Visual content is critical for any online presence to be effective. In fact, it is an essential part of successful social media management. Not only do images and videos make it easier to show off your brand personality, but they also make your messages more interesting as well as more digestible.
But effective social media visual creation doesn’t just involve communicating through photos, videos, and similar media. There are best practices to follow in order to maximize the response to every visual you publish.
Here are 10 valuable tips for creating visuals for your brand’s social media presence:
1. Have an overarching social media management strategy
Visuals aren’t just about prettifying what you want to say. Each one you create should contribute to and advance your social media marketing strategy. So before you start designing your organization’s visual content, make sure you know the answers to the following questions:
- What unique value does your company offer?
- Who is your audience? What are the best ways to communicate with them?
- What problems do you solve for your customers?
- How should you measure your campaign’s success? What are your most important metrics?
- What is the overall objective of your visual content?
Answering these questions will direct your social media visual creation efforts. It will help you be intimately familiar with your company’s overarching strategy and ensure that your visuals make a solid contribution. You can check out the best social media management tools to help you get on top of your social media game.
2. Never stray from your brand image
Don’t fall into the trap of constantly trying new design ideas or chasing potential virality. The best social media visual creation strategy is to use a consistent design style that reflects your brand voice and image.
Branding consistency on your social media accounts should go beyond using a single color palette and choosing similar templates. Every element—your graphics, copy, layout, music, etc.—should reflect exactly the personality that your company portrays. You could also try making a QR Code with your company logo in it to enhance your company’s brand image.
If you mean to be sophisticated and competent, there’s no need for fun and hip, no matter how well the style has worked for other brands. Similarly, if your brand personality is youthful and spirited, it should reflect in your visuals, no matter your message.
3. Tap into your audience’s emotions
Tell stories that are consistent with your target audience’s experiences and highlight the emotions they might be feeling. Show that you understand their journey and that your brand is genuinely interested in what happens beyond the sales transaction.
But when relying on emotions for your visual content, remember that the goal isn’t always about warming hearts and causing tears (although that could also be very effective, if it suits your brand). Making your audience laugh is also a good way to create an instant connection with them. If you’re able to do this consistently, they’ll eventually be conditioned to associate your brand with positive feelings and will be more likely to patronize your company.
4. Create your own content
It might be tempting to use pre-built templates, but what will your audience think when they see the same design used by another brand? Additionally, using stock photos and other ready-made media might seem like an incredibly efficient way to create the visuals you need. However, they might also be too generic and unappealing to your audience.
Audiences value genuineness that stock photos might not deliver, so stop using them. Simply editing a stock photo can take it from boring to interesting overnight.
It’s always better to create original content that reflects your brand values and speaks to your audience on a personal level. Whenever possible, show your actual products and real users of those offerings. This will better enable your viewers to relate to your content and ensure that your message resonates with them.
5. Repurpose other content
Part of your marketing strategy should be to determine how to maximize the value of all your content. Just because something was created for one platform, it doesn’t mean it can’t provide value for another. No matter the type of content, there must be a way to repurpose it using different kinds of visuals and through different community platforms. The trick is in making sure your content is complimentary, not repetitive.
If you have a blog, your social media accounts will be a good place to share visual snippets of useful information and drive traffic to your website. You can create infographics out of survey results and make personalized videos out of customer testimonials. Whitepapers can supply content for an entire podcast series. You can also create useful documents like checklists and charts.
6. Feature your users’ content
Social media is an excellent place to create real connections with your target audience. It is a good platform to foster a community they take part in. Lead discussions or launch campaigns that will encourage them to participate. You can also find ways to gather video responses from your avid fans. When you do these things, pay close attention, and you’ll find gems of content you can highlight as social media visuals.
Featuring user-generated content (UGC) makes it easier for your followers to feel like they’re a part of a community of like-minded people. It gives them something genuine to relate to, and it fosters a feeling of authenticity. When UGC involves an endorsement, it can be much more powerful than anything you create on your own. To tie things up even more, you can embed your user-generated content on your website with a social media aggregator.
Launching custom user-generated content apps takes UGC participation to the next level by providing always-accessible mobile creation tools. Dedicated user-generated content apps enable intuitive content generation and frictionless submission, empowering customers to become brand ambassadors.
7. Brand all your visuals
Different people consume content in different ways. When you share a visual on your social media account, users will have many ways to share it. Some will use the platform’s official share button, but others prefer to send the link, some might take a screenshot, and others might even print it out to show others.
To make sure that all your visuals can still be traced back to you, make sure you brand them. Create a logo with a recognizable name and include them in your designs. When possible, add a link to the original post or at least include the official name of your social media account. So whenever or however it is shared, you still get the credit and the mileage.
8. Customize visuals for every platform
When you create visuals, tailor them to every platform. Think beyond dimensions and ensure you consider the platform’s culture and unwritten rules before posting. Keep in mind that every platform has its own conversational context, and audiences typically have an expectation of what they’re going to get when they visit these sites. You need to understand those audience expectations and preferences, so you don’t come off as an intruder.
9. Use clear calls-to-action (CTAs)
No visual content should be created merely for design’s sake. Each one should serve a purpose, and that purpose should ultimately lead to sales. When you publish any type of content, make sure you declare exactly what you want your audience to do through an effective call-to-action. It could be on the visual itself or as accompanying text. Either way, the message should be concise as well as compelling.
For example, publishing a relevant quote on achieving success might be useful for building your brand presence. But think of how much more value the same visual will offer if it can directly drive traffic to your website. All it takes is a call-to-action statement like “Ready to reach your peak? Click here to register.”
10. Split test your visual strategy
It’s easy to make assumptions about your audience’s preferences, but you can’t truly know what works until you’ve tried it and checked the results. But even if you’re already hitting your targets with your current visuals, wouldn’t you want to know if there are little tweaks that could boost conversions further?
When creating visuals for social media, every element of the design can make a significant impact. So, your split tests should involve only small changes. This will enable you to pinpoint exactly which design change contributed to the change in response.
It helps to change only one variable at a time. For example, center-align on one and left-align on the other. Use a GIF on one and a static image on another. You can also experiment with various CTAs.
Wrapping Up
Every social media management strategy should involve the creation of compelling and consistent visual content. It is the best way to engage audiences and capture their interest enough to absorb what you want to say.
But if you want to make social media content creation work for your brand, you can’t be lazy about it. Make the effort to create original, non-repetitive content. Ensure that each one is consistent with your brand. And, use it as a way to truly engage your audiences.
Apart from being more interesting and memorable, visual content is also more shareable. By following these best practices, you can pursue a visual content strategy that isn’t just digested but also shared.
