We know a lot of businesses are creating content for their social media platforms – and that is awesome! To help you out, we’ve put this article together with tips on how to improve your social media images.
Design in Alignment with your Brand
Your images speak a lot about you and your brand. Make sure when styling your graphics that the design matches your brand, and how you want your clients to feel when they interact with your brand. This means using styles, images, symbols, colours, and fonts that match or complement the image of your business.
Keep your Style and Design Consistent in your Social Media Images
When it comes to designing social media graphics, be consistent with how you use colours, fonts, and styling. When you’re consistent with your styling, you help your audience recognise your brand. This means that when they see your post, they’ll automatically know it’s you.
Inconsistency in your styling will confuse your audience and inadvertently tell them you don’t really know what you’re doing.
Create the Correctly Sized Image for your Social Media Platform
Different social media platforms have different size requirements. The dimensions for a Facebook post are different from a Facebook cover image, and are different again from an Instagram post.
To ensure your content displays properly on your social media, make sure you’re creating the images in the right size.
Check out this article which gives you the dimensions for the most common social media platforms: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/ultimate-guide-social-media-image-dimensions-infographic
Use Good Quality Images for your Social Media Posts
If you want to look professional and attract attention for the right reasons, make sure you’re using good quality images. Whether you’ve taken them yourself, or you are using a stock image, make sure they are at a high enough resolution so they are clear and don’t look pixelated.
It’s often a good investment to use paid stock images, and you can subscribe to some inexpensive plans to get them. The advantage of paying for stock images is that you have more peace of mind regarding licensing.
Our favourite paid stock image sites:
Our favourite free stock image sites:
Before you use free stock images, we suggest you read this article.
Choose the Right Colours
Choose a colour combination, about two to three hues, that reflects your brand’s personality. At the same time, choose the right colour pairings to create balance and contrast in your images. You can use a colour picker tool to figure out which hues work well together.
Use Text Appropriately
Besides using fonts that match your brand, here are styling tips for your text:
- Ensure that the font you use is easy to read.
- Limit the number of font styles used to one or two. A good rule of thumb is to use contrasting fonts for header information and body text.
- Don’t use loads of text. Remember that a large number of users are on mobile devices so small text won’t be easy or pleasant to try and read.
- Ensure your text stands out against the background. To do this you can change font colour, blur the background, adjust brightness and contrast, add a colour filter behind the text, or add a drop shadow.
A word of warning about text for paid social media posts. If you are planning on using an image for paid promotion (e.g. boosting a post, or running an ad), particularly on Facebook and Instagram, too much text on your image will hinder the success of your ad. Facebook considers images with too much text to be of low quality. Facebook has a handy Image Text Check tool which you can use to determine if you’re using too much text.
Keep Important Content Clear of the Edges of your Social Media Image
As much as possible, keep an invisible margin around your image. At times, images are cropped slightly when viewed across different devices. Place all important content, like text, and the important parts of the image, within this margin so that it doesn’t get cut off on some displays.
Keep it Simple and Include White Space
Too many words, too many colours, too many elements will make your social media images crowded and overwhelming. Limit the number of elements you put into the images, while still conveying your exact message. Don’t be afraid to leave white space. It helps give the eyes a rest and makes your image more pleasing to look at.
Tools for Creating Social Media Images
You don’t have to invest in Adobe Photoshop to create good social media images. There are many tools available and most don’t require you to download software. Some are free, and others have free and paid subscription options.
Our favourite tool, which we have been using at Impressence Web Studios for several years now, is Canva* (affiliate link, see below). Canva is a browser based graphic design tool. We love it’s ease of use, the great range of templates available, the simple resizing capabilities and it’s awesome new animation feature.
Another product you might want to check out is Snappa. We have used Snappa in the past and it has some great features too, but Canva won out in the end for us. They both have free versions available, so you might as well give them a try.
Final Thoughts
Social media is a powerful tool for reaching your target audience. Use these tips to help you create eye-catching and impressive images, and boost your social media presence.
* We are a Canva affiliate. This means we may earn a small commission for purchases made via these links. We only promote products that we have used and tested ourselves, and that we believe would bring benefit and value to our readers.
