Design Principles For Your Social Media Posts To 10X Your Followers Count

Visual design is critical for social media because it captures the attention of users online. Providing quality content in the form of images and videos, it’s going to help you get noticed by consumers over your competition.

49% of marketers primarily use visual content on blogs and websites followed by social channels like Facebook and Instagram. According to Venngage, this particular focus on social media graphic design makes a real difference to the engagement of the online content.

In this article, we’ll cover the types of visual content that brands can post on their social media and nine of the best social media graphic design tips for that exceptional engagement required. Graphic design can be a great way to grab the attention of your consumers, so it’s not one you want to avoid utilising.

Types of visual content brands can post on social media

Adam Enroy mentions that 23.7% of content marketers face design and visual content as their biggest challenge in business.

There are multiple types of visual content options to choose from, here are just a few suggestions.

Infographics

Infographics are a great way to share more detailed information but in a digestible format. Infographics would typically be featured on a blog or via email. However, there are lots of brands making use of these on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook too.

Product Photos

Product photos can tell a lot more than just written content and so it’s a great way to maximise the sales made for your business. From Facebook to Instagram, these platforms are a useful channel for displaying your products through photography.

These platforms do work for advertising, as proven by the rise in revenue. In the UK alone, Instagram brings in around £3.59 billion per year as of 2021.

Data Visualisations

Charts and graphs are likely to be more engaged with over chunks of text. Even though they might not be as interesting, they still round up the message or sales pitch you want to get across to your consumers.

With data visualisations, you can communicate information without creating too much that it’s hard to take it all in.

Videos

Video content is one of the hottest trends in visuals nowadays, with Twitter Business finding tweets with video get 10 times more engagement than those without.

This type of content is always a lot more engaging, especially as our brains love anything visuals, especially if it’s easy to engage with. It’s why platforms like YouTube and Tiktok do so well and also why many existing social media platforms have introduced stories.

User-Generated Content

Brands and businesses are finding that more of their customers are choosing to interact further with online content by creating their own.

Whenever a customer includes your product on their social media handles, it’s worth sharing it to the masses. It makes existing customers feel more valued and it helps drive more sales with creative and unique content.

9 practical social media graphic design tips

There are lots of social media design tips that are practical for any brand to use when it comes to their visual graphic designs.

1. Create a detailed content strategy.

A content strategy is a must and the more detailed it is, the better. Having a content strategy provides direction and ensures you deliver on your content every single time.

What do you want to achieve from your content? How can you ensure everything you post is engaged with fully? Have set goals and milestones to reach when it comes to your content so that you’re always improving

2. Use the right tools for design.

There are a whole host of tools that you can use when it comes to graphic design. Canva is a good one as a template design platform. For those who need something a little more advanced, Adobe Spark is also beneficial for graphic designers who require a bit more freedom with their creations.

Canva is a useful one for those who need a design tool on a budget because for the most part, it’s free to use.

3. Make sure dimensions and sizing are correct.

Every social media platform has different requirements when it comes to the dimension and sizing of the graphics. With that in mind, you want to familiarise yourself with the requirements needed so that you can adapt your content to fit these limitations where applicable.

If you’re not thinking about this as you design your content, you could end up spending more time correcting these issues.

4. Be sparing with text.

Too much text and it’s like an automatic disengage for some consumers. You want to be sparing with text where you can and instead, focus on the design and visual appearance of how everything appears within the content.

It’s not always the case but less is sometimes more when you’re creating visuals for social media.

5. Consider the color palette used.

The color palette is essential because if you didn’t already know, color can evoke different emotions. Whilst you want to stay consistent with your own branding color theme, you may also want to think about what colors are used in your visual content.

For example, blue can be a trustworthy color whereas green is more peaceful. It’s important to inspire and influence through the use of color.

6. Keep quality consistent.

Remember consistency in the quality of your content. If the quality of your visuals is poor, then they’re going to be ignored. They’re also going to set a less than satisfactory impression for those new consumers who are only just seeing your content for the first time.

7. Vary the types of visual content to keep it interesting.

There are many types of visual content available and with bigger companies like Google changing the way they display content, it’s important to do the same. Google’s material web design is a change from the search engine’s flat design that you’d traditionally find.

8. Research what’s trending.

Research what’s trending when it comes to visuals on social media. Memes and GIFs are big at the moment because they can add humor to a lot of content that may be trying to convey a serious message.

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9. Get inspiration from your competitors’ graphic design.

How do I make my graphics more engaging? Get inspiration from your competitors’ graphic design. There is a lot of content out there already that you can be looking at in order to find what’s working successfully and what might be worth avoiding for your own graphic design creations.

Examples of brands leveraging exceptional social media design

If you’re looking for inspiration on how to design social media posts. Then here are some excellent examples of brands leveraging exceptional graphic design.

Chipotle – Challenging Boomers on Tiktok

A great brand that leveraged its graphic design through video content recently was Chipotle. It utilised a predominantly millennial and Gen-Z-based platform Tiktok, to take the mickey out of challenging Boomers to say the brand name correctly. Safe to say it worked a treat!

Project #ShowUs by Dove

A great way to show off a product with inclusivity and diversity was Dove’s 2019 campaign project called #ShowUs.

In collaboration with Girlgaze and Getty Images, the project consisted of 5,000+ photographs devoted to shattering beauty stereotypes with female-identifying and non-binary individuals. A powerful and inspiring message.

Go grab the consumer’s attention

Graphic design is one of the best ways to grab the consumer’s attention in the digital age that we now live in. Social media continues to delight and entertain online users, with a staggering 4.55 billion people around the world using these platforms.

Use these social media post design ideas and tips to help drive further success for your business in 2022.

Author bio: Natalie Redman is an experienced freelance copywriter. She works for Appnova, a creative design agency in London, specialising in providing fashion brand marketing strategy for its clients across the globe.