The Easiest Way to Design Better Graphics for Social Media
Designing social media graphics can be a challenge. Not only does each piece need to have a careful eye for small details like proper cut outs of images and alignment of text, but social media graphics do best when the layout is fresh and unique. Keeping that up for multiple posts isn’t always easy, so we’ve put together this list of methods to help you design better graphics for social media and level up your feed in no time at all.
1. Get clear on your message
Sometimes it can be tempting to prioritise quality over quantity when it comes to social media. Posting regularly is important to keep present in the minds of your followers, but it’s just as important to make sure that the content itself is clearly in line with your brand’s messaging and mission.
To make better graphics for social media, understand what it is your brand wants to say better. What is the bigger motivation behind your service? What are your unique selling points? What sort of pain points does your brand help to solve, and how can you highlight that through your content? When you understand what you want to say as a brand better, it’s much easier to come up with topics and subjects that relate to your audience better and build your brand identity at the same time.
2. Understand your target audience
Similar to the last point, understanding who you're communicating with helps to contribute to better graphics for social media. When you know the sorts of things that your audience struggles with day-to-day and what subjects interest them the most, it’s much easier to make successful social media posts. Find out the demographics of your audience based on who actually interacts with your post, and look to your existing customer base to see who your service connects with the most rather than just taking an educated guess at it.
3. Try different formats
Not everybody consumes content in the same way. Some people in your audience might prefer to read an infographic rather than scroll through a carousel, and so it’s your job to play around with the formats to see what gets the best connection. Make use of different formats to cater for your entire audience, rather than only ever posting traditional social media graphics. This makes your page more interesting and gives more areas for your audience to explore and consume content how they like to.
4. Work with a professional graphic designer
Oftentimes, social media design is left to marketers that have never had any formal graphic design training. Not only is that quite stressful for the marketer, it takes them away from the tasks that they were hired to do. Working with a professional graphic designer is a sure way to improve graphics for your social media account, and as a bonus - your team will also have more time to focus on the things that matter most to your brand.
Professional graphic designers have been trained to think about the flow of information in a design and how easily understood it will be, as well as the design style and what story that says about the brand. In addition to making more educated choices about the social media designs, expert graphic designers can also design a high-quality piece faster. That means that you can increase your social media presence without needing to lose the quality of each individual piece of design work.
If you’re interested in working with a professional graphic designer, you can do so with one of our unlimited graphic design subscription plans. Learn more about our unlimited design plans and how we can help with social media graphics design here.
5. Review, review and review again
Once any design is completed, the best thing you can do is to review it and review it again! Not only is it important for the designer to spend time checking the work - it’s a good idea to get some fresh eyes on the design to get feedback from a fresh perspective.
That review process is an important time, it gives the designer the time to push their idea and make it even better. When you spend time reviewing, you will avoid common mistakes like bad alignment and spelling mistakes that can really damage your brand’s overall identity.
In this article, we’ve discussed the foundations of improving your social media graphics. These techniques are the basis for better graphics for social media, and they can be applied to lots of other marketing content design processes. Keep an eye on the Design Cloud blog for more on how to improve your social media graphics, and tips from pro designers on how to achieve better graphic design.
