The phrase “visual speaks louder than words” is apparently true, particularly when it comes to social media content. While the captions are no less important, the visual elements that go with them are crucial to the growth of your business.
It’s not challenging to create engaging content. Still, it can also be overwhelming if there’s no precise idea of what you want to post. Follow the pro tips below to get ready to witness how your social channels grow in 2022.
Determine Your Visual Brand
Prior to designing what you want to convey through your visual content, it’s essential to first determine what your visual brand is. What included in a visual brand are the color schemes, typography, and other aesthetic components consistently used in all your advertising materials,
Take your time to determine the tone you want to communicate with through social media posts. Your brand’s overall mood should be reflected there, although sometimes you need to tweak specific posts depending on the platform.
Pick a Theme and Be Consistent
A recent Microsoft research shows that people nowadays lose their ability to focus on a particular thing roughly after eight seconds. This number even continues to decline in a crowded online space. That is why content on social channels is not known for holding the audience’s attention.
The best solution is to determine a distinct visual theme after you have figured out the visual brand of your business. If your brand has a specific color scheme, employing the same color throughout your content is definitely your best bet. Besides, consistency helps people to easily recognize your brand.
Balance Your Visual Elements
Balanced social media posts are what attract the audience the most. Particularly so if the use of media components is relevant. This is where graphic design for social networking sites comes in handy. Each platform has its own content type; therefore, you need to carefully consider the type of content, the objectives, and the platform where you will publish it.
You can try making video content, for it has been gaining traction on today’s social advertising channels. At the same time, create reliable infographics for they can gather an engagement of somewhere between 120 to 180%. If you want to stay with images, make sure to pair them with text to reinforce your message.
Consider Designing Custom Graphics
The marketing budget in a small business is often limited, which hinders one from using quality images. Fortunately, stock images provide an excellent substitute should you require original pictures but can’t produce one. However, make sure not to overuse them or pick widely used photographs.
If possible, it’s always worthwhile to devote some time to producing graphics that fit the type of images you would like to use as social media promotional materials. Your target audience is unlikely to expect quality images taken by a professional adorning all of your social networking handles. So, don’t hesitate to share one or two candid photographs of the products you offer.
However, if you opt to use some stock images, make sure to spend some time looking for ones that have not been popularly utilized before. You may also perform some customization to the photos so that your materials look original and appear different from the rest.
Create Templates
Designing marketing content for social channels is a time-consuming task, even when you need to create one post only. You often need to create a different type of post for multiple platforms. Undoubtedly, this is a taxing job, and the best solution for this is using templates.
Templates are also essential for staying on brand across all platforms. It can include visual and text templates you plan to share on your social media channels. In addition, the templates should be made available for all types of platforms you use (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc.).
Each platform comes with its own requirements, and what you want to post can be slightly different. That way, you can save time and effort should you need to share new content. In addition, you can also maintain brand consistency.
Wrapping Up
Almost as essential as the tips above are to list down things you will not publish. This may include visual elements (colors, particular words, and images) that you don’t want to use and don’t fit your brand identity.
Also, always consider using templates that you can download on graphic design platforms or make your own. This is to streamline the process of creating social media content and maintaining brand consistency, resulting in increased engagement.