Design for Social Media

 

Fifteen years ago, you might have been one of those people who thought social media was just a fad. However, nowadays, it is just as essential to be present on said networks as to have a telephone number at the time . And of course, there is no point in being present on these platforms without having set first, a good design strategy for social networks.

For businesses, networks like Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest are great places to interact directly with their customers. This is where you bond with them by providing content that is both entertaining and informative, which will promote brand awareness. But, if these platforms are very useful, they are also very competitive! Once published, your content will be put in direct competition not only with the content of other brands, but also with the platform's algorithm which favors this or that information over another. On networks and in nature, it's the law of the strongest ... The good news is that design is a great tool that will help you create memorable and engaging content.

This little guide to design for social networks will give you all the keys to understanding the different types of design, and how to use them, but also how to make them visible.

Before you start your social mediadesign

Develop your strategy

The first thing to do to create the design of its pages on social networks is to create a strategy (or reassess your existing strategy). Your social media design should enhance your content, clearly communicating your messages. It is therefore essential to know precisely beforehand what messages you want to convey to your audience!

1.       Evaluate the audiences of your current channels. You may have already researched your target audience to develop your branding strategy. However, each network has its own audience that represents only a segment or a representative sample of your general audience. In order to create the most effective design, you need to know who are currently following your content and what they are looking for. Make sure your findings are supported by research on the target market: conduct interviews, surveys, use the platform's analytics, note the comments your followers leave, and more. Then create user personasfor your existing audience as well as for your target audience. Personas are very useful because it is easier to create content for a person (even imaginary) than for numbers and statistics.

2.       Choose the best platforms to reach your audience. Social media is essential forbusinesses, but that doesn't mean that all platforms are useful for all businesses. For example, cooking recipes work very well on Pinterest, so it makes sense for a food brand to take an interest in that network. But it won't necessarily be a good choice for a company specializing in alarm systems, for example. Do your research, and select the most popular platforms in your industry and with your audience. Otherwise, you risk missing out on great opportunities.

3.       Evaluate the types of content that work best on these platforms. Reducing the reach of your audience and networks will allow you to focus on the types of content to create and, possibly, how that content should be designed. Some platforms impose a specific type of content (images and videos on Instagram, short sentences on Twitter, etc.). Each platform provides information relating to its prerequisites and general operation. Also, some types of content will be based more on trends popular with users: although Facebook offers the ability to create videos and written posts on Facebook, many users use the platform to share external links. Take the time to examine user activity, and pay special attention to what your competitors are doing,

Take stock of your resources

Now that you have a better idea of ​​who your audience is and what platforms you are going to invest in, you can start thinking about your page design by writing specifications. The specifications, along with a release schedule, will help you stay organized throughout the process. Include the following points:

·         Upcoming publication plans

·         The purpose of the content

·         The intended audience

·         Examples of competing content

·         Type of content (photo, video, illustration, animated gif, etc.)

·         Caption or text

·         Design examples

Learn about the prerequisites for each platform

Make sure you have all the information relating to the prerequisites for each platform, so that you can quickly size your content and adapt your designs to different networks. The sizes required by each social media also tend to change from time to time, so make sure you are well informed. Here are the sizes and dimensions recommended by the most famous social media platforms in June 2020:

Tips for designing your page on social media

Now that you have a strategy in place, you are ready to create your social media pages. Your profile is the home page of your account on the networks. This is where users will come to when they search for your name or when they are directed to you via a link. This is also where the “follow” button is located. A well-designed profile design can make all the difference and make users click or not…

The purpose of your profile page is to tell your potential followers who you are. And if your biography / about section should explain just that in a few lines, your profile design will do the same, but visually, thanks to the colors, shapes, and images chosen. This is also the reason why you should absolutely avoid graphics that do not match your brand identity. Or which are simply "beautiful" without necessarily conveying your message. Your designs should provide more information about your brand. When choosing which images to put on your page, ask yourself what each one says about you and your business, and make sure the answer is consistent with what you post on all the platforms you are on. Present.

