10 Design Hacks for Visual Content to Improve Social Media Marketing!

So, you are investing time and resources in social media marketing, right? But how successful have been with this?

How about some improvement to drive more interesting results?

There is no doubt that these days, practically every business needs some type of visual content with social media marketing becoming a major part of our everyday lives. For one, social media is a ready platform to easily connect with and engage your potential customers at near zero cost. However, to be effective you need to create sharable content that has the potential of going viral. Unfortunately, not many of your social media marketing content will be able to achieve this feat.

From research findings, it is a confirmed fact that visual content do better than context based campaigns on social media. This means if you can create more appealing visual content you will have more chances of improving your social media marketing success. But the challenge is, how do you do this? How can you design visual content to spark up the flames of social media shares and ultimately, go viral?

In this post I want to share with you 10 design hacks to make your visual content stand out.

1. Create Billboard-Like Page Headers

Using great domain names isn’t enough to capture your audience’s attention. Your website and your social media accounts need attention-grabbing, informative page headers, too.

2. Keep The Design Simple

Today, single-column, endless-scrolling pages are popular because they’re straightforward and easy to navigate. This is what people expect when they visit a modern website. If they can't figure out how to get around your site, they may go elsewhere.

3. Show Your Information, Don’t Just Talk About It

You’ve partnered with Williams-Sonoma in the past? Post a photo from the shoot. You’ve had an article in a top selling magazine? Don’t just post a link to it, also include a PDF of the actual printed page.

4. Tell Stories With Your Visuals

By creating visual narratives, you can lead people through the story in an interesting, compelling way. In a world where nobody can pay attention to anything for long, storytelling is one of the best ways to engage your audience.

5. Include Obvious, Strong Calls To Action

Make them unique, too. What do you want your audience to do? More importantly, what can you make your audience to do? Tell them how to do it so that the process is fool-proof.

6. Try Crowdsourcing

Social media is a two-way street. When you communicate with your customers, they want to communicate back. With crowdsourcing, your audience can feel like they’re an actual, important part of your business. They get involved while the brand gets the funding they need to move forward.

7. Create Visuals Specifically For Each Platform

Vertical images work well on Pinterest while horizontal images are better for accompanying links on Facebook. On Instagram, every image has to be square. When you re-design visuals so they work well on each platform, you tell your audience that you care about social media messaging.

8. Vary Your Content, So Long As It’s All Still On Message

Try different types of content, including photos, graphic design, videos, GIFs and audio posts.

9. Create Original, Branded Designs

Use your brand style to create your own images using tools like Canva. You’ll avoid copyright issues and showcase your graphic design skills at the same time.

10. Always Link Back To Yourself

When you pin to Pinterest from your blog, make sure the link to the blog post is included. When you upload a photo to Instagram that you created, add your watermark. Always make sure to credit yourself. If an image or other piece of content circulates online, you’ll want everyone to know where it came from.

Conclusion

Visual content are a great way of making a success of your social media marketing. Right now everyone is doing it, from people you’ve never heard of to the biggest name brands on the market today. These tips will help you stand out and of course, implementing them will help you make the most of the content you put so much hard work into.