Social Media Guide: Create a Strong Visual Presence for Your Business

There’s no doubt about it: social media is a key element to success for any modern business. Social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter can connect you to an endless pool of potential clients.

It’s not enough to simply exist online. You need to be effective. Looks are everything in establishing your brand identity and credibility. Read on as we discuss how you can create a strong visual presence for your business.

Social Media Guide

Photo by Mikael Blomkvist

Deliver quality visuals

It needs saying and bears repeating: only post high-quality images. Even if you find or create a picture that suits your needs, it won’t do you any favors if it looks blurry to your audience. Keep your eye on the image dimensions.

Larger pictures, such as banners for Facebook, need to be around 2400 x 1600px in size. You can halve that for smaller images on platforms like Instagram.

Taking your own pictures? Upload them to a free image editor like Fotor. You’ll be able to resize, touch-up, or change the lighting of your picture before posting for a more professional look.

Design with branding in mind

Always design with your brand as the anchor. This isn’t simply your brand name–it’s your business’s identity and how it’s conveyed through visuals and text.

Choose a color palette that suits your needs and communicates a feeling to the audience. A yoga studio might use light blues and greens, while a DJ service might rely on darker themes and pops of color.

Develop a logo as well. Graphic Springs is a free logo maker that lets you customize a professional logo to match your branding. Incorporating design motifs and palettes will ensure a cohesive picture for your audience.

Tell your audience a story

Use visuals to communicate a story. Don’t simply post a picture of your latest product with the price and then move on. Make the content you share purposeful and relevant to your potential customer.

For example, a picture of your new daily planner against a white background is just another product. It won’t be memorable or remarkable.

But when you share a picture of a student at an organized desk, you’re telling a story. It communicates who the product is for, how it can be used, and what it can help the consumer achieve.

Adjust for different platforms

Ideally, your business will be active on multiple social platforms for the biggest impact. As you create and share content, keep in mind the shifting expectations for each platform.

A coffee company might share a picture of a latte in their Instagram account. However, that wouldn’t be appropriate for a site like LinkedIn. It would be more appropriate to share a data-driven graphic about bean production costs instead.

Weigh the value of each visual to the viewer across each social media site. Then trim and adjust accordingly.

Don’t overdo text

It can be tempting to use graphics to communicate a lot of information. Resist that temptation.

Browsing the internet has lowered the attention of all consumers. Visuals that are clogged with text immediately lose their impact, and your audience moves on to something simpler.

If you need to communicate with interesting data, keep it short and sweet. The free infographic tool at Visme will help you design a clutter-free visual. A quicker, easier option is to place text in the post, outside of the image.

Creating a strong visual presence takes some work at the beginning. But once you have the basic knowledge and tools you need, it will be easy to catch the eye of future customers on social media.

Credited to Kristopher Perry. Edited by admin.