A few habits fix most of those problems on every platform. Shoot video vertically so it fills the phone screen, and write the first line of every caption so it still makes sense when the rest gets cut off. Put links only where a person can tap them, since each app allows that in different places. The shape, caption length, and hashtag count still change by platform, and this post will explore how to approach each one.
Why doesn’t the same post work everywhere?
Each platform shows your post in a frame of a different shape, and anything that doesn’t fit inside that frame gets cropped or hidden. A before-and-after photo shot wide can lose its effect when Instagram cropping leaves half the visual out of frame.
Where a post shows up inside an app, called its placement, matters too, because each placement reaches a different group of people. Reels, which are Instagram’s short vertical videos, are shown to people who don’t follow you yet. Your profile’s feed goes mostly to your followers, though those posts have a chance of showing up for those who aren’t. Stories are photos and short videos that go to your followers and disappear after 24 hours. Instagram and Facebook share an owner and a posting screen, but even those two reward different kinds of posts. That’s why choosing between Instagram vs. Facebook for a local service business usually ends with one platform as the lead and posts adapted for the other.
Social media post sizes and specs, platform by platform
Shape is written as a ratio of width to height. 4:5 is slightly taller than a square, 9:16 fills a phone screen from top to bottom, and 4:3 is a little wider than it is tall. These numbers are current as of September 2026.
Facebook feed
- Shape: square or 4:5 for photos, and wide when you share a link, because Facebook pulls a wide preview photo from the page you’re linking to.
- Caption: two or three short paragraphs, with the point in the first line.
- Hashtags: leave hashtags off.
- Links: paste the link right into the post.
- Best for: reviews, community news, and posts that need a few sentences of explanation.
Instagram feed
- Shape: 4:5. Instagram also accepts 3:4, which matches the taller tiles on your profile grid, the page of thumbnails people see when they tap your name.
- Caption: put the point in the first line, since the rest is hidden until someone taps “more.”
- Hashtags: three to five specific local tags, like your city name plus your trade, and five is the most Instagram allows since it capped hashtags in December 2025.
- Links: caption links can’t be tapped, so point people to the link in your bio, the short description at the top of your profile.
- Best for: before-and-after photos and carousels, which are posts with several photos a person swipes through.
Instagram Reels
- Shape: 9:16.
- Length: aim for under 60 seconds even though Reels can run longer, and show the finished result in the first two seconds.
- Hashtags: the same three to five as a feed post.
- Links: Reels captions can’t hold a tappable link.
- Best for: time-lapses of a job and short on-camera explanations from someone on the crew.
Stories (Instagram and Facebook)
- Shape: 9:16.
- Length: short clips or single photos, a few at a time.
- Hashtags: optional.
- Links: add a link sticker, a button you place on the Story that people can tap.
- Best for: day-of updates, polls, and quick questions to people who already follow you.
Google Business Profile posts
- Shape: 4:3 landscape, and 1200 × 900 pixels is the size to save the photo at.
- Caption: up to 1,500 characters, though only the first sentence or two shows before someone taps to read more.
- Hashtags: none.
- Links: the post gets one button, such as Call now or Book, and that button is where the link goes.
- Best for: offers, seasonal reminders, and anything you want a person to see while they’re looking up your phone number.
- Shape: square or 4:5 for photos.
- Caption: about two lines show before “see more,” so the point goes first.
- Hashtags: two or three.
- Links: put the link in the first comment instead of the post, since posts with a link in them tend to reach fewer people.
- Best for: commercial jobs, hiring, and posts aimed at referral partners like property managers and general contractors.
TikTok
- Shape: 9:16.
- Length: under 60 seconds, with quicker cuts than a Reel.
- Hashtags: a few specific ones, since TikTok uses them along with the caption to sort videos by topic.
- Links: TikTok captions can’t hold a tappable link.
- Best for: your weekly Reel, posted again with a new line of text on screen.
YouTube Shorts
- Shape: 9:16.
- Length: under 60 seconds, the same as your Reels.
- Caption: a plain title that says what the video shows, because people search YouTube the same way they search Google.
- Hashtags: one or two, or none.
- Links: a Short can’t hold a tappable link.
- Best for: posting your weekly Reel again as a Short, which is YouTube’s version of a short vertical video.
How do you turn one job into five posts?
Say you’re partway through a kitchen remodel. Ask the crew for four kinds of shots. Get a wide photo from the doorway before work starts and the same angle when it’s done. Then add a 30-second vertical walk-through of the finished kitchen and a few short clips while the work is happening. Just these few shots are enough for five posts:
- Instagram carousel: the before and after photos at 4:5, with the after photo as the first slide, so the finished kitchen is what shows in the feed.
- Instagram Reel: the walk-through, opening on the finished room, with a short line of text on screen saying what the job was.
- Facebook post: the after photo with two short paragraphs about what the homeowner wanted fixed and how it turned out, plus their review if they left one.
- Google Business Profile post: the after photo cropped to 4:3, one sentence about booking kitchen estimates this season, and a Call now button.
- Instagram and Facebook Stories: the in-progress clips, with a poll asking followers which backsplash they’d pick.
If you post to TikTok or YouTube Shorts, the walk-through goes there too. Save the video from your phone’s camera roll instead of downloading it from Instagram, so it doesn’t carry another app’s logo.
Spread over two weeks, those five posts do different jobs. The Reel reaches new people, the carousel and the Facebook post show proof of the work, and the Google Business Profile post invites potential customers to call you. Balancing those jobs week after week is easier when you plan with the PACE content allocation model.
Free tools that handle the sizing for you
Three free tools do most of the work. Canva is a web and phone app for making graphics from templates, and has preset sizes for most of the placements outlined in this post. Just pick “Instagram Post” if that’s what you want, and the placement is taken care of. Also, Meta Business Suite is the planning tool from Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram. You can post to both from one screen and still edit the caption for each platform before it goes out. Your phone’s built-in photo editor can also crop to 4:5, 4:3, or 9:16.
Setting up branded templates in each size, with your logo, colors, and fonts already placed, is a small graphic design project that saves time on every post after that.
A pre-publish checklist
Run through these six questions before you post, and fix anything that gets a no.
- Is the photo or video the right shape for where it’s going?
- Does the first line of the caption make sense if nobody taps “more”?
- Is every link somewhere a person can tap it?
- Are there five or fewer hashtags on Instagram, and none on Facebook or Google Business Profile?
- Is the finished work, or anything else that matters, away from the edges of the photo or video where it could get cropped?
- Is the video free of another app’s logo?
Start with the two or three placements you’ll actually use. Set up a template for each placement before your next job, so you’re not fixing the same crop every time you post. After that, the time you save goes back into what to post and how often, which is where most of the work in social media for local service businesses actually happens. If you’d rather not handle formatting yourself, Posted Social’s social media management includes formatting every post for its platform. If you need the photos and video in the first place, content production covers the shoots.