Better by the Gram: Image Size
Using portrait-proportioned images makes your post look bigger because it takes up more real estate on the screen when viewed by the user. It takes up nearly the entire screen and that’s all the users sees for that moment. Obviously you need an engaging photo, but this reduces the competition for the user’s attention to zero if the user can’t see anything else on the screen but your image.Â
So what if you’re making an infographic? Same portrait size. Instagram and many social media influencers will tell you 1080 by 1080 1:1 square pictures work best but the data simply doesn’t support that. 1080 by 1350 or a 4:5 ratio seems to be the best option for overall engagement based only on image size. Upon discovering this, I was shocked too after years of being told to turn my phone sideways or to crop my post to a square. Sometimes to be fancy, I’ll post in landscape, which I assume means no one can see shit in my image and I’m wasting my time. Landscape is 1080 by 566 or a 1.91:1 aspect ratio. If creating a digital image, use 1080 as your baseline width in all cases. I would suggest that landscape is the worst option since it takes up the least amount of real estate of the viewable area.Â
Use this as a quick guid, from best to worst ,for Instagram posts:
Portrait 1080 X 1350Â 4:5 Ratio
Square 1080 X 1080 1:1Â Ratio
Landscape 1080 X 566 1.91:1 Ratio
Above I stated that Instagram suggests using 1080 X 1080. In fact, they’re default settings for images used to want you to crop image to that size. I have seen no indication that they give any preferential treatment to any specific image size.
