Images in Social Content

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

The importance of visual content

Visual content is now a staple of the feed on every social media platform, with all major research on the matter agreeing that, overall, posts with images will attract more attention and ultimately engagement. 

For many businesses, articulating what they do in a visual medium is challenging. Consider an insurance company – how would it create engaging posts on a platform like Instagram, for instance? 

Well, this is the wider creative challenge of social media. We are pushed to going beyond simply talking about our products and services – this is just promotional noise anyway – and discovering ways to add value to the feeds of our target audiences. 

It’s good to ask yourself these questions when deciding your image strategy:

• What knowledge or resources do we have access to that could be useful or entertaining for our followers? 
• How could we help them get more out of our products? 
• And what happens behind the scenes that might be interesting for people to get a unique perspective on?

Creating images

Whatever creative approaches you take when filling your content calendar with content, you’ll need some sort of process for making that happen at scale and realistically within the time you have. The main things you’ll need to make that happen are assets, tools, templates, and ideas.

Assets

Assets are any imagery that you currently have available, or plan to commission the creation of. 
An over-looked starting point for a social media manager is to gather all existing images within a business and put them in a single folder. From this bank of assets, you can create lots of new content.

Tools

There is an increasing number of powerful-yet-accessible tools and apps on the internet today. 

The market leader is Canva, but there’s also a slew of mobile apps that do specific things with images such as warping, mirroring, text overlays, and animating as GIFs. These adjustments can turn a seemingly dull corporate image into a visually interesting graphic.

Templates

Templates are useful for two important reasons:
You need to ensure that all imagery in social media is in line with the company’s branding. A number of templates can be created which ensure that even staff with just a general sense of the brand can’t go wrong. The use of color, typography, logos, and graphics will be defined by the template, and it’s recommended that these should be accompanied by some basic instructions to ensure best practice. 
You don’t want a team to feel restrained by resources or capabilities, and so having these templates allows the creation of image-led posts in social relatively quickly and easily.

Ideas

Lastly, ideas are that final elusive piece of the puzzle when it comes to imagery. You should of course be tuned into your audience personas and understand what they may like to see in their feed, but you’ll need to get inspired and invite input from around the team to bring good ideas into the mix. Monthly brainstorms are common, helping to plan the coming month’s content in one concerted effort.

Image best practices

Even with a template, it is possible to create a poor, uninteresting image. Here are some best practice guidelines for thumb-stopping visuals.

Use hi-res images

Always start with higher-resolution images than the final product.  If you scale a low-res image up you get pixelated or fuzzy images, which look unprofessional.

Use bold colors and shapes

This is the single biggest tactic you can employ to get more attention for your social posts. It’s why you’ll notice that many of the ads in your social feeds include bright graphics, striking geometry, and big, bold typography. 

It could be said that the job of your visual is to get people to stop scrolling just long enough to start to absorb the message in your overall post, including the text. Without that eye-catching image, you’ll just get scrolled past like most other pieces of content.

Have a single subject

A common mistake that non-professional photographers make when capturing moments on camera is framing shots with too much in them. It’s almost always better to have one clear subject of an image. 

For instance, if you were attending a conference, it would be tempting to take shots showing the scale of the event, overviews of the floor, and the like. But in a social feed, which is largely viewed on a mobile phone, these cluttered images with no single point of focus or subject just won’t stand out. 

Instead, what would be far more effective in that example would be close-up images of interesting people you met, unusual pieces of merchandise, and interesting innovations on display.

Avoid filters, but do edit

The aesthetic of Instagram filters was popular in the early 2010s, but today brands are using a more natural look to their images. 

That’s not to say your images shouldn’t be edited; they absolutely should! But subtlety is the key. Tidy up your images with cropping and straightening, before adjusting your image with anything from professional options such as Adobe Lightroom or accessible mobile apps such as VSCO. This tonal editing should bring out the color and contrast to make your image appealing, without looking like a vintage polaroid!