Your Social Media Graphics Are More Important Than Ever

For many businesses, social media marketing has moved from the status of complimentary add-ons to more traditional media into the forefront of prospect engagement and cultivation. Plus, in recent years, social media has expanded into a vast, lightning-fast landscape of millions of posts and teeny tiny attention spans. You have to stand out instantly. Although, of course, your copy and call-to-action needs to be valuable, and on point for your target audience, the creative and graphic techniques you use can make a huge difference. Here are some important reasons that great graphics help plus some tips to look into.

Captures and Holds Attention:

The human brain processes images thousands of times faster than text. Your social media creative has only seconds to stop the scroll and get your message across. The images you use, the type formatting, and how they are arranged, all play a role in the success of your campaign.

Tips to look into: 

• Make the most of your brand colors by choosing bold looks with plenty of contrast.
• Use quality, original images whenever possible.
• Strive to create a hierarchy in your elements that guides your audience to your call to action (CTA). 
• Movement is the king of capturing attention. Use formatting such as animated gifs or short videos. For your videos, consider starting with a cliffhanger to get scrollers to stop to learn what happens next.

Improves Brand Recognition:

Social media done right creates a lasting and distinctive brand that your target audience recognizes instantly and will pay attention to like running into a friend in a crowded restaurant. A consistent visual brand identity will also build trust and familiarity, keeping your business or service at the top of their minds when the time comes to purchase. These factors also promote repeat purchasing.

Tips to look into: 

• Identify your target audience and get as specific as possible. Create your “perfect customer” within a specific niche.
• Carefully cater all images, copy, and formatting to them. Craft a world they would want to live in.

Boost Engagement and CTR:

The desired metrics of a successful social media strategy is the engagement from your target prospects such as likes, shares, comments, and click-throughs, leading finally to the sale of your product or service. Superior call to action design and formatting boosts the likelihood of these engagements.

Tips to look into: 

• Consider interactive call to actions (CTAs) such as polls, trivia questions, quizzes, or asking questions and engaging with answers.
• Design your CTA to stand out with contrasting color or plenty of space around it.

Higher Content Retention:

Social media users are bombarded by content every day as they, on average, spend nearly 2 and a half hours on their favorite social apps. In all that noise, you are trying to get them to remember your content. Strategic formatting use with original creative and copy that is posted consistently will help you stand out and help them remember.

Tips to look into: 

• Consider infographics, charts, or interestingly formatted videos that combine type or other elements over the base video graphic. 
• Ensure the main point you want them to remember is in the first few seconds.
• Create valuable content that informs and or entertains your target audience. Not only that, but make sure the content fits in your brand world, where you know it’s something your audience wants to see.

Conclusion

Great graphics and intentional formatting is now synonymous with great social media content and is essential for success. By capturing attention to stop the scroll, constructing brand recognition and familiarity, boosting meaningful engagement, enhancing information retention, and increasing click-through rates, high quality, compelling graphics set your content apart from the clutter. With a strategy that understands the importance of graphic design, your brand can foster a community of connections with your target audience and achieve growth that will lead to sales.