sometimes difficult to target a specific one. By using hashtags, you can narrow down the audience. If someone searches for a hashtag on Facebook, they’re likely really interested in the topic, so they’re looking for more content. That is why posts with hashtags receive 12.6% more engagement than those without them.

Some best practices for hashtags include:

  1. Don’t go overboard: Using a few unique hashtags, you will accurately target a specific audience.
  2. Use unique branded hashtags: Creating specific hashtags for your brand allows you to find and create a community to share your content quickly. 
  3. Utilize only relevant hashtags: Like above, with fewer hashtags, you need to pay more attention to the types of hashtags you use. Additionally, you need to select hashtags that describe your content. 
  4. Test and monitor Facebook hashtags: Social listening can help you track hashtags. Monitoring and tracking hashtags that your targeted audience looks at or follows can help you discover which hashtags to use. 
hashtags

Hashtags can help highlight specific campaigns or posts your followers may be interested in. Using hashtags that your audience will be interested in will make sure your Facebook can appropriately target your audience. 

Captions

Facebook’s ideal character limit is between 40 and 80 characters, so your post captions should be concise to be valuable. An engaging caption can inspire your followers to interact with your photos and videos or purchase your products or services. Some tips for creating engaging captions include telling a story, utilizing polls, offering advice, using universal appeal, showcasing your fans, and more. 

Here is an example of a caption that follows some of these tips: 

facebook marketing captions

Converse represents using the tip of showcasing their fans. Converse’s newsfeed is an excellent example of setting a tone and staying loyal to it. Fans know who they are. It is essential to know your target audience and to act accordingly.

Alt Text

Alternate text appears in place of an image on a webpage if the image does not appear on the user’s screen. The alt text of an image is one of the best things you can do for your website. It can turn your images into hyperlinked search results — giving your website another way to receive organic traffic. Search engines are able to crawl and rank your website better with this text because it helps screen reader tools describe images to visually impaired users.

alt text

Stories

Just as many other social platforms, Facebook has taken advantage of leveraging stories in its algorithm. Facebook has more than 500 million daily viewers on Stories. With the connection of Instagram and Facebook stories, you can also post on both platform’s story features simultaneously.

facebook stories

Content from Stories has prime real estate at the top of the Facebook app. Facebook is aware of the rise of Stories content. Using Stories, you have a chance to connect with your audience who may not otherwise see your organic posts. With social media algorithms constantly changing, it’s harder than ever for brands to get their message out there without paying for the views and engagement. The Stories feature is one of the most popular on Facebook, so you should take advantage of it.

Partner with Pyxl

There are a lot of requirements to ensure your Facebook posts are optimized in order to reach a large number of your targeted audience. Do you need help optimizing your Facebook posts? CONTACT US!

Or if you’re in the mood for more learning, check out our blogs on adding Facebook Business Manager to your marketing strategy or how to use hashtags on social media platforms.

Updated: Apr 13, 2022

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