Profile picture design

Your profile picture (or avatar) represents, along with your username, your online identity. This is the part of your profile that will be seen outside of your profile page, acting as a signature for all of your posts. Profile photos are generally small in order to give pride of place to your posts themselves. So, go for simplicity. Some brands can get away with using their entire logo (if it's readable even if it's very small), but most are forced to opt for a lean version (i.e. the first letter of the brand name, either the pictogram alone, without text). You can also add a bold color or pattern to it to make you stand out more. Also keep in mind that even though the given dimensions correspond to a square,

Cover image design

While all social networks have cover images, you often need to create a different one for each platform, as your strategy will be different depending on the channel. Your cover image is the large rectangular image at the top of your profile page. It is intimately linked to your profile picture, and they are usually positioned in relation to each other. Your cover image is like an expansion of your profile picture. This is the space where you can make more text and more visuals appear.

Many cover designs have the profile image and the cover image interact with each other, such as No Co on Facebook, for example. Be careful though if you want to create something similar, as it can take a lot of effort and won't necessarily work (in the case of No Co, the layout changes when viewing the page from a small screen, for example example).

While the cover offers more space than the profile photo, that's no excuse to overload your design. Your cover image should have a certain visual impact, but it's also an opportunity to advertise your brand, highlighting what sets you apart from the rest. It is also the ideal space to display your contact details, such as your website address, your phone number, or your pages on other networks. Generally speaking, your coverage should provide information about who you are and what you do. So try to be clear. Minimalism isn't a bad idea here. Kathryn Mueller's YouTube design, for example, is in a bright warm pastel pink. It contains circular shapes, and a photo of the protagonist in situation.

Layout design

While the layout of the profile page is usually dictated by the platform in question, as well as the content you post, you still have some control over the overall design of your page. This part of the process doesn't involve creating graphics designed for social media, but using spacing and alignment to make your content accessible to users.

For example, YouTube offers a number of tools to customize your profile page. Most people opt for a fixed ad at the top of the page (explaining what your content is about), followed by recent videos, and themselves followed by playlists. Likewise, Pinterest offers the ability to organize selected content into "boards" (and "sub-tables"). Whatever platform you're interested in, take the time to organize your page so that the most important content is at the top and the images posted represent the nature of your content.

Even with platforms like Instagram and Facebook that display your content in chronological order of publication, without customization options, you can still plan in advance how your content will appear on your page (more info on this below).

Specificities according to the platforms

The advantage of social networks is their diversity. Each platform has a unique approach when it comes to its design and the layout of its content. And so, if most of them have a lot in common, each of them also has its specificities that you will have to take into account. For example, your branding on Twitch might include an offline image (a static graphic that shows on the video screen when you are not online) and an online image (graphics overlaid onscreen when you are offline). Online). For YouTube, prepare some sort of trailer for your channel and video previews. Take the time to test your profile pages ahead of time, and review those of your competitors on the specific platforms you plan to use.

5 guidelines for creating your content design

Everything on social media revolves around content. And it's on the networks that you share your content and interact with your subscribers. Spending the time and investing in the design of its pages is worth it, because that is what will help you to impress your audience.

The nature and design of your content will vary depending on your brand, what you do, and your goals, but below are some general guidelines to help you grab your audience's attention and loyalty.

1. Create useful content for your subscribers

One might think that adapting its content to its audience is obvious. But given that social networks are designed to publish your words and your images you may be tempted to speak only of itself: does not forget the controversy surrounding selfies and due to project a self-controlled picture. Your audience chose to follow you for a good reason. Whether its news, entertainment or inspiration, your job is to provide them with what they signed up for. The same goes for the design of your content, which must be more than visually appealing: it must be useful.

Here's an example: You know that most of your followers follow you to stay informed about your brand's sales and promotions. You decide to create an event on social networks following a promotional campaign with a logo, content and advertising specially designed for the occasion, as Del Marva did with his blood drive. In the case of this brand, the bright orange pineapple pattern makes it clear that this is a festive event (while also helping the content stand out from the rest of user news). But Del Marva also uses clear and bold typography, enhanced by clear banners that contrast with the background, and highlight the most relevant information, such as the date of the event in question, and how to get there. Participate.

