One of the best ways to get posts related to your book shared is by posting a picture. In fact, studies show that posts with an image have an 87% greater shot of being shared than those without.
Being visual-oriented creatures, we are more likely to notice a post when a picture is included. In addition, if the picture is particularly appealing, many social media users believe it adds to the appeal and the cred of a post that is shared or retweeted.
Given this, when selecting an image for your post, you’ll want to ensure it’s the optimal size for sharing and retweeting. That probably means you’ll need to crop the image before loading it to your site. Not doing so may mean that the social media site auto-crops it for you, resulting in part of the image being cut off, reducing its effectiveness. As each social media has a slightly different size and dimensions for their shared images, try to pre-crop the image so that it will work on each one with a little dead space on the sides for the social media site to auto-crop.
While the photo doesn’t need to be the exact size as follows, it should fit the same proportions (the first number is the height, the second is the width, both measurements in pixels):
• Facebook – 1200 x 630
• Twitter – 440 x 220
Be aware that sometimes social media sites change these dimensions. Because of this, generally an image that can be trimmed with the main thrust of its content at the center works best.
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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past decade, I’ve helped more than 300 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.