8 Tips for Social Media Visual Content

July 3, 2016 Design tips, Uncategorised

Your brand doesn’t really exist online if you’re not represented across social channels and are regularly interacting with your followers

Social media has become such a large part of the modern world with 2.3 billion active users on social media and 91% of retail brands using two or more social media platforms. There are numerous reasons businesses can benefit from an active social media presence, these include:

  • Posts can be used to drive targeted traffic
  • Boost website SEO
  • Relationship building
  • Foster brand loyalty
  • Businesses can find new customers

If so many businesses are using social media, how can your content stand out? What can make your business’ posts more appealing to your audience than competitors?
That is where the design in your social media content plays a big part in post engagement and success.

Importance of Good Design in Social Media
Humans are very visual beings. We can process visuals about 60,000 times faster than text and up to 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. With this in mind, it is no surprise that viewers respond well to great design. When coming across a brand for the first time, a viewer subconsciously creates an image in their mind of your brand. If the graphics are poor and inconsistent, this image will be negative and also decrease the chance of brand loyalty.

Through creating attractive graphics that appeal to audiences, shareability is boosted, one of the important aspects of social media content. Shareability means the potential of a pieces to be ‘shared’ by a third party. By producing shareable posts, audiences can distribute and promote your brand for you. A business’ SEO is also benefited by shareable content. For example, if you were to post a link and this gets shared multiple times, search engines will notice this and assign more ‘importance’ to the linked content therefore ranking it higher in search results.

These points are only a small handful of the benefits gained through good design that here at theroom we want to share with you the next time you are considering to push that ‘post’ button.

Graphic Design Tips
Below are eight tips that can improve the quality of your business’ social media image content.

1. Consistency
Consistency is very important. Whether your brand is going for a very minimalistic aesthetic or a look with bright colours and bold shapes, you must stick to it. Consistency is beneficial to businesses in that it improves brand recognition, familiarity, brand loyalty, and reputation. Also, once you create a design that you are happy with, it can be used as a template and you can deliver later designs faster.

2. Reduce the Text
People aren’t on social media like Facebook or Instagram to read a 500 word blog post. In fact, they wouldn’t read most things longer than a paragraph. Having short (and direct) content makes it easier to digest and helps to get the message across. If you do require a large amount of text, you could try replacing it with a graphic/infographic or a link to a blog post on an external site (such as LinkedIn or on your website). Text that’s used in an image, such as a quote, will stand out more than that of a quote in a simple text post.

3. Use Contrast to Make Your Posts Stand Out
It’s simple – using contrasting colours will make your designs stand out from other graphics on the page. Use a strong, bright colour against a neutral colour or vice versa to achieve this.

4. Simplicity is Key
Tip #2 suggested not having large amounts of text, and the same goes for graphics. Having a graphic that’s busy and distracting will make it harder to get the message across but will also create a negative image of the brand in the viewer’s mind. Using a clear and simple design will make the content appealing and easy to communicate through.
Text in graphics should be limited to no more than three fonts – any more becomes displeasing.

5. Brand Graphics
As mentioned above, shareable content can be great for promotion and distribution, though what’s the point if the graphic becomes untraceable? If you have a photograph or infographic that gets shared many times but does not have any identification, people won’t be led back to your business.

BONUS TIP: Create guidelines when including your logo, such as size and placement. This helps in overall brand recognition.

6. Use it to Share, not Sell
Social media users do not want their newsfeeds filled with businesses trying to sell them their stuff. Rather, post content that people can relate to, such as similar interests and ideologies. For example, instead of a gym posting about gym memberships constantly, they can post a quote or image that is inspirational to live a healthy life.

7. Quality Images
Using images that are visually appealing will generate more engagement compared to images that are too small and/or pixelated. High quality images can also boost your brand’s credibility and professionalism.

8. Switch it Up
People don’t want to see the same sort of visual content over and over from your brand. Switch it up a little by using varying graphics like quotes, infographics, screenshots (business dependent), and photography.

At theroom we offer social media packages to assist in the visual design that best fits your business properly. Contact us today to find out more.