If you share content on behalf of a brand or publication, chances are you’ve noticed that photos significantly boost engagement on Facebook. A post with a beautiful, high-res image tends to get more likes, comments and clicks than a standard link, which only includes a thumbnail-sized image like this:
For that reason, community and content managers have gotten into the habit of manually uploading a separate image for links like this:
That method works well enough, but it takes a few extra minutes to resize a photo specifically for Facebook, upload it and then add in your comment and a shortened URL to your destination. Fortunately, it looks like Facebook has caught on and is rolling out an update that will make our jobs easier.
On September 10, Facebook + Journalist shared the news that they’ve significantly increased the size of link images. “We’ve just rolled out larger images on link shares,” the post reads. “This will make your stories look even more beautiful on Facebook. The goal with this is to increase click-through rates on links as larger images are more engaging.” The new setup looks like this:
The post also notes that the new recommended image size for websites is 1200 x 627 pixels, and the minimum requirement is 560 x 292 pixels.
Have you noticed this change? Will you begin relying on the auto-generated link images, or will you continue to upload custom images for Facebook posts?
