We recently posted a blog featuring tips to “Step Up Your Social Media Efforts in 2015!” Research shows that posts with images yield 53 percent more engagement, so we’re here with a new round of tips to help you push your efforts to the next level through effective graphic strategies.
Extend your visual brand:
You want every facet of your marketing strategy to increase the awareness of your brand, right? Your social media interactions can play a key role in this effort. Defining and sharing your brand elements with your team will also increase efficiencies, allowing your marketers to create and post social media graphics quickly. Use these guidelines to help bolster your visual brand through your social media images.
Color - Find ways to incorporate your brand colors into all of your social media posts. If you don’t have brand guidelines related to colors, think about what you want your brand to portray and what colors best evoke those feelings. Document the hex codes for your brand’s colors and share them with your team to ensure consistency across graphics.
Typography - Pick two or three fonts that represent your brand’s personality and use them consistently throughout your social media posts. Choosing fonts with a large family of styles (condensed, italics, bold, etc.) can help keep things interesting. Experimenting with font pairings and different type layouts within your prescribed font families will keep your graphics visually surprising while maintaining a feeling of consistency.
Template - Designate which branding elements will remain static throughout your posts to increase your audience’s ability to quickly recognize communication from your organization. For example, will your logo be in the same size and place across all social media posts?
Choose the right image:
We know that communicating with images will yield higher engagement than posts with text alone. Here are some useful tips for selecting images that will help your organization stand out.
Flexible - Your social media images will be viewed across varying sites and devices. Choose images that offer the flexibility to be cropped and viewed clearly at very large or very small sizes. Selecting an image with a point of interest at the center is a good rule of thumb.
Recognizable - Choose an image that reflects your brand’s personality and the audience you are targeting. One trick is to find an image that highlights the color of your logo. For example, if your brand’s primary color is yellow, find an image featuring a woman wearing a yellow shirt.
Impactful - Colorful images and images with dark backgrounds tend to stand out best on Facebook pages. When searching for images, think about more than a specific object you are looking to promote. What feelings do you want to evoke? Try searching for those words, such as “enjoyment” or “adventure.”
Know the rules:
If you intend to enhance your social media strategy with ads, you have to know the rules to be successful. Facebook and Twitter publish strict guidelines for advertising that impact how you design your graphics, and all ads are subject to a review process. But don’t worry! It is still possible to create an effective, eye-catching campaign. Here are a few of the guidelines to follow to create inspiring graphic ads that meet the requirements.
Choose Quality Content - Be sure that your content is relevant to your targeted audience and the product or service you are advertising. Images may not be excessively political or sexual, or exploit sensitive issues. Images must be high quality. Use our tips above to source your images.
Minimize Text - Facebook will reject ads that exceed a 20% text limit. So choose your words and layout wisely. Keep in mind that any text in your logo will contribute to this copy limit. When possible, use a mark or symbol over a logo with a lot of text. Twitter has additional guidelines related to grammar, excessive punctuation and misleading copy and images.
Do Your Research - Social media can be a moving target. Keeping up with appropriate image sizes, guidelines and best practices can be daunting. Fortunately, there are resources at your disposal. Social media sites publish guidelines, policies and tools to help you develop your images. We recommend reviewing these resources regularly to keep up with the latest information so you can make informed design decisions.
Do you have a success story to share? Leave us a comment! We’d love to hear your ideas for creating interesting and inspiring social media graphics.
Resources:
https://designschool.canva.com/blog/getting-started-social-media-design/
http://www.shutterstock.com/blog/how-to-create-great-facebook-ads-with-shutterstock-images
https://www.facebook.com/ad_guidelines.php
https://support.twitter.com/articles/20169693-twitter-ads-policies#