What Is Social Media Design And How Important It Is In Marketing Strategy

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You have considered social media marketing for your business. So are the thousands and lakhs of other businesses because 73% of marketers have found social media effective for their business. So why not consider social media for business?

Now, this comes with a disadvantage. You have to stand out from the rest because there is already enough competition in any kind of niche or business. And there is almost a “Zero” chance that your competitors are not using social media for their business.

If they aren’t on social media you are just lucky. But that’s for a small period of time! Because I don’t think it takes much time for them to just go online and start marketing. That’s because it has become hard now for businesses to survive without any social media presence.

But that’s ok. You can still attract your ideal clients and customers by communicating them via some good visuals. Yes, visuals. And that’s what this article is all about.

What is Social Media Design?

Have you ever heard of the term “Visual Content Marketing”? Well, what is basically means is using visuals (images, videos, infographics, etc) to convey your message to your audience.

Now considering reading a Harry Potter book vs watching the Harry Potter film on Television. Which one do your prefer? Well, I can’t tell about you but most would like to watch it rather than read the whole text.

So that’s the reason why you should give more importance to visually appealing content in your social media marketing srategy rather than bombarding your prospects with lots of promotional text messages and emails.

Now, let me define what social media design is.

It means designing visual content from twitter profile to Instagram post to pinterest pin in such a way that it is conveys the message in the easiest possible way to your audience.

For example look at this ad video of Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Reliance Digital (@reliance_digital)

If you are someone who like taking snaps, then you are more probably convinced to consider this mobile phone as an option.

Now, just imagine the same thing in a written format. “The camera is great, the batter life is great, etc..”. It sucks, right? Or alteast not so convincing I’d say.

That’s how much visuals can impact your customers decisions.

Oh. That’s it. No. There is more, actually.

Why Social Media Design Matters So Much?

Talking about the attention span on social media, in this fast-moving world, people are way too fast in scrolling their social media feeds.

The attention span of an average human got reduced from 12 seconds (2000) to 8 seconds (now). Why? Too much content. The increase in the volume of content is way too high when compared to the increase in time people spending on social media.

This basically tells us that we need to come up with appealing visuals in your content marketing strategy to make people stop scrolling their feeds and give you their attention.

Some random but related stats

• 65% of senior marketing executives believe that visual assets (photos, video, illustrations, and infographics) are core to how their brand story is communicated. (MediaPost)
• Design and visual content is the biggest challenge for 23.7% of content marketers. (Adam Enfroy)
• 32% of marketers say visual images are the most important form of content for their business, with blogging in second (27%). (Social Media Examiner)
• More than 80 percent of the information that our brains are processing is visual and brains are hardwired for visual content.
• Social media was a major use case for visual content with 49% using visuals for Facebook, 47% using them for Instagram, 42% using them for LinkedIn, and 33% using them for Twitter. Source: Venngage.com
• Researchers found that color visuals increase the eagerness of readers for a piece of content by 80%. – Source
• Visual content is more than 40X more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content. – Source

Along with the research, and the competitve advatages visual content has, the social platforms are also getting adapted to it.

How Social Platforms are getting more and more visual

66% of all social media posts include visual content.

Instagram is all about visuals. Maybe the reason why it’s the fastest growing social platform right now.

No matter how effectively you use your hashtags which can help you reach more people, if the visuals aren’t up to the mark most won’t even consider following you or engaging with you.

This is something I truly believe in and the very same reason why I put more effort into visual aesthetics while designing.

Pinterest is a goldmine to generate traffic to websites and blogs for free. Most marketers are using it wisely to bring tons of visitors to their sites but by only putting pins that are designed well and that stand out from the crowd. The pin design is vital for your Pinterest marketing strategy.

The same goes for Facebook and Twitter. Stats say that putting more visuals on Facebook and using rich media on Twitter will always help in generating more engagement.

• Facebook posts with images see 2.3X more engagement than those without images (Source: Buzzsumo) and in 2013, Facebook became the largest photo-sharing website, with its users uploading 350 million photos every day (Source: Business Insider).
• Tweets with images get 150% more retweets.

Even Twitter encourages its users to use images (Image Source: Twitter Analytics).

Even on Youtube thumbnail design matters a lot to get clicks, especially in this clickbaity world.

If I have to sum up all the above things in a single sentence

People may not have enough time to consume content that you post and the only way to make them stop scrolling their feed is by interrupting them with appealing visual content that stands out from the crowd.

How Social Media Design Can Help Your Brand

Design is one of the most underrated things in social media marketing. Even if you observe, a lot of businesses pay close attention to their budget on ads and boosting their posts but aren’t concerned about the design of the ad creative.

But why should they care? A well-designed content has the ability to attract user attention. Period.

• When people see a particular design style more consistently, they are gonna remember who is publishing/posting the content. It’s like sending some kind of visual signals to your audience saying that it’s me that is creating this kind of content. Brand Awareness.
• Using the right visuals and design in your content marketing strategy can help distinguish you from your competitors.
• If you make it easy for your audience to consume the content you will be rewarded with their attention. Keep the design simple and understandable. Remember that if you can make people spend more time on your content then social algorithms will reward you by showing your content to more people.
• Looks matter. Any design that is attractive and appealing can stand out easily and can stop the users’ scrolling.

Types Of Visual Content For Social Media

When I say visuals, I don’t mean just posting your product images or images of your company serving people. There is a lot to it.

1. Designed Product/Brand posts
2. Product Images
3. Photos
4. Infographics
5. Videos
6. Animations
7. Quotes
8. GIFs
9. Memes
10. Screenshots

These are the main visual content types businesses try to leverage in their visual content marketing strategy.

Conclusion

Now that you understand the value of design and visuals and you also know the types of visual content you can create, it’s time to make your social media more visual. For that, I’d recommend reading this article where I’ve talked about some really important design tips that can help you craft beautiful social media graphics.

If you want to get attention, you need to put the effort into conveying the message in the easiest consumable way. Concentrate well on visuals and design the content well (or hire someone to do the work for you).

• social media designvisual marketing