How to Optimize blog images to make an impact on Facebook

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Facebook introduced a significant increase to the size that thumbnail images from linked articles appear in the News Feed. When you post a status update including a link, Facebook will automatically pull an image from the article, and as long as it is of sufficient size, that image will display at full width on your Page and in News Feeds, with the blog title and blurb below it. In exact terms, for a linked article's image to display at full width on Facebook, the width of the image needs to be 1.91 times its height. Facebook recommends an image that is at least 1200 × 630 pixels, which, truthfully, isn't realistic for most bloggers. Instead, aim to produce blog posts that include at least one image that is 600 × 315 pixels (even if it an image that is uploaded large, but shrunk to fit your blog's formatting style), as this is the minimum size that Facebook requires for any linked article's image to display at full width in any position on all devices - desktop, mobile, or tablet. If your linked article's chosen image is below 600 × 315 pixels, Facebook will automatically shrink it much smaller.

Note: When you paste a link into the status box and the automatically-generated
preview appears, two small arrows appear on top of the thumbnail image
allowing you to select the most appealing photo from the article. If none of the
available thumbnail images takes your fancy, click the "Upload Image" link and
choose one that is saved on the hard drive of your computer. You can edit the
text in the headline and description fields that are generated, too, if you wish to
make them more effective. On the rare occasion that you paste a link to share
and no preview image appears at all, you may have to debug the page -
essentially forcing Facebook to refresh its cache of your site. Simply visit the
Facebook Debugger tool at https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug, paste in the URL
of the Page with the problem image, and click "Debug." Wipe your status box
clean and try pasting the link again; the problem should now be fixed.

 
Note: Somewhat related to the previous tip regarding the popularity of images
and quotes in particular, why not try the following: Pick out a blog post's most
quotable, shareable snippet and turn that into an image either as a quote on its
own or coupled with an appealing photo. Then, link back to the blog post from
the text box in a status update and monitor how well the post is received.