29Aug 23 Top 11 Social Media Graphic Design Tips to Stay Ahead of Competitors

Smart social media marketers never underestimate the power of engaging graphics when it comes to marketing campaigns. Visual branding on social media is an important aspect of meeting the objectives of your campaign. Engaging graphics are known for grabbing the attention of viewers. They help audiences to understand your message and remember for a longer time. That’s why most marketers rely on engaging visuals for a robust marketing strategy.

Typically, our sense of remembrance gets stronger when we see something attractive. So, as a brand owner, it’s pivotal to make your content stand out of the crowd. Keep reading to discover more about creating stunning visuals for social media content strategy.

Things to Consider for Creating The Best Social Media Ad Design?

Before you start working along with the tips, there are some basic things that you need to consider. No matter what you plan, your brand identity falls in the first place. Take the social media platform as a podium for the visual representation of your brand. Don’t just plan your design only because your competitors are doing it. Understand your audience and conduct market research. Find out:

• What your audience is looking for when they visit your brand’s page?
• What are the values they are looking for?
• What are their interest?
• What are their pain points?
• What are they looking for on various social media pages?

These answers will help you to frame a concept and plan the approach to design. These references are enough to devise a constructive design plan for your social media marketing. You can then compare with your competitor’s design and find a unique depiction to represent your brand.

Find out the best app to create social media posts or simply hire a graphic designer to make things easier and logical. They can plan and employ ideal strategies to overcome competitive hurdles and reach your consumers.

Why Visual Content is Important for Social Media

Social media revolves around the principles of attraction and flaunting. From selfies to branding, the aim narrows down to aesthetics. Text-based posts are rarely fruitful for social media platforms. This type of post is only crucial to share critical updates. So, share a combination of visuals and texts to have a competitive edge.

Posts with images acquire a 98% comment rate on LinkedIn. Contrarily, carousel posts get the maximum engagement rate on Instagram. So, these stats show why videos and images are valuable to reach the marketing goals on social media. Also, this isn’t limited to marketers. Even consumers are prioritizing visual content when they are on a shopping spree.

Let us now find out the most up-to-date tips for creative social media design!

1. Focus on The Value

If you want your page to be remembered and get the maximum engagement, ensure value in your visuals. Value-added visuals reinforce and support the communicative track of your business page. Pouring in unnecessary colors, filters, and elements just for the sake of design – isn’t going to work anymore. Do the design elements really support your message? Are the graphics serving their purpose? Ask these to yourself, and you’ll automatically find the answer.

Carefully examine the graphics to add relevancy to your social media posts. The goal is to make people understand what you’re trying to say. Maintain the balance between being too flashy and boring design aspects. Therefore, focusing on the value will make your audience feel the usefulness of your page and its content.

Here’s how you can ensure value to your graphics –

• Create a checklist
• Create infographics
• Highlight product features
• Provide a step-by-step guide with images

2. Use Contrasted Colors For Creative Social Media Design

Similar to quality text, contrasting colors are pivotal. As we know, attention is the key to social media marketing; contrasted colors help to achieve the same. Viewers will naturally stop scrolling when they find your post in their feed. Without contrasted colors, your posts will get lost in the disregarded sea of generic images.

If you have CTA buttons and links, make sure to contrast them. Include graphics with your CTAs. This will help to increase engagement and drive immense traffic to the page. Keep the area of the link or button smaller to achieve a higher conversion rate since contrasting colors ensure that the area stands out from the rest of the graphic.

The idea is to complement each section of your graphical image. All you need is to play with different hues to match the elements. However, do not use too much color in a single image. Keep your choice restricted to one or two contrasting colors.

3. Maintain Simplicity

This is one of the chief social media graphic design tips. There is no hard and fast rule to include finance fonts and complicated design elements for social media posts. Too much image detailing overwhelms your viewers. Try to avoid this.

So, the main idea is to add items that impact your viewers. The most engaging graphics are easy to remember due to their aesthetic simplicity. Interestingly, these are also powerful as they convey the message appropriately. Feel free to experiment but be sure to keep the design simple. Also, keep a note of the color code to represent your brand appropriately. Stick to your company’s theme color in case you cannot find an alternate color combination.

Here’s what you can follow to maintain simplicity –

• Use a single font style
• Do not show text-image on every single post
• Keep a small CTA button
• Try to keep it restricted to 2 main colors

4. Use Visual Cues

Do you call yourself a chef? Add elements of mystery, curiosity, and anticipation to your social media graphics. These are some of the most dominant design tips for branding. This way, you can hook the audience to your posts. Include visual cues to get more clicks from viewers. For instance, if you sell food and want to highlight a new bestseller, add enough details to sharpen the viewer’s appetite.

So, you need to show a part of your product or service that sparks curiosity and adds a sense of discovery.

Here’s what you can do to incorporate visual cues into your social media graphics.

• Add an arrow for highlighting the main information
• Add bullet points and emoticons
• Add a short detail that explains the overall image

5. What Do Lines Mean for Social Media Ad Design?

Simply put, straight lines indicate an order or tidiness. On the flip side, curved or crooked lines hint at an organized movement. Lines are a key aspect of an image that guides the eye to where you want your viewers to go. So, delicately deal with lines in your images, whether it’s a social media banner design or a carousel post. Lines showcase the most crucial and intentional elements of an image.

