CREATE ENGAGING IMAGES WITH THIS SOCIAL MEDIA GRAPHICS CHECKLIST
24 of May 2018There are lots of tools out there to create your own social media images, but if you really want to make your mark on social, you can outsource your images and have a designer create your images by following this social media graphics checklist.
Table of Contents
WHY ARE SOCIAL MEDIA IMAGES SO IMPORTANT?
HollieUsing social media images have been shown to improve social media shares, earn more retweets, and get more engagement. Your social graphics are also a great way to show your companies values and shows your audience what your brand is about.
UNIFORMITY AND BRANDING
NoraTo make sure your audience recognizes your social media graphics, you need to keep certain aspects of your images uniform. Many experts recommend keeping your companies logo in the same location on every image and using your brand colours or text.
Although you probably won’t use all of your brand’s colour or type fonts in every image, using 1 or 2 of them throughout your graphics will create a connection between your business and your social campaign. When your audience sees your images, they’ll instantly recognize your brand.
To make sure your designer and team use a consistent theme for your social media graphics, you might consider creating a style guide for your brand.
Buzzfeed’s Proper Tasty videos have the same visual style, making their recipes instantly recognizable on Facebook.
TYPE FONTS
HollieIf you haven’t yet established type fonts for your business you can use several tools that can help you use find fonts that work together visually. Choose the main font for headlines, another for subtitles and a font that is easy to read for the body text.
For example, you might use a similar version of a font such as italics or bold for your subtitle and use a contrasting font for the body. Try to keep the body text as simple as possible, so that it’s easier for people to read. There are several fonts that fit the bill including Georgia, Helvetica, Open Sans and Verdana.
BRAND COLOURS
NoraSelecting your brand’s colours is an important part of establishing your brand. You might employ a designer to help you choose colours that reflect the values and niche of your business.
Once you’ve chosen the main colour for your brand, you can easily find an aesthetic colour combination using tools such as Paletton to find complementary colours or Color-Hex for similar colours and to browse colour palettes.
To help your audience recognise your brand, it’s important to keep the colours of your social media images consistent throughout.
Marmite consistently uses their unmistakable yellow and black colours through their Instagram content. There’s often strong product placement too, with a jar of Marmite in almost every post.
SOCIAL IMAGE SIZES
HollieEach platform has its own size guidelines for images, so it’s important to create your graphics for the social media platforms you’ll be using. Optimised images will look much better and also shows professionalism. Of course, cross-posting across platforms is a common occurrence now, and it is possible to reuse certain images over several social media platforms.
Here’s a list of sizes for shared social images as of 2018:
CHOOSING CONSISTENT IMAGES AND FILTERS
NoraIf you’re using images, either stock or your own photos you should try and keep them thematically similar. They should be a visual reflection of your brand, whether you’re a company or a person. Your images are also a good way to show your businesses character.
If you’re using overlays for text in your images, you should consider keeping the location of the layer the same in every image, which will help to further your brand’s recognition.
Similarly, if you’re using filters or effects, choose 1 or 2 for your social images and continue to use them throughout.
By following and creating visually consistent social media images you can establish templates that will not only create brand recognition but will allow the quick and continuous creation of your social media images.
Download your free social media graphics checklist to make outsourcing your social media images a breeze.