The benefits of social media marketing are proven and many. Building brand awareness, creating an online community, and lead generation are just a few of the key reasons to market on social channels. With social media marketing, you can reach a large audience with a relatively small budget. In this post, I’ll share my simple graphic design formula for creating visually engaging social graphics that build brand recognition and encourage clicks.
Quick note: Before taking pencil to paper, remember to begin with the message. Knowing your audience and key messaging will help lay the foundation for telling the story visually.
Design foundations + Brand = Successful Social
Design
Let’s start with design foundations. Design for social media is unique. Think big impact on a small canvas. Getting a bit more specific:
- Simplicity is key – pulling key messages and limiting words is a good starting point.
- A general rule for design is to strive for an uncluttered approach with relatively few high impact images or graphics.
- Typography should be bold, concise, and legible.
- For your social color palette, blanket statements like “use bright colors” or “use complimentary colors” are good baseline thoughts, but these decisions blur with what’s appropriate from a brand perspective. So, let’s continue the conversation.
Branding
Brand is king in social media for consistency and recognition building.
- Keep your brand positioning statement in mind when designing – make sure your design represents what you offer and resonates with your buyer persona.
- Pull from your visual branding guidelines by using brand-specific fonts, colors, and imagery (vs. stock photography).
- Respect the good design foundations mentioned above, but if your brand dictates, don’t be afraid to spread your design wings. A creative headline font, or a muted color palette may be integral to your brand identity. Don’t sacrifice the brand to be like everyone else.
- Keep designs consistent from channel to channel. Start with your highest priority channel, and then rework your designs for additional social platforms. Using a program like Adobe Express or Canva is a great place to start and require a small learning curve.
- Be sure to include a clear, easily accessible call-to-action – either in the graphic itself (if applicable), or in the post content beneath.
Crumbl Cookies gets it on social (not to mention branding!). Let’s a take a quick look at what they’re doing right on social media:
Telling your story visually with social media is a mix of design basics and brand. If you need help moving your social media from concept to campaign contact Christa Blackman to learn more.
