Social Media Marketing Tips for Your Business
1. Create a design brief.
Designers aren’t mind readers. No matter how skilled and talented a designer may be, they’re not going to be able to bring your vision to life if they don’t have a clear understanding of that vision. “Before you start collaborating, it’s important that you map out what you need in a design,” advises Tristan. And the best way to do that is to create a design brief.
Design briefs are detailed documents that outline all the key details of your design project—and they’re a must when working with designers. “A thorough and well thought out brief gives a designer a launching-off point to build upon,” says Tristan.
Your design brief should include anything and everything your designer needs to successfully complete the project. “This includes both creative elements like your brand colors and visual style, and business elements like your target audience, industry and the purpose of the design,” Tristan adds.
Some elements you should consider adding to your design brief include:
Your company slogan or tagline
A description of your company and industry
An explanation of your product and/or service
A description of your target audience
Your brand colors
Examples of designs that have the look and feel you want to capture in your design
The more information and design direction you give your designer, the better they’ll be able to do their job—and the higher the likelihood you’ll be excited about the final product.
These days, every company has a social media page design for their Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Google+, Linkedin, Pinterest or Instagram page. The profile picture, cover image and background images act like billboard space for companies to communicate their brand – and that’s where they need a designer to create some eye-catching designs.
Here’s 9 tips on how to design the best social media page for your client’s company.
Showcase the company’s branding, products and community
Social media pages’ images consist mainly of a cover/banner image, profile picture and sometimes a background. The company logo is typically displayed in the profile picture. The cover/banner and background can feature various types of images; some display the basic products and services of a company, while others promote a featured social media or marketing campaign.
It’s always good to consistently update the imagery on a company’s social media page to keep things fresh and interesting for the target audience. For example, you can feature your latest social media campaign on your cover photo to promote the campaign and place a call to action.
When designing a social media page, make sure that your design is consistent with the company’s branding, demonstrates the services that the company provides, and serves as a strong call to action if the design is for a promotion/social media campaign.
2. Use the correct image sizes
Below is a list of the recommended file dimensions for each social media page cover image, profile picture and background. These images will display at different sizes on different devices, but for the best image quality across multiple devices, use the dimensions below:
Facebook: 852 x 315 cover photo; 180 x 180 profile picture
Google+: 2120 x 1192 cover photo; 800 X 800 profile picture
Youtube: 2560 x 1440 cover photo (template link here); 800 x 800 channel icon
Twitter: 1252 x 626 cover photo, 73 x 73 profile picture, 1600 × 1200 background image
Linkedin: 646 x 220 banner image, 100 x 60 company profile picture
3. Create your designs in RGB color mode
Your social media page designs are only going to be displayed on screen. No CMYK colors here.
Facebook is a perfect opportunity to engage with their audiences, grow their follower base, and build stronger relationships with their followers. Some of the most popular forms of content on Facebook are:
Data visualizations (infographics, charts, graphs): Apart from making complex information understandable, data visualizations will also drive traffic to your site.
Graphics and animations: Original, on-brand graphics help you stand out in busy social media feeds.
Memes: They let you humanize your brand and show its fun side. While you can share popular memes in your industry, but creating your own memes is a perfect opportunity to engage followers on a more personal level.
Blog headers: Their main purpose is to grab users’ attention and encourage them to click on your link.
Videos: Skip long textual content and provide interactive explanations via video.
The size of Facebook visuals varies. The size of link posts should be 1,200 x 628 px, for 360-degree posts it goes up to 4096 x 2048 px, while the maximum dimensions for photo posts are 2048 x 2048.
Instagram is all about gorgeous and interactive visual content. It helps boost people’s interest in your products and gain their trust. Here are a few kinds of content to share there:
Product images: They showcase your most popular products and can directly boost your sales. No matter if you are hiring a photographer or taking photos yourself, make sure you always use the same filters and styles to keep your account consistent and recognizable.
User-generated content – images or videos created by your customers or social media influencers. telling customers that people similar to the are buying from you.
Inspirational quotes: When choosing the right colors and fonts, you can create inspirational quotes that will empower and encourage your followers and build stronger relationships with them.
