How Much and How Big…?

I thought it would be helpful if I shared the character count limits and image size recommendations for the various social media sites. If you know what your limits are ahead of time, you can create something offline to maximize the space and then insert it into your profiles. I based these on my category of professional services. I am not sure what the limits are for other types of businesses. All character counts below include spaces. Of course you want to use good keywords whenever possible, to attract people through the search engines.

Updated March 2011 to reflect Facebook changes

Facebook Fan Page:

Facebook profile image: Up to 540 pixels long by 180 pixels wide

Front page About area under photo: This is pulled from the About section of the Info tab. The first 60 characters show on the sidebar.

Status update posts: 420 characters. You can sometimes get more if you are copy/pasting from another program. You also get apparently an unlimited number of characters for Facebook Events.

On the Info Tab:

Founded: 255 Characters

About: 255 Characters, 60 of which show on the left sidebar of the Page

Description, Products, Awards, Website (one per line, full URLs), Biography, Personal Information, Personal Interests and others: Unlimited

Images and tables on custom iFrames or FBML sub-pages: 520 pixels wide

Facebook Event Descriptions: Unlimited

Twitter

Custom background image: 1255 x 555 pixels max, with the central space for the twitter feed being 450 pixels wide. Arrange your image so that anything you want to show is separated by 450 pixels of blank space.

Bio: 160 characters. Abbreviations are Ok!

Posts: 140 characters. Abbreviations are Ok!

WordPress Blog/Site:

Posts: No limit, however some users have had errors over 1,000 words. For the reader’s sake as well, it is a good idea to break the post up either by inserting the “more” tag (option-shift-T on a Mac, or alt-shift-T on a PC) which tells the reader to click to read more, or the “page break” tag (option-shift-P on a Mac, or alt-shift-P on a PC) which tells the reader to go to the next page. These are also buttons in your post editor – they look like 2 blocks with the dotted line in between them.

Header Image: These vary according to the theme you are using, but in general a good size is 760 pixels wide by 200 pixels high.

The following vary in what is shown and used in the different search engines, but are on the lower end so they should work for each one:

Title: 65 characters

Meta Description: 150 characters

Meta Keywords: 256 characters

Tagged as: Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress