In today’s social media driven world, tons of visuals are being shared all across the internet at any given minute. Businesses are finding that the use of images and visuals make their social media content more appealing to audiences. Let’s face it: pictures are more likely to get our attention rather than a bunch of words. Users are more likely to click on impressive graphics. With visuals, you can even do yourself a favor and say more with less. That old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is still pretty relevant. You can share images and visuals on dozens of social media sites, like Instagram and Pinterest, which can spread your content to new audiences. The hard part is creating visuals that accurately represent your business and achieve the attention you are looking for.
You need a few handy resources that can help you create amazing images. For starters, find software or a website that can help you crop, resize, and change the file format of your images. You will use this tool over and over again for any visual series you are creating. A resource that can help you edit and create visuals that include images, words, and icons will also be helpful. Many people turn to Canva or PicMonkey to help them create stunning visuals for their social media or blog posts. Once you have the tools in place, you can begin to create visuals that will enhance your posts and drive more traffic to your website.
When creating your images, you need to make sure you keep up with your business’ brand. Make your visuals recognizable as being explicitly from your company and nowhere else. This doesn’t mean just adding your logo or business’ name to any image you post, although that is important. Branding your image means creating a distinct visual presence with the use of style, color, font, and more. Your branding should be consistent on every medium you post in. While you may need to re-size images for social media, you still need to be consistently using images that create that distinct visual presence. You don’t have to take the same image and edit over and over again to fit each post to create consistency in your brand. You can have consistency by creating a style guide. This does also bring up a question; Is the look your brand keeping up with the times? Many large companies have changed their logos and branding in recent years. Change isn’t necessary for everyone but a review of your brand now and then doesn’t hurt.
Once you find what color palettes, fonts, and general styles work for your business, write them all down as guidelines to follow when creating new images. You may have two drastically different images that still maintain your visual brand. It’s not so much about keeping your actual visual the same as it is keeping the complementary items on your visual consistent. Using similar color schemes, patterns, or font families can all help with consistent branding.
That being said, don’t be afraid to try something new with your visuals. Test the waters. Find out what is and what isn’t working from your readers and customers. Check your analytics to determine your click through rate for social media posts. If you are getting excellent feedback from one particular image, play around with it and see the different ways you can replicate. There are a million ways you can design one visual, so don’t get stressed out if one particular graphic isn’t working well. Just go back to the drawing board and start again. Visuals are always going to be relevant because pictures stay around for a long time. If you take the time and effort to experiment with your branded visuals, they will pay off.