Behind-the-scenes photos of your offices, staff, parties, etc. that will emphasize the human side of your brand.
The size of Instagram posts needs to be 1080 x 1080 for photo posts, 1080 x 1920 for stories, and 1080 x 566 for landscape photos.
Twitter is perfect for boosting engagement and interacting with followers in a more personal way. The kinds of content that work there are:
GIFs – just like memes, their main purpose is grabbing people’s attention and boosting engagement.
Visualize customer feedback and tweet it to boost brand credibility and maximize sales.
Deals, offers, and discounts: As your characters are limited on Twitter, creating gorgeous graphics to emphasize your hottest deals is a great way to engage users and get them to visit your site.
The size of Twitter posts should be 1500 x 500 for a header photo; 400 x 400 a profile picture, and 900 x 512 for regular posts.
This is the largest professional platform and, as such, it is perfect for networking with potential clients, partners, or employees. The right types of visual content for LinkedIn include:
Infographics and other data visualizations– just like I have mentioned above, infographics are a perfect way to visualize your stats, gain industry authority, and boost shares and backlinks. As such, they are perfect for LinkedIn.
Banner images – should emphasize your brand’s personality and memorability.
SlideShare presentations are perfect for educating your audiences through a well-organized, informative, and visually appealing content format. You just need to balance your design elements and include custom animations, charts, and your brand logo to maximize engagement.
The size of LinkedIn posts should be 1584 x 396 for banner images and 400 x 400 for a company profile picture.
4. Make your designs visually consistent
Your client is looking to establish a strong brand identity through social media, so make sure that all your designs are visually cohesive across platforms. Designer charmiel designed 3 different social media page images for their client, but kept the overall look and feel of each design consistent.
5. Devote more space to images than to text
The brain processes images thousands of times faster than it processes text, and image-based content (especially photos of people) is proven to generate more re-tweets, Facebook shares and other types of engagement than text alone. Facebook actually used to have a rule that cover photos could not have more than 20% text. Even though the rule is no longer enforced, it’s not a bad number to keep in mind when designing your cover/banner image. Keep the content image-based.
6. Pay attention to how the placement of the profile picture interacts with the cover/banner header
In terms of composition, don’t let a profile picture overlapping the cover image hide any valuable content that you want your audience to see. For easy viewing, make the main content of your cover/banner image more oriented to the right side of the image than the left.
For a more creative approach, try making the profile picture and the cover image purposefully interact with each other. Above, The JA Designs has designed the profile picture and the cover image to display as if they were one continuous image instead of two, while placing the most important information closer to the right side of the cover image.
Some social media platforms platforms will automatically place your cover image into a photo album, so make sure it looks good with and without the profile picture overlapping the bottom left corner. Don’t leave an awkward blank space in that area.
7. Make sure that your designs abide by each platform’s rules
Most of these guidelines forbid the use of nudity, celebrities, obscene or threatening images, profanity, and copyrighted images in both the profile picture and cover image. Each site enforces these guidelines differently, but if your design violates them, you risk your client’s company account being suspended or terminated.
It’s important to read the fine print as a designer, so feel free to peruse the Facebook page terms, Twitter terms of service, Google+ policies and principles, YouTube community guidelines, and the Linkedin user agreement.
Note: If you’re designing a social media page on 99designs, submitting original work and declaring any stock imagery will cover your bases in this area.
8. If the design is for a promotion or social media campaign, keep it simple
For a featured promotional campaign on your social media page, use compelling imagery, short copy and a simple call to action. Above, Design_arc‘s Facebook cover design clearly indicates the call to action with a straightforward and effective design.
9. Make it creative and visually engaging
Here’s the bottom line: the purpose of a social media page is to engage with the target audience and get them to share its content, which includes the cover/banner image.
Social media pages that have appealing content and visuals are much more likely to be shared and increase engagement. So definitely exercise creative freedom in your designs, while making sure that that your visuals are consistent with client company branding and are showcasing their products and community.
Got any social media page design tips? Share in the comments!
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