Good strategy is crucial for marketing success. Unfortunately, while many organisations and brands make extensive and detailed strategies for other marketing channels, social media doesn’t always get the same attention-to-detail. Social media can be a powerful tool, but it requires a carefully thought-out strategy for maximum effectiveness. To ensure your social media posts and ads are cutting through, we’ve compiled a list of simple yet important social media marketing considerations that often get overlooked.
Key 1: graphic design for social media needs a formalised styleguide
Remember that your posts and ads might only be seen for a split-second. That’s a very small window to make an impact. Graphic design for social media plays a key part of your brand’s social media strategy, helping communicate your brand’s message and stand out in users’ feeds.
And we aren’t just saying this because we’re a graphic design agency, either. We’ve discussed the perils of bad web design before (click here to learn about the problems with low-quality visuals, and the importance of professional graphic design) but to recap, effective design:
- Creates a consistent brand appearance, strengthening recognition across different social media platforms
- Presents a more professional appearance compared to other social media content
- Can make your digital content more accessible
- Provides clarity to your visual communication and imagery
- Improves credibility – 75% of users gauge brand credibility based on design
Engaging a professional graphic designer can also help you communicate your brand’s message not only through branding, but with infographics and motion graphics. For brands that need to communicate complex information through social media, graphic design for social media graphic design is an essential tool.
The key to this is to create a formalised social media graphic design styleguide to direct your social media efforts, rather than taking an ad-hoc approach as many organisations do. This styleguide should lay out everything about how your brand presents itself visually on social media, from language used, to logos, to colours.
In summary: graphic design for social media can help ensure that your social media posts and ads stand out in user’s feeds, communicating your brand, boosting customer recall, and efficiently conveying key information.
Key 2: choose the right platforms for your social media strategy
Not all platforms are identical. Good social media marketing strategies understand the differences between each and choose or prioritise platforms are most likely to achieve the goals set out.
Some factors you’ll need to consider when deciding which social media platforms to target in your strategy include:
- What content performs best on each platform, and your ability to create it
- Audience demographics
- Available targeting and advertising tools
- How each platform’s content algorithm behaves
For example, Meta allows brands to set up online storefronts on Facebook and Instagram, allowing you to sell directly to your customers via social media. Brands whose goals are to drive sales may choose to place greater emphasis on Meta-owned platforms in their social media strategies.
In summary: your social media strategy will need to carefully evaluate which social media platforms best align with your marketing goals, and decide whether the time and resources needed will are better spent focusing elsewhere.
Key 3: tailor your content for your platform
Once your social media strategy has narrowed down which social media platforms to focus on, the next step is to start posting. While it’s important to maintain consistency across your brand’s social media presence, it’s also just as important to recognise and adapt content in cases to account for different nuances between platforms.
Beyond technical differences such as file size restrictions, it’s also key to consider each social media platform’s unique user culture in your social media strategy. They may:
- Respond differently to content
- Have different lingo or shorthand
- Use hashtags differently
While consistency is important, your strategy should also accommodate for adjustments in messaging across different platforms, whether that’s regarding tone-of-voice, images, and more across different platforms. Doing so will help improve engagement and ensure your socials are achieving the goals you’ve set.
In summary: when creating your strategy, brands should take note of any nuances between platforms and plan content accordingly. This should also be included in the parts of your styleguide outlining graphic design for social media.
Key 4: refresh paid social media ads on an ongoing basis
Whether it’s an ongoing campaign or a one-off promotion, paid ads offer an additional way to reach users on social media. With powerful targeting tools, brands can target ads to social media users with greater accuracy based on location, demographics, interests, hobbies, and life events. Little wonder paid ads are a large part of many social media marketing strategies.
One key to maintaining engagement with social media ads is to refresh them on an ongoing basis by updating copy, visuals, and targeting settings regularly. This is especially important for ongoing campaigns with a focus on driving user interactions and engagement.
This is because long-running social media advertising campaigns are prone to falling victim to ad fatigue, where users disengage or actively ignore an ad going forward.
While this affects most advertising, it’s especially problematic for social media ads. Many social media ad algorithms will take into consideration user engagement, with priority given to ads which generate more interaction. Ad fatigue drives down interaction and engagement with old ads, leading them to be deprioritised by algorithms, kickstarting a death spiral.
Refreshing your ongoing ad campaigns with new copy and visuals can help maintain user engagement, and ensure that your social media ads continue to perform well with ad algorithms and avoid the dreaded death spiral.
In summary: refreshing social media ads can help maintain ad performance, both with users and ad algorithms. This is critical in maintaining the efficacy of social media advertising over time.
Key 5: build an effective website to support your social media presence
Social media profiles are not a replacement for a dedicated website!
Dedicated websites provide a valuable customer or client touchpoint – one which many of your posts or social media ads might direct users to. There are many reasons:
- You have total control over how a website is designed and styled
- It can communicate much more information than a social media post
- Website content is not subject to algorithms
- Dedicated websites offer more functionality than social media
When it comes to social media strategy, ensuring your brand A) maintains a dedicated website, and B) is keeping it up to date is just as important as anything you post to your social feeds. It should be fast, functional, responsive, and well-designed (something our web designers in Melbourne can help with).
In summary: social media is not a replacement for a purpose-designed and built business website. A good, well-designed website can complement your social media efforts (and vice-versa), helping your brand achieve its ultimate goals.
The final key: engage a professional if you’re unsure
Need graphic design for social media? Want your brand to stand out in user’s feed? Get in contact today
Social media marketing can be a powerful part of your marketing plan – provided that it’s backed by a comprehensive, thought-out strategy.
Of course, while the strategy is crucial, it’s the execution that can make or break it. To ensure your social media activities are helping achieve your brand’s objectives, it’s important to engage the services of a professional like MOO Marketing & Design.
We are an end-to-end marketing and graphic design studio in Melbourne that offers a range of digital marketing services, including graphic design for social media. We work with some of Australia’s biggest brands for all their marketing needs, including graphic design for social media and brand strategy services.
Learn how we can help you brand stand out of the herd. Whether It’s social media, design, or branding, our team of accomplished designers and experienced marketing pros can help.
You can contact our marketing agency in Melbourne on (03) 8843 1600, or fill in our contact form and our friendly team will get back to you to discuss your requirements.