In honour of an upcoming social media marketing meeting in Pembrokeshire, Wales where we’re discussing all the changes with the new Timeline layout for Facebook fanpages, here’s a quick rundown of the ideal sizes for your pictures.
Whilst Facebook does resize some of your image automatically, it you can get your images to roughly the correct size before you upload them to Facebook it helps – particularly if you don’t want to end up with parts of your picture cropped automatically by Facebook.
(If you don’t have Photoshop or Serif Photoplus a couple of cool free tools for resizing your pics are Gimp and Irfanview)
Your Cover Image
The new cover image is 851 pixels wide x 315 pixels high.
This is PRIME real-estate on your Timeline so consider it an opportunity to give a great visual starting point of showing what your business is about, and a flavour of what sort of content people can expect to see on your Facebook Timeline. You can really get creative with this, and as long as you stick within the rules listed below you can change this as often as you like e.g. to reflect different seasons or events
There are strict rules from Facebook about NOT being overtly promotional on your cover picture :
“Covers may not include:
i. price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it on socialmusic.com”;
ii. contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your Page’s “About” section;
iii. references to Facebook features or actions, such as “Like” or “Share” or an arrow pointing from the cover photo to any of these features; or
iv. calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends.”
Your Profile Picture
This is the small picture which sits ‘embedded’ on the edge of your cover picture.
The recommended size for this is a minimum of 180 x 180 pixels.
This is the picture thumbnail which will appear next to your post when you post as your page so make sure it’s a good one. Personally I think a headshot is better than a logo (unless you’re an instantly recognisable logo!)
Your App / Tab Images
Your tabs used to be featured as a list down the left hand side of your page, with a tiny icon next to them.
On the new Timeline these are now featured much more prominently beneath your cover image, with four displayed (you can have more than 4, but only 4 display – the remainder are found by clicking the drop down arrow on the right of the app pictures).
Also you are now allowed to customise your app thumbnail pictures – so although they are small, you can still get creative!
The size for each one is 111 x 74 pixels
Your Wall Post Images
These are the pictures you use in your actual posts.
The recommended size for these is 404 x 404 pixels (although I have found that Facebook does still sometimes not display the whole picture even at this size – most annoying and I’m not quite sure why!)
So – although there are a lot of changes to take on board with the new Timeline design, there are LOTS of opportunities to be creative, and make your page really visually appealing!
Did you find this helpful? Got questions? Fire away in the comments section, and I’ll do my best to help 
Also – seeing as we’re talking about Facebook feel free to hit the LIKE button, to help get this info out to a wider audience. Thanks!
