Size does matter: here's why...

The idea for this blog is one that I’ve had for quite a while now because it’s the mistake a lot of social media users make when posting content.
Not only is the problem avoidable, but it’s also easy to fix and doesn’t take long to make sure that your content is seen properly.

Each social media platform has its own ratio for media; whether that be a size of an image, the size of a file or the length of a video. They all will have guidelines on what these ratios are so that you, as a social media user, can implement them to ensure your content fits the platform.

Not only are these ratios provided with a simple Google search:

There are also hundreds of editing tools available to assist you in matching these guidelines - granted some of which are not free but the small fee of usually about 99p means that you can always match these ratios and never have a poorly cropped post again.

So why does the size matter so much?

From a professional point of view, I use social media to get my client’s message across in a way that means the consumer can consume the information quickly and easily. Part of doing that is the correct crop of an image or video so that the social media platform can display the media in the way it is intended to be displayed. By doing this, consumers can see the content quickly and without any hassle. It also means the content can be seen straight from the platform and not through a link (unless unavoidable).
For example; if I could scale a video file down (either in file size, length of the video or both) so that it is view-able on the platform I want to post it on. I will do it to avoid posting a link that more often than not, no one bothers to click on.

The National Centre for Biotechnology Information claimed that the average human attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2013. It’s now 2018, has our attention span got even shorter? What does this mean for content creators and social media managers?
It means that we have to not only create engaging content, we also have to make it as easily seen as possible - otherwise consumers get bored and they don’t bother to look at it.
I mean, how many times have you stopped scrolling to watch a video on Instagram, only for that video to take ages to load which makes you just start scrolling again and forgetting all about it?

Chances are that whole process from you taking interest in the video to choosing to skip past it, all happened in a few seconds - how can content creators and social media managers compete with something like that?!

We look at the analytics that tell us how long the content was seen for and we adapt the content to make it more watchable to improve those analytics.

Back to the topic - size matters

The size of your content on social media matters so much as it means that consumers can view your content not only straight from the platform it was posted on, but also quickly. Which means that they don’t get bored and move on, instead they engage with it or at least get the message the content was trying to portray in the first place. WHICH IS THE GOAL!

So next time you’re posting to a social media platform ask yourself; will this content be displayed well?
Sometimes, types of content just aren’t made for a particular platform. For example; I wouldn’t write a long post on Twitter like I would on LinkedIn. Neither would I post a long video on Instagram - I’d leave that for the Facebook page!

Load time and content quality are two massively important principles when posting on social media; which can be frustrating as these two things don’t often go hand-in-hand.