Right from the early civilization of humankind, humans are, by their nature and instinct, visual beings.
In the human brain, almost 30% neurons of the cortex are devoted to visual processing, while just 8% for touch and only 3% for hearing. Now you can logically imagine to what extent images and visuals appeal the human eyes.
This is the reason why visuals now play a vital role in content marketing. If you have to sell your product or service, you have to share. Share what? Value added contents. And how? Mainly through attractive visuals. Because gone are the days when people used to scroll and read lengthy paragraphs. So if your contents still don’t have visual elements, you’re likely missing out a chunk of potential customers and the opportunities that follow.
We cannot ignore the rise in social media too. Nowadays, both our personal and professional lives are incomplete without Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Interest, and the likely. Social media marketing is perhaps one of the best ways to spread your marketing content and build awareness of your brand.
Basic graphic design tips
So how do you do it? Through graphic design social media marketing. Social media images are crucial for your content to reach the maximum amount of people, build recognition, and drive traffic back to your website. What truly matters is that you need to prove your mettle in creating the right social media graphic that strongly appeals your potential customers.
There are definitely certain criteria and design tips for social media graphics that need to be taken into consideration. We’ve put together ten such simple Design Tips for making eye-catching social media graphics that are sure to create a buzz about your brand.
1. Different images for different Social Media Platforms
Each social media platforms have a different set of size resolutions for social media graphic design requisites. The size that works fine with Facebook might not work with Twitter. So you need to stay updated about the respective sizes of each social media channels. You can check this, this and this to gain a further idea about the sizes.
2. Include your Logo
The presence of a recognizable logo makes it much easier for people to relate and enjoy the graphic. This helps in creating brand engagement. Suppose if today you see an engaging post and there you see a big “M” engrafted in a familiar style you know, immediately you would recognize that the graphic has been posted by McDonald’s.
Whenever you get an opportunity, include your logo in the graphic and watch your brand engagement skyrocket.
3. Set a Goal
There should be a set goal for each image you create. Do you want to drive traffic, or increase engagement, or get more fan following? Setting up a fixed goals will help you align your graphic accordingly.
However, do not get confused in too many goals, or you might botch it up. Always try to have one goal in mind, and accomplish it. Too many goals driven into a graphic can confuse your social media followers and backfire.
4. A Quintesential Blend of Shapes and Images
There are tools that let you play with texts, shapes, and layers. You may rotate the letters to fit each shape perfectly, thus creating a nice visual effect. Alternatively, you can arrange your texts around the objects in the image, instead of writing them over the texts.
5. Avoid too many Texts
We know you love text. But that doesn’t mean you would allow words to make the image look crowdy. Whether you are creating a graphic for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, or any other social media platforms, limit yourself to one or two liners.
Too many texts can get overwhelming to the onlookers. The point of social media graphics is to deliver the actual message through color, shape, and one/two liner texts.
6. Maintain Consistency
If you are posting a graphic to support your tweet, then make sure that the text in the graphic and the tweet are similar. This is important because most people choose to click or not based on image text. To avoid high bounce rates, let them know what they are getting into by clicking it.
7. Be Creative
There is a range of visual contents, so it’s not like you have feed your fans with images and images everyday. It might be a little trite. So how to solve this?
Be creative and create a variety! There are various types of graphics that you can share on social media. Here are a few ideas:
- Top 10 Lists
- Post Quotations of famous people in an engaging typo and shape
- Infographics
- Charts
- Screenshots with arrows to illustrate a point
- Captivating Photographs
8. Typography
No doubt, Typography is an art. And the rate of your brand engagement depends on how well you are skilled in this art. Selecting the perfect font that gets aligned with the images can be a tough job, but when done correctly, it can bring your graphics to life.
Ideally, Serif fonts are the best choice for print purpose and Sans-Serif for the web. Whatever font you choose though, you have to ensure that it conveys your message and reflect your brand to the utmost.
Here are a few pro-tips for you:
- Limit yourself to using a maximum three typefaces.
- Use font sizing that fits well within the medium that you are publishing to.
- Keep in mind the medium your graphic will be posted. The fonts must fit well within the medium.
- Use kernings in the titles; it enhances the look of any graphic.
9. Use Negative Space
Negativity is positive!
Confused? Well, don’t be. Must you have heard about negative space in design jargon? It is also called white space. Clever use of white space is a great way to draw attention and grab the eyeballs. A design doesn’t always need to be colorful or busy, sometimes white space creates a change for the viewer and appeals them more than a brightly colored graphic.
10. Have your Branding
Imagine the scary condition when a viewer finds an informative graphic and wants to know more about the publisher, but gets no trace about it.
Don’t let this happen to you however!
Make sure you always have the brand identity of your company in your graphics. Because ultimately the point of creating shareable graphics is to get traffic to your website. And if your graphic has no such branding, the whole effort becomes futile.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be a big and bold sticker or an annoying watermark. Just put your website URL at the bottom of the graphic, or link the design so that when the viewers click on it, they are redirected to your website. This also has another benefit. In the sea of big data and visual contents, your designs will never get lost. Even if someone else shares it, people will ultimately get to know who’s the original publisher of the design.
How can InfoGraphic Design Team come to your help?
Well, no doubt you can create your own graphics designs for social media by taking help of the graphic design tools. But it is always recommended to consult professional designing agencies for any graphic design requirement. Because the templates available online are definitely cool, but in the long run when a requirement for custom design will come, the templates will fall short.
Here at InfoGraphic Design Team, we create fully customized graphics as per the project requirement. Our experienced graphic designers brainstorm idea and come up with graphics that are tailor-made. Feel free to contact us if you are thinking of creating social media graphics for your business.
Now It’s Your Turn!
So these are just a few tips that you can use to create better, more engaging visual elements for your content. Hope you enjoyed learning the nitty-gritty about social media graphic designs!
Did we miss any of your favorite social media design tips? Let us know that. And if you have any design tips, we can’t wait to know about it! Please feel free to comment below, and keep the conversation going!
