How can I create engaging social posts?

Understanding what is involved

It can be hard to keep your followers engaged with everything you post on social media. However, using social media is essential for any company, as other than Google, it's the first place a customer or client will look. If you're running on a limited budget or you are a start-up company, it can save you a lot of money. Below are some tips on how you can create engaging social posts using graphics because after all, pictures really do speak a thousand words!

Brand Guidelines

As a brand you want all of your posts and designs to be recognisable. By being consistent with colour, logo's and typography you are ensuring your brand is memorable. Think of the bigger brands who are consistent with their branding from the Twitter bird, Nike tick or the McDonald's M, all you have to do is see their logo and you immediately recognise who it is. Also, if you were to ever use a marketing agency, giving them brand guidelines to follow will allow them to create posts with ease.

Legibility

This might seem like an obvious point, but a lot of graphics have been overcomplicated in the past - remember less is more people! A good design will be easy to read, so don't overdo it with fancy fonts and colours. Audiences spend most of their time on social media so if the writing is too small – they won't bother trying to read it. Keep the font BIG.

Hierarchy

When talking about visual hierarchy we mean the style elements of a graphic so colour, font size and positioning of the graphic/text. Syntax refers to the way in which a sentence is structured, just like that hierarchy provides order which helps readers to prioritise words and information. This enhances the communication you're trying to push out. An example of this is by realising everyone reads from top to bottom and most read left to right so by keeping a clear hierarchy you can keep the order of natural processing.

Be Original

Checking your feeds and the news for upcoming trends and stories relating to your business is of importance. You can take content and make it your own! Make it fun by using polls, infographics and listicles. Humour on social media is also a must – if you can't make your audience laugh, or they find your posts are too corporate they'll lose interest. Use memes, puns and don't be afraid to make fun of yourself! People love to see the personal side to a business.

Simplicity

If there's too much text on a post people will get bored, switch off and scroll past your post. Keep your posts simple by having fewer (or no) words and branded colours. By complicating your posts, you will confuse the audience. You can create a simple social media graphic with tools such as Canva or  Adobe Spark and there's many more! 

Get Help

Making your feeds aesthetically pleasing can be very time consuming if you don't have a background in visual design or aren't used to using design programs such as Adobe. So why don't you get someone to do it for you? Here at Greyhive we have a great understanding of design programmes, social media and how to increase engagement. With Greyhive you would have a Marketing Executive, Content Writer and Social Media Executive working on your brand – we're here to act as part of your team.

If you feel like you need a helping hand with social media, then get in touch today!

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