We are visual people. Since 1873 when the first American newspaper began using daily illustrations we tend to connect and remember more with a good image. Social Media is no different. To help with your social media marketing having a good image with your content is vital to reaching the maximum amount of people.[1] Since not everyone is a graphic artist there are a few tips and tricks you can use to make things easier to enhance your content.
If you ever talk to a marketing guru, they will use terms like color, font, lines, typography, contrast, and space. These can all be overwhelming leaving you questioning where to start and how to improve your posts.
While all of these are good and necessary, we will try to break down into more simple applications that do most of the work for you.
Frank J Kenny, an entrepreneur and Chamber professional who has said that images do many things for your posts that include:
- Getting your audience’s attention
- Help build your brand identity[2]
Kenny has great tips on how to utilize the tools available to you, use your phone, capture the “oh wow” moments around your community.
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Social Media Image Sizes All Sizes in Pixels |
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Profile Image: 110 x 100 Photo Size: 1080 x 1080 Landscape: 1080 x 566 Portrait: 1080 x 1350 Story: 1080 x 1920 |
Profile Image: 180 x 180 Cover Photo: 820 x 310 (or 640 x 360 on a smartphone) Sharing Image: 1200 x 630 Event Image: 1920 x 1080 Facebook Ad: 1200 x 628 |
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Profile Image: 400 x 400 Header Image: 1500 x 500 In-stream Photo: 1024 x 512 |
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- Start with a high-quality royalty free image
- There are lots of places you can use such as canva[3] which is free to sign up, they have free templates and images you can use.
- Other sites are Pexels[4] or Unsplash[5]
- Color
The choice of color is one of the most noticeable and tangible components of a brand. A lot of thought goes into choosing the right color. You will hear terms like RGB, CMYK, and Web#, CMYK is great for print, and RGB and Web# are better for digital.
Colors evoke emotions and feelings. For example, Red = anger or passion, blue = trustworthy, loyal and dependable, yellow= happy[6]. Keep in mind that color will look different depending on the screen. Personally, I like to use the Adobe color[7] when I am creating. Be sure to ask co-workers for opinions because others see things that you do not. For example, I had a marketing professional who loved to use an aqua blue in almost everything, all those can look fantastic in print, in digital form it is too hard to read especially if used for a font. Today’s trend for colors is clean and simple. When designing you will want to keep fonts down to two colors. Too many different colors are too distracting and leave the reader lost, not knowing what to look at first.
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- Fonts
Choosing the right font is huge. There are many free font websites like 1001 Free fonts[8] and dafont.com[9]
When choosing a font, once again if you are new to this take some time on Pinterest to see the sample font combinations. Infographics like the one below show two fonts you can use together to make your images pop. Also, spend some time to learn about kerning which is the process of adjusting the spaces between the characters. The same rule with color applies to fonts. Be very careful to limit the number of fonts used in any graphic. Too many fonts are overwhelming, it is best to keep it simple to a header font and complementary content font. Occasionally you can add a 3rd subtitle font.
- Software
I personally like to use Adobe creative suite, however, for the beginner, I would stick with Canva, utilize the free images and templates as a starting place.
- Get help!!
Do not be shy to check out other peoples work for inspiration. I like to look on Pinterest, as it has a wealth of resources from infographics to help you know the sizes of images depending on the social media platform, to font and color combinations to create the best impact.
If you have questions, be sure to call the Chamber for assistance. For a consulting fee, we can help guide to resources and help you to create a strong, dynamic digital marketing campaign for your business.
Cheryl Viola, Executive Director
[1] https://www.elleandcompanydesign.com/blog/color-palette
[2] https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/
[3] https://buffer.com/library/social-media-design-tips
[4] https://frankjkenny.com/a-guide-to-creating-awesome-images/
[8] https://www.elleandcompanydesign.com/blog/color-palette [9] https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/ [10] https://www.1001freefonts.com/ [11] https://www.dafont.com/