2. Incorporate different types of design into your content

The variety of your content depends on your strategy. Your posts should cover a variety of topics (such as behind the scenes of your business, customer testimonials, promotional material, etc.), but you should also research and create opportunities to accommodate different styles of design, so that you maintain a certain dynamism on your page.

It helps to know which design styles work best. The flat design and bright colors are useful for infographics (vertical or scrollable), and help convey complex information or tell a story. Handwritten fonts are great for quotes and sayings, and will make users want to share or comment on them. Photography provides the opportunity to showcase real people and real products. Make sure, however, that all of your photos are professional, and resist the urge to use filters, as this makes you lose authenticity.

One of the best ways to create variety is to involve your followers in your social media strategy. Think about crowdsourcing and start a hashtag contest or social media account takeover, for example. This can lead to content that is inconsistent with your visual identity, but consistent with your brand in general, because it comes from your customers.

3. Match individual content with your profile

Keep in mind, however, that many platforms prioritize chronological order for posts. As mentioned in the previous section, your profile page should be visually consistent in order to function effectively, and your posts should not detract from that consistency. The key is to find the balance: your content must be unique, have its own objectives and its own target audience, but it must also integrate perfectly with the platform in question. The key here is branding: create varied content, but keep every element in line with the fundamentals of your brand guidelines.

Some brands go so far as to plan their content chronologically. It works especially well with Instagram, where content organization is very reliable, with its three column grid. By posting content with similar styles every three posts, you can manage to get the columns to create a cohesive aesthetic. However, this method may require you to post one type of content rather than another. In most cases, you will have access to several options to develop your content while letting the platform do its little thing.

4. Prepare thematic content and models

While it might seem ideal that all of your content is surprising and original, it's often not realistic, or even necessary. Having ready-made templates will not only allow you to create content in a fast and scalable way, but also easily maintain visual consistency. This can be especially useful for designing content that comes up all the time, like YouTube video previews, for example. On the one hand, they must be original and unexpected, and on the other hand that users want to click on them. But since most of the content is the video itself, spending time and energy creating truly unique previews from scratch every time doesn't make sense.

We don't always like the word “model” in design, as it can sometimes be synonymous with generic and poorly designed designs. But in our case, it's more about roadmaps that will allow you to avoid having to start the entire design process over again every time. In addition, nothing prevents you from varying the models by modifying, for each publication, the images and the color, for example. Ultimately, in this case, the templates can be of great help to you in speeding up the process and allowing you to focus on the content itself.

5. Adjust your design based on analytical data

Social networks evolve rapidly and your content merges into the collective mass the second it gets published. The good news is that the speed at which networks scale can also get results quickly. Most posts have a lifespan of a few hours, one or two days at most (that is, the period during which you get the bulk of your impressions, likes and comments). So you can test your content and find out very quickly what works best and what doesn't, and adjust your strategy accordingly.

From an analytical perspective, the success of a post will depend on your followers. It helps to create benchmarks based on your best performing and worst performing content to get a feel for what content performs best. Also, don't forget that other factors also come into play (the time of publication, the still mysterious algorithm, real world news that could distract your subscribers' attention, bad luck, etc.). The A / B testsare useful for reducing flops and for determining which graphical elements perform the best. In addition to the specific data provided by the platform (which usually shows the number of impressions, views, and time spent watching in the case of video), tools like UTM codes added to CTAs will let you know which post in particular generated the most traffic.

The power of design for social media

Social media is a highly competitive arena that requires great organization and hard work to successfully navigate its way, both in terms of content and design. But the results are worth it. Not only is this a great way to attract leads, convert customers, and increase your brand awareness, but it's also where you can engage with your customers directly.

The best way to ensure that your social media presence is effective and will get you the best possible results is to hire a social media design expert. Good design can help you convince users to pay attention to your content, and to listen to what you have to say. Good social media design will help make your posts useful and accessible. It will also highlight your professionalism and commitment to quality.

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