If your graphic contains illustrations, use clean diagonal lines to take the viewer’s eyes to different areas quickly and efficiently. These are used to create tentative sections and multiple focal points. Similarly, you can add curved lines to create a sense of motion. The motion leads the viewers around the graphic and pays close attention to the elements. So, create a logical path and lead the readers to a visual journey.

6. Go For Templates to Make It Easier

Sometimes, we don’t have much time to create quality graphics, especially for people who are business owners. Nurturing creativity takes time. So, everyone cannot create a creative social media post instantly. This is a problem when you have time-sensitive promotions or flash sales for which you need immediate content for social media posts. If this is the case, consider using a template.

There are different types of templates available on the Internet. They come with pre-designed elements that are suitable for instant post-creation. Templates are a great way to create engaging posts instantly and come up with your sales and promotions. Yes, the quality will be generic when compared to bespoke designs. But you need to worry, as there are customizable templates for you to design the best images.

Some of the interchangeable elements in a template are:

• Main image
• Texts
• Supporting images
• Colors
• Illustrations

7. Typography for Eye-Catching Social Media Graphics

There used to be a time when the standard font for print was Serif and Sans-Serif for web. However, in the new-age design concept, typography is considered to be an art. Therefore, you need to choose the right font or a specific class of fonts that matches the tone of your design. The fonts you choose also decide how the audience perceives your message. The fonts are very much related to your brand’s impression. The basic part of choosing an appropriate font is readability. You don’t have to worry about design if readability is all right.

Here’s what you can do for choosing the best fonts:

• Limit your choice to a maximum of 3 font types for each design.
• Use a font size that fits well in the image.
• Kerning can be a wise choice for titles.

8. Make Sure To Use The Right Image Size

An incorrect-sized image is enough to make your posts look distorted and amateur. Actually, the size of your graphic is based on which platform you choose to post. Facebook and Twitter’s recent updates allow uploading almost any size of an image. On the contrary, Instagram and Pinterest ask for specific sizes. Uploading any image size may not work on these platforms.

Even if you manage to upload an image, you are eventually risking your posts to cut in half or make them blurry for the audience. Also, images with low resolutions and improper aspect ratios can make them cropped, stretched, and crunched. All of which lead to poor branding. So, make sure to tailor your graphic size according to the platform on which you are planning to post.

Tips to find the right size for eye-catching social media graphics:

• Stories: Create a background or use a template if you want to use horizontal images in your stories. This will keep the proportion in its place without hampering the aesthetic.
• Plan for all devices: Sometimes, vertical content display goes awry based on specific screen sizes. So, it’s better to check your analytics and find which types of devices are used by most of your audience. Plan your graphic accordingly and maintain the size.
• Prioritize the pixels: Whatever you plan or create, make sure that you choose the right pixel for your image. Take help from a skilled graphic designer who can maintain it correctly.
• Check out the preview: Before publishing right away, check the preview. It will let you understand the image output and areas of rectification.

9. What is the Scale of Your Image?

Zoom out if you want to showcase a design concept, or zoom in if you want to focus on font choices. In simpler terms, image scaling is the deliberate sizing of different elements in your design. Scaling helps to keep your design elements in focus and aligned. This allows readers to go through a sensible journey without running aimlessly.

Scaling helps to create more concrete designs for social media pages. Also, it helps to make your image responsive. Control image scaling with various editing software available online. Remember, scaling cannot adjust the resolution. The pixels may get stretched and make the image blurry. So, work carefully when adjusting your image scale.

10. Keep The Graphic As Fresh As Possible

As per the latest social media design trends, keep your images as fresh as possible. That said, don’t just copy what your competitors are doing. Even if you tweak the design, do not follow the same pattern. If you are completely blank, take the idea and plan something new. As a business owner, researching all these design trends may not be possible all at once. Take help from a professional graphic designer who can help you create the best post for your branding campaigns.

They are trained and experienced to brainstorm dynamic design ideas to suit your business plans. The goal here is to create something interesting so that the audience stays focused on your brand. Some companies follow a single approach of design through each post so that viewers can easily identify them.

11. Maintain Hierarchy

Here we have the last design tip and that is to maintain hierarchy. Place the most important visual element at the front when creating your social media posting design. Maintain a bigger font for portraying something important in the image. This is crucial when you have multiple elements in your image. It’s somewhat like a pyramid, keeping the most important thing at the top and organizing the others accordingly. It works great for social media designs, especially, when you are trying to convey a message.

Plan your hierarchy according to your goal list. Portray the most crucial message at the focal point to get your message noticed easily. Once the first layer of information or design is complete, you can start establishing the next layers as per the requirement.

Over To You

Considering the new age landscape of overcrowded social media campaigns, visual graphics necessitate a unique design concept to stand out from the crowd. While these tips will definitely serve as a strong starting point, remember, there is no uniform graphic design strategy. The trends and approaches keep changing as per the business demands and competition.

Therefore, it’s always wise to work with a professional team of graphic designers to keep things simple even in the complicated market.

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