7 Graphic Design Tips to Boost Your Social Media

Table of Contents

1. Why is Design Important in Social Media?
2. 7 Graphic Design Tips for Social Media
3. Key Takeaways
4. Conclusion
5. FAQs

In the past few years, social media has become an influential place for brands. As a business owner, growing your business without a social media presence is nearly impossible.

However, to properly utilize its benefits, you need to get social media marketing right. The way you convey your message through social media platforms is important. Thus, you should follow our graphic design tips for social media that can help you engage directly with your target audience and make lasting connections with them.

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Why is Design Important in Social Media?

Different types of publications and blogs follow certain design guidelines to be presentable and easily understandable for viewers. So, why not social media?

If you’ve not given due importance to social media designs, it’s high time you start doing so. It plays a crucial role in attracting user attention and building brand recognition.

The points mentioned below reflect on the importance of graphic design in social media marketing.

Professional brand image

Every brand wants to come across as genuine and professional before its target audience. Irrespective of the platform a brand uses to communicate with its users, the way your ideas get conveyed should be clear and consistent. The users will not take you seriously if your posts or ads are inconsistent or have a lot of variations.

This uniformity in social media marketing is only possible when you have developed your detailed design style guide. For instance, you can have a specific set of colors or fonts, use British or American spellings, and use your brand’s logo in each of your posts.

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Provides brand recognition

Social media is a visual treat for viewers. The videos, images, or graphics keep them scrolling for hours. Your social media designs should be such that users can recognize your brand from your posts themselves. This way they will remember you better and will see your posts every time. This consistency comes with a uniform design and creates brand recognition.

Moreover, it also builds brand awareness since graphics are the most shareable form of content on social media.

Increases attention span

Grabbing user’s attention on social media even is not an easy task. Users simply scroll through their feed without actually looking at the posts. So, what can be done to capture the interest of users in such a short duration?

Captivating social media designs are the answer. Content creation by brands using a captivating design style can attract and engage your target audience at the very first look.

Conveys the message clearly

It’s rightly said, “A picture is worth a thousand words” and this explains the importance of design in social media. Well-designed infographics and images present your ideas most clearly. It not just conveys your message but also helps the target audience to understand your company’s values and what it stands for.

7 Graphic Design Tips for Social Media

After looking at the benefits design has to offer to social media marketing, let’s see some graphic design tips for social media. These simple social media design tips can be applied by brands at any stage of their marketing journey.

1. Plan before you start with graphic design in social media

Have a clear social media design strategy to enhance your content. To create the most effective design strategy, begin with evaluating your existing followers and what they’re looking for in your content.

Further, build user personas to reach out to new audiences since it’s much easier to design content for specific kinds of users. Choose the appropriate platforms for your brand. For instance, fashion and style tips perform great on Instagram which is what makes the platform apt for lifestyle and fashion brands.

After narrowing down on your audience and the channels you’ll be targeting, catalog your content plans and design medium (images, videos, GIFs). Also, keep a reference of content sizes and formats for different social media platforms.

2. Designing your social media page

With a social media strategy in place, it’s time to implement it. Start from your homepage which tells your potential followers about you. Your bio shouldn’t be too long. Your page layout should be such that the most important content is on the top and featured images tell the nature of grouped content. Your profile should deliver a focused message about your brand identity visually using images, colors, and graphics.

3. Design content in a way that is relevant for your followers

After optimizing your profile page design, focus on the content designs. Don’t make your social media account just about you. There’s a reason why people followed you, be it information, entertainment, or inspiration. Keep that reason alive.

Design isn’t just about visual appeal, it’s also about making content more impactful and useful for viewers. Brands can use bold and clear typography on bright backgrounds to highlight significant information which can grab the user’s attention as soon as they view the post.

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4. Use a variety of content designs

You may post different types of content such as promotional materials, customer reviews, product information, etc. on your social media. Regardless of what it is, each content category should have a different design that keeps your page dynamic and engaging.

For instance, inspirational content looks great in hand-written typography and might compel users to share it. Similarly, when posting pictures of real people and real products, don’t over-filter them and lose their authenticity.

5. Balance each post with your overall profile page

Even though you can have a variety of design types, your posts and the overall profile page still needs to be visually consistent for effective branding. This can be achieved by designing each post with its own goal and targeted audience, but at the same time contributing to the collective whole of your social media design.

6. Design themed content and templates

We recommend designing templates for some posts as these allow you to create content speedily and give a cohesive look to your page. Templates may come across boring and generic, but these can act as design roadmaps for posts where it’s better to skip designing individually.

This is particularly useful for recurring design images such as YouTube’s video thumbnails as spending time and energy on making unique thumbnails every time does not make sense. Thus, templates allow you to give more attention and time to more important content.

7. Update your design strategy based on analytics

Social media is dynamic and the lifespan of a post can vary from a few hours to a day. This can help you to test which design styles work better and adjust accordingly. Evaluate metrics such as views, watch time for videos, etc. to determine the success or failure of your post. A/B testing is a useful tool to decide which design variant is best.

Key Takeaways

• Developing your design style is an important component for a brand in its social media marketing strategy. There are several reasons for this, such as:
  • Having well-defined and consistent design styles imparts a professional look to your brand and to every content you post on social media platforms.
  • A social media design strategy creates brand recognition and awareness by posting content on social media platforms that can be easily associated with your brand through certain design elements.
  • An eye-catching design and good use of graphics in your content can help you get the attention of your target audience among the endless pool of posts on social media platforms.
  • Design in social media marketing is crucial since it helps brands convey their ideas, values, and culture to their target audience in a more precise and clear manner.
• These social media graphic design tips can help you get the most out of your social media marketing.
  • Before starting with social media design, you should plan your social media design strategy according to the audiences and the channels you are targeting.
  • After the planning stage, start designing your social media page to create the first look of your brand for the target audience. Your bio should be precise and your profile page layout should highlight the most important content.
  • Make sure that your content design creates a good impact for your posts apart from just being visually appealing.
  • Keep your social media page engaging by using different design styles for different categories of content types.
  • Each post can be distinct in itself but it should still be in line with the core elements of your social media design.
  • Make use of templates in your design style for some recurring content types to save time and effort.
  • Be flexible with your design strategy and keep testing different design styles to see what works the best based on certain metrics.

Conclusion

Social media is an excellent place for attracting leads, engaging customers, and creating brand awareness. However, brands can leverage these benefits only if they follow a great design strategy. Without one, the content is likely to get lost in the ocean of similar content. Captivating designs can compel the users to listen to what you have to say. Thus, brands should not underestimate the power of social media design.

FAQs