Social Post Image does not fill whole space / weird grey bars

[AndreaE]

Our team is attempting to post social through Hubspot but we are underwhelmed by the inconsistency between the social post preview (all looks well, image fills the space) and the actual post on LinkedIn. 

See below, our first social post from Hubspot social to Linkedin -- the image does not fill the space, and grey bars/alleys are added to the right and left sides.

1. Can this be avoided? How?

2. Why does the post preview look different than the actual post?

3. If it is not possible avoid this by posting via HubSpot, will it be fixed? 

Thank you,

Andrea Eaken

[John_Gennell · Accepted solution]

Hello all!

The social networks are very strict when it comes to image ratios being published via the APIs. Unlike posting directly to the networks where they will automatically resize your image to cover the space in the post, when posting via their APIs, they will not perform that auto-resizing. So, you have to get the ratio right when posting. Below are the image ratios that will work for each network, will not have any "gray bars", and will fill the given space.

Facebook: 300:175
Twitter: 2:1
Instagram (square): 1:1
Instagram (portrait): 4:5
Instagram (landscape): 1.91:1

LinkedIn (landscape): 1.91:1

We have also built a cropper in the File Manager with all of those dimensions automatically added in. For example, if creating a Facebook post with an image that you are not sure is the right dimension/ratio and you want it to fully cover with no "gray bars", you can crop the image into the correct ratio right in HubSpot. Here is a video demonstrating how directly from the social composer, using Facebook as an example:

Example video, click here!

HubSpot Social Cropper

This will help to ensure that your images are the right ratios for each of the social networks and to avoid the "gray bars".

Thanks!

John

[melissa_kovach]

I went through the steps in the video tutorial, and am still seeing the strange grey bars on the preview image. See the attached example for a post I am trying to schedule for Twitter.

This seems to me like an issue that has just started becoming a problem, at least for my team and it's causing a lot of backtracking and disruption to our workflow. Is there a true fix here?

[mbinmasoud]

Hi, 

Will the Linkedin available sizes under Crop > custom be updated anytime soon? Linkedin allows for square images now, but everything we post from HubSpot, even if it has the correct square dimensions AND we use the crop tool, will have gray bars. 

Posting directly from Linkedin looks like the only workaround which:

1. Defeats the purpose of the HubSpot's social media management

2. Seemingly won't be reported on by HubSpot's social reports.

Please advise. 

[pranav_bhasin]

I agree and strongly feel that HubSpot should work towards a better integration with LinkedIn. 

[Daveonearth]

Just crazy what Hubspot Costs for Marketing professional module and then social posting isn't even close to 100% 

[SarahAdell]

Thanks, John. We're currently building out image at those sizes/ratios below and using the crop feature if they are a different size to ensure they're the right dimensions. 

Unfortunately, it sounds like the only solution is to post natively to have portrait style image. 

[SarahAdell]

That is frightening. Now I am worried about drafts and scheduled posts that we have created that are portrait style and whether or not they will display correctly natively. Is there recommend dimensions that are a best practice when posting from HubSpot vs the source?

[AndreaE]

Hi Sarah,

We were able to circumvent the issue by building our images in the following dimensions:

Facebook/LinkedIn: 1200x628

Twitter: 800x418

(I use bannersnack.com to build/export the images and save as templates. Tested the dimensions above on our social posts through HubSpot this morning; the previews were still inconsistent --i.e., showed grey bars for FB and Twitter-- but the actual posts looked correct.) 

Hopefully HubSpot will fix the preview bug, but in the meantime this workaround should help! 🙂

Best,

Andrea 

[SarahAdell]

These dimensions for posting are frustrating because they are all landscape vs portrait and that's not a best practice for social.