Do you want to learn how to create graphics for social media that can help your SMB? Do you want to learn how to encourage more users to engage with your brand on social media?
We're here to show you how to create striking social media graphics to hook more audiences with.
Social media is the era’s top information pool. There’s no doubt about it. It’s no surprise that 72% of Americans are social media users.
However, not all small- and medium-sized businesses get a chance in the spotlight. If this is the case, you may be missing one very important thing: engaging visual content. Below, we’ve got a list of steps you can take to improve your social media graphics game.
1. Know Your Target Audience
Before you start, you need to know who you’re making the graphics for. This knowledge will guide you when you’re deciding the mood and style of the graphics. For example, if the audience is adolescents, it will differ from one for professionals.
It also helps to know what your audiences want or expect from your brands. Remember, people like things they feel that’s familiar to them. Yet, you can also use this to your advantage and break their expectations (in a good way).
You can also use this information to show audiences what your business is like. Do you want your audiences to see you as an approachable and open business? Or do you want your audience to see you as professional and specialized?
2. Plan It Out
When you start learning how to create a graphic for social media, you need to know how to plan it out. Often, social media marketing campaigns aren’t a one-time thing. They take months to finish and a lot of online posts.
Thus, you need to create social media graphics that can fit the timeline of your marketing campaign. Before you start, it helps to plot out how you want the campaign to go. For example, do you plan to do daily teasers or puzzles with an image until the day of the sale?
Knowing certain details will also help you in the planning phase. That includes how much experience the design team has, how much time they have, and how much they need to work on. You also need to know how much budget you have and how many social networks you want to cover.
3. Show Don’t Tell
Visual content is effective because your audience, by nature, is a visual species. However, you mustn’t be complacent with any graphics that gets brought to you. You need to strive for graphics that are striking, engaging, and relevant.
When you “show”, make sure your graphics alone communicate a story or idea. Use as little to no text as possible. You can ask a friend to tell you what they see when they look at your work to get a new perspective.
Note that striking doesn’t always refer to colorful or crowded graphics. You can use a minimalistic style and still have an attention-grabbing graphic. If you’re not confident that you can do it, hire a professional illustrateur to help you out.
4. Stick to Your Rules for Making Social Media Graphics
Consistency is the key to long-standing success. Customers like it when a business is predictable in all the good ways and surprising in the best ones. For creating graphics, define a few ground rules for any visual content on your social media.
Write down what kind of colors you want to place in your graphics. Stick to your brand’s colors or any colors people associate the business with. You can also include your logo at the corner of every graphic you post online.
Staying consistent can help people recognize your brand better. At a glance, they can already know that it’s your business’s content that they’re seeing. This is a great step in boosting brand awareness.
5. Use High-Quality Images or Graphics
91% of consumers now prefer visual content over text-based media. Thus, you want to include quality graphics to make engaging social media content. Picking or creating any kind of visual content won’t cut it anymore.
The visual elements in your social media accounts or posts need to be of high quality. Nothing says dated, unprofessional, or novice louder than using low-resolution graphics. If you want to make an impression, use high-resolution images.
When you draw or create the graphics on your computer, save it as a vector or in PNG format. These are the best ways to ensure your social media graphics don’t lose any details when you save it. Vector and PNG formats allow for lossless compression, which is perfect for scalability.
6. Optimize Your Image for SEO
How will your audiences react to your work if they can’t find it? The best way to keep their search algorithm tuned into your SMB is to include search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is a tool that will help search engines bring your SMB to your online audiences.
This happens with the use of keywords and key phrases that your business uses. Add these keywords to the image alt tags, geotags, and rich captions. Also, before you upload the image, change its filename to match your keywords.
7. Adjust the Designs to Fit Various Social Media Platforms
Remember that while you can use your graphics on all your social networks, every network is unique. They have different ways of sharing information for your business. Thus, you want to adapt to each “style” the various social networks present to you.
For example, you may find that your graphics are easiest to upload on networks like Instagram. It’s also the best place for visual promotions because of its graphic nature. It’s different from using Facebook, which allows you to include a long text in your post.
Start Designing Graphics for Your Social Media
Picking or creating the right graphics can help your brand stand out on social media. Don’t forget to make it fun and entertaining other than making eye-catching graphics. If it can bring a smile to your audience’s face, then you’re already on the right track.
Now you know how to create engaging social media graphics for your business! We hope you learned something valuable from his post about social media graphics. If you want to learn more about keeping your SMB at the top of its game, check out our other posts.
