Every business wants their marketing materials to get in front of as many potential customers as possible. And in 2023, the place where people spend their time is social media. According to research, around 70% of the U.S. population uses at least one social platform regularly.
With millions of posts uploaded daily, it’s important to create amazing content to help your brand stand out. Here are four tips to help you level up your designs for social media marketing and boost your presence online.
Start with professional social media templates
Design isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. And if you’re a busy business owner or manager, you likely don’t have the time to sit and design incredible social media graphics from scratch. To give yourself a head start on the design process and create better designs, it’s always a good idea to start with a template.
There are thousands of free social media graphics templates available online from websites like PosterMyWall. Simply browse through the designs, choose one that best fits your brand, customize the information in the builder, and you’re ready to post.
All templates are crafted by professional graphic designers, so you can be sure that whichever you choose will look as good as anything you can find online, helping you stand out from the competition.
Even if you do want to design your posts from scratch, browsing through templates is a great way to get inspired. You might see a design element you hadn’t thought of before, which you can incorporate in your own social designs. You never know when inspiration might strike!
Create a consistent brand image
With any type of marketing and branding, consistency is key. The goal should be to make social posts that any of your followers take one look at and know it’s your business based solely on the design, whether the post is branded with your name and logo or not.
Think about how you want your brand to be portrayed online. What factors are important? Consider design elements like:
- Colors
- Typography
- Style (minimalism, mysticism, retro, etc.)
When you look at your social platform’s gallery, you want it to look like a cohesive collection of posts. The more consistent you can make your social designs, the better it’ll be for your branding.
Alter your designs based on the platform
No two social media platforms are the same. For example, one platform could have different sizing and content guidelines compared to another. Posts that look great on Facebook might not look as good on Instagram. If you really want to level up your designs, cater them to each unique platform.
Before creating content, do some research to identify the best practices for the various platforms you plan to use. Specifically, check for sizing guidelines — especially when working with video.
The most common difference will be whether the platform prefers content in landscape or portrait orientation. For example, Facebook and YouTube (for standard long-form uploads, at least) prefer a horizontal landscape orientation, while Instagram and TikTok prefer vertical portrait orientation for videos.
If you try to upload a landscape video to TikTok or as an Instagram Reel, it’ll put black bars on the top and bottom of your video to make it fit. Not only does it make your amazing video content look bad, but it also hurts the viewer experience. Cater your content designs to the platform to ensure everything looks as amazing as you intend.
Monitor analytics and adjust accordingly
Leveling up your designs on social media isn’t all about the front end. It’s important to watch the analytics over time to ensure your “leveled up” designs are actually performing as they’re intended.
Whenever you enact a design change in your social media feed, keep a close eye on the analytics. Specifically, here are a few of the key performance indicators (KPI) to watch:
- Likes
- Engagement rate
- Comments
- Shares
- Views/video plays
If you decide to swap up a design and your engagement rate goes through the roof, you know that whatever design element you changed was a good one and that you should continue to use it in future posts.
Alternatively, if you notice the KPIs drop after changing your designs, you know it didn’t resonate with your followers, and it’d be best to try something else.
It might take a bit of trial and error, but tracking analytics is the best way to determine whether your designs have actually “leveled up” or if your followers see them as the same old stuff you’ve always been posting.
Take your social media designs to the next level
Social media is a powerful marketing tool for any modern business, but it’s not as easy as throwing a few posts up every now and then. If you want to stand out from the competition, you need to level up your designs.
Start designing your social media graphics with a few templates from sites like PosterMyWall, create a consistent brand image, adjust your posts based on the platform, and monitor analytics over time. With a pinch of creativity, plenty of planning, and constant monitoring, you can level up your social media designs to encourage more engagement and bring more attention to your brand.
