It is no secret that stunning, catchy imagery is an excellent tool for getting your brand noticed via social media.
Images get 150% more retweets on tweets than those without images, and images are the most liked and shared content on Facebook.
It can be difficult to keep up with all the social media platforms and send a consistent message across them all.
Instead of sharing random images and hoping for the best, there are ways you can create consistent content your followers will recognize and associate with your brand.
Step 1: Get to know your brand
If you don’t know the purpose of your brand, it will be difficult to create a visual identity.
Let’s get started.
This is the key idea: Get to know your brand. Know what you want to achieve with your brand identity and social media.
Selling something? Are you trying to inspire others? How can you increase brand awareness?
These are steps to help you build your brand and give you something to do.
Research. Research.
What are you seeing that is working? And what would you do to make your brand stand out?
When looking at other brands, avoid plagiarism You can keep track of where your inspiration comes from by creating a Pinterest board, or another mood board.
Think of brand words.
Are you serious or fun? Is your brand modern or traditional? Are you looking for something bright and bold or subtle and soft?
You can choose from a variety of descriptors, and then narrow it down to those that are most relevant for you and your brand. It’s also useful to have a list of things you are “not” to define yourself.
It could also be useful to look at other brands and determine what their words are based on the content that they have published.
Create a visual reference.
Take those words and pull out images from the internet that can relate to your brand.
Start with a broad range of images that you want to narrow down. Next, look through the images and consider whether they are in line with your brand. It doesn’t matter if you think the image is stunning.
After you have a few examples of images that reflect your brand words, you can start to create your content.
Keep it up!
Once you have established your descriptors, and have visual references to them. It’s now time to start making stuff! These brainstorming tools can be used as a guideline, so make sure to refer to them often.
When you are sourcing images or creating them, ask yourself if they match your brand.
This is a great example of visual brand unity. Centsational girl is a Pinterest user with 90 boards and thousands of followers. You can see why it makes sense.
Visual unity? Definitely.
Step 2: Create something extraordinary!
A brand style guide could help you get a good understanding of your brand. Now it’s time for you to apply it to your content.
Before you start, you should be aware of the strengths and limitations of each social media site you use. Also, you should know where your images will appear.
For example, if you post an image to Twitter, your followers will see a preview of the middle of your image at 2:1.
You can either design according to these dimensions or ensure that important copy and information are in the middle section. Otherwise, it will be cropped out and people will miss it.
Are you creating a Facebook graphic, such as an ad?
Your image’s placement will determine how much detail you should include. It should not be too small, especially on mobile. Any detail or copy that’s too small will look messy.
You will save time and make it easier by planning and deciding where and how you want your images to appear. You’ll end up with an image that looks great on one social media platform but looks amateur on all others.
These tools will help you create beautiful and expertly branded web content.
1. A Color Story
Instagram filters can be a bit lacking luster and not as easy to spot. However, they are better than the filters Facebook or Twitter offer on their apps.
A color story is a great free resource that can help you think about branding colors and the emotions they evoke.
A common color palette, which could be your logo or brand colors but also a common type or saturation of lighting that unites your images, will help you unite your content and build brand recognition.
2. DaFont
This is the right place to go if you ever need fonts.
Fonts are often an integral part of a brand’s visual identity. For example, think about Harley Davidson or Coca-Cola. Their brand visual is based on a font.
Where can you find such stunning fonts?
This is the best spot to capture compelling fonts and establish your brand identity.
3. Flickr
You probably know by now that if you don’t have the luxury to make your images, it can be very frustrating to search through the thousands of stock photo sites looking for images.
About 10% of stock photos look nice. Many stock photos are extremely staged and cheesy.
These are likely to be used by around a billion businesses.
Flickr is one of the image-sharing sites that content creators often forget about. You can find many gems if you search for images that have the creative commons license. Make sure you double-check the artist’s license and attribute as necessary.
4. Design Inspiration
Designspiration.net can help you get unstuck if you feel stuck.
It is a simple way to look through some great design work. It’s possible to search by keywords or color. This can be very useful when trying to find new ways to use your brand colors.
5. Use templates
You will need templates to ensure consistency between images.
Instead of starting from scratch each time you need to create a graphic, make some templates that have the correct dimensions, safe areas, your logo, and fonts, you use often set to a minimum type size. Although 50pt may seem large, it will be easily legible on a small screen.
It’s simple to add new images or modify the text once you have your templates set up. You can also hand your templates to anyone who creates web content for you. This will ensure that everything stays consistent.
ArtsHacker has compiled templates to fit almost every social media platform’s header. It can be difficult to know what parts will be cut or covered up by your profile photo.
6. Google Drive, Dropbox, or another type of cloud space
It’s important to have a complete list of all the files that you use once you begin to build a collection of images and templates to help your brand. You never know when you will need an image or font again.
Use a common naming convention on everything (project-name_placement_date_dimensions.jpg or something similar that makes sense to you) so that it’s easy to go back and find things you’ve used before.
This is especially important for smaller businesses that are just starting to grow. Future designers will be able to access these assets and can keep the look consistent rather than having to start over every time.
Conclusion
You can make your brand more memorable by creating unified images.
While some brands have success by creating lots of different content and throwing it at the wall to see if it sticks, others only make it so far. Consistency in your visual story is key to building a brand you love.
Although it may seem like extra work to create well-planned and thoughtful social media images, you will find it easier over time to identify imagery that represents your brand’s values.
Now all you need to do is insert it into the template you created for yourself. It will look as though all your social media pages belong together, so your followers will be able to recognize you among the many other contents.
