Twitter is a great platform for posting both marketing messages and inspirational image quotes. The problem is that most users don’t properly crop their messages. This often causes some of the text to cropped out.
In this short article, I’ll show you how to position your text on your Twitter images so they are properly positioned.
Don’t lose your follower’s attention
Twitter will allow you to post almost any size image. There is, however, a sweet spot on where to position your text.
The image below is an example of what improperly cropped Twitters images will look on your timeline.
As you can see, the bottom of the text has been cropped out. At this point, you must count on the user to click on the “View photo” link in order to understand or fully benefit from your post. Always keep in mind that our attention spans are getting shorter and you don’t want your followers to have to do any additional work (not even one click).
Finding the sweet spot for your Twitter images
Twitter timeline images are typically cropped to display 505 pixels wide and 253 pixels tall on the desktop. This gives you a sweet spot of about 500 pixels tall by 250 pixels wide. Of course image can be larger, but your calls to action or message should be centered using these dimensions.
Using Photoshop to determine text postion
Since we’ll want to be able to post the image to both Twitter and Facebook, we started with a 600 by 600 canvas in Photoshop. We think this is the optimal size for creating post images that can be shared on both platforms. We then created a layer that was 500 pixels wide and 250 pixels tall and centered it on the canvas.
This is what the uncropped image will look like on Facebook and how it will be displayed on Twitter only if the “View photo” link is clicked.
To test the image, we uploaded it to Twitter. This is how the image was displayed in our Twitter timeline.
As you can see, all of the text can be viewed without the user having to click on the “View photo” link.
Most online publishing platforms get it wrong
We love Canva and Post Planner but neither of these platforms offer a “safe” template. I realize that Post Planner is focused on Facebook, but wouldn’t you want the ability to use your images on Twitter also? Canva does provide a “Twitter” post template, but this is not a great option if we want to repurpose the image on Facebook.
I’m sure their developers could easily create an overlay in less than an hour, but until they do, Photoshop is probably your best option.
What if I don’t have Photoshop?
You still have a couple of options. You can download and install many of the Photoshop alternatives (Gimp is actually pretty good and free) or you can just try to center your text within your image and test post to Twitter (you can always delete it and reposition your text).
Our completed image for Twitter and Facebook
Our strategy was to create a single image that we can post to multiple social media sources. Below is the source image we created.
As seen on our Twitter timeline.
The same image as it appears on our Facebook timeline.
As you can see, the image looks great on both platforms. The cropping between the two platform has had no effect on the post’s message.
Main Takeaways
Being an efficient communicator is a skill we all need to possess. You don’t need to be a graphic artist to create great, shareable content. The use of a simple Photoshop template can help you to be both efficient and boost your brand.
