Why Graphic Design is Important For Your Social Media Marketing
Published: December 5, 2022
If you’re wondering why graphic design is important for your social media marketing these days, you only need to have a look online. The truth is, human civilisation is more visual than ever – and it’s no secret why. From the invention of television to the rise of the internet, our eyes have become increasingly fought over, in a growing attention-based economy. With a smartphone in just about everyone’s pocket and widespread accessibility to dopamine-boosting social media, it’s no wonder audiences all over the world are becoming increasingly focused on the visual.
That’s why, in this day and age, ensuring your business is communicating effectively through powerful visuals and innovative graphic design is not only important – it’s the key to survival.
So how can graphic design help your online marketing? And why is it important for your social media?
Why is graphic design important for my social media?
Contrary to popular belief, graphic design is more than the creation of pretty pictures. It’s actually the art of combining imagery and text, for the purpose of communicating visual objectives and messages to specific demographics and social groups.
We’ve all heard the phrase a picture is worth a thousand words. It’s no secret that visual content, such as images and video, is infinitely more engaging for online audiences than oodles of text. In a nutshell, graphic design can help a business organise information in a visually compelling, impactful way that successfully delivers a message to its target audience.
Basically, in the context of social media marketing, graphic design is a lot more engaging than a blog post or a 500-word text ad. When done right, implementing modern graphic design in your social media marketing can be hugely successful.
Graphic design done right
Take Spotify’s #Wrapped campaign for example. The campaign allows Spotify users to share their own data, such as their favourite songs and most listened to artists, directly to social media from the Spotify app. By combining user-generated content with powerful graphic design, Spotify successfully celebrates their users and music through compelling and immersive visuals.
Ultimately, the #Wrapped campaign has humanised Spotify and created a social media sensation that continues to this day
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Spotify #Wrapped aside, there are thousands of other notable social media campaigns that have utilised graphic design successfully, including holiday rental giant Airbnb and Dove, who are infamous for their self love campaigns.. Even the NZ Police have gotten on board in recent years with a series of dry yet humorous memes.
Of course, there’s also a fair few big brands who’ve made epic blunders when it comes to their social media.
Marketing fails: When social media goes wrong
When it comes to social media marketing, even the very best graphic design can’t save you when you fail to do your due diligence. Before social media, controversies spread through word of mouth. These days, with widespread access to the internet and a rife ‘cancel culture’, an ill-timed campaign can be catastrophic for your brand.
A scandal erupts when #CocaCola publishes Russia’s map without Crimea. Another one does, when they try to fix it pic.twitter.com/aKdVHyfPvB
— Hromadske Int. (@Hromadske) January 6, 2016
For example, in 2016 Coca-Cola came under social media scrutiny when it published a Christmas advertisement featuring an illustrated map of Russia without the disputed territory of Crimea. Faced with a barrage of criticism from angry Russians, the brand apologised and re-published the map with Crimea – only to infuriate Ukrainians. Both sides demanded a Coca-Cola boycott and began tweeting videos of the soft drink being poured down the toilet.
The lesson? If in doubt, don’t publish a map – and maybe do some research before you publish your campaign.
@AndriiOlefirov @CocaColaCo @CocaColaCo_RU #Crimea is #Ukraine #StopRussianAgression pic.twitter.com/9PAgaHm5Ru
— Team of ZinaPortnova (@Zn_Portnova) January 5, 2016
How can I create content for my social media?
As you’ve probably already garnered from Coca Cola’s social media faux pas, social media content requires research. Failing to do so won’t do your brand any favours. You’ll most likely find yourself the laughing stock of Twitter. Your mistake will also be memorialised forever on several ‘Top 10 Marketing Fails of 2022’ posts – that’s where we found Coca Cola’s ill-timed advertisement. Awkward.
When it comes to social media, successful graphic design is on-brand, relevant, authoritative and timely. It’s important to make sure your ideas are relevant to your brand and the product and/or service you’re peddling. It’s also important to keep up with the latest trends and new stories on social media so you can react accordingly. In this day and age, there’s nothing more embarrassing than posting content you’ve been working on for weeks only to find out it’s old news.
Of course, before you create any content, it’s also vital to make sure your business has stringent brand guidelines. Following these guidelines will ensure your content is visually consistent and recognisable, and should include everything from your brand colours to the fonts used in your logo.
The different types of graphic design content
There’s nothing more boring than one-trick-pony content. If you’d like to run a successful social media platform, your content needs to be diverse, exciting, engaging and of course, utilise different formats and mediums to keep audiences entertained.
When it comes to graphic design and content creation for social media, there are a number of different mediums you can utilise, including:
- Video – Shorter, more concise videos are often more engaging and will hold the attention of your audience.
- Memes – An iconic component of the modern digital world, you’ll want to make sure you know your memes and can use them correctly before hitting that publish button. Failing to do so will make you the laughing stock of the internet (seriously).
- Gifs – It’s basically an image combined with a video. Need we say more? You’ll get extra points using relevant, on-point gifs from pop culture and current news events such as Sure Jan but only in the right context.
- Illustrations – Illustrations can be used to instruct viewers or get a message across without resorting to a 1000-word blog post. Make sure you pay attention to trending styles and colours.
- Infographics – Infographics have become hugely popular in recent years, especially on apps such as Instagram. They can be used to displayed screenshots, images, memes or simply just small snippets of information. Basically, infographics are useful for displaying informative content without bombarding your audience with heaps of text. They’re also a popular way of explaining current news events such as Black Lives Matter or Elon Musk buying Twitter.
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The best graphic design tools for social media
All of these types of content can be created using graphic design tools. The tools you use to create your content are also important, although the platform you choose to will depend on your graphic design experience as well as how quickly you need to get the content finished.
For efficient, hassle-free graphic design, you might like to use Canva. Ideal for creating well-designed, on-brand posts quickly, the app can be used to create a single post in different formats and sizes – so it’s useful when you’re posting across multiple social media platforms. It’s also easy to use with a mobile app that is great for creating ‘on-the-go’ visuals and can be used to create both image-based and video content.
Other handy tools include Photoshop and inDesign, although they can be a little more complicated to use than Canva. You could also hire a social media marketing agency to create the content for you.
How can graphic design help my social media marketing?
With most platforms now not only offering a platform to connect with consumers, but a place to place paid advertisements and sