Social Creative: Tips for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Published: November 17, 2015

Author: Michael Nguyen

Managing social ads across networks? It can be a challenge to keep the requirements and best practices for creative straight. We’ve broken down the recommended dimensions, image requirements, and creative best practices for you by platform and ad type…but if you can’t read it now, go ahead and bookmark it. We’ll wait.

Facebook

Banner

-Dimensions: 1200 x 628

-Text Restrictions: 20%

-Text tool: https ://www.facebook.com/ads/tools/text_overlay

Examples of good creatives:

Creatives that incorporate ad copy’s objectives – in this case – make more money + growing graph + green color schemes � — **Creatives that incorporate ad copy’s objectives** – in this case, make more money + growing graph + green color schemes

Good usage of overlay text – CuriosityStream – Curious World!? � — Good usage of overlay text: CuriosityStream + Curious World

Showing the product in use. For mobile apps, showing the app on the phone. � — Showing the product in use. For mobile apps, it’s always smart to show the app on the phone.

Carousel

-Dimensions: 600×600

-Text Restrictions: 20%

-Text tool: https ://www.facebook.com/ads/tools/text_overlay

Examples of good creatives:
Continuation Carousel -> Panels connect to make a panorama. Important that first panel is engaging, otherwise people won’t swipe through the entire carousel.

Product/Client Multi Feature -> Use each panel to show a different selling point for a product/client.

Instagram

-Dimensions: 1200×1200

-Text Restrictions: 20% Text Restriction

Examples of good creatives:

We don’t have too much info on Instagram yet, but there are a couple thoughts of what will work well due to the nature of the channel.
Go aspirational. Instagram has a high focus on high quality images (anti-stock!). If you think about popular handles, they often feature nature/fashion artistic shots.
Use filters! Instagram is huge on filters (Valencia, anyone?), so feel free to play around with saturation and hue to bring out certain parts of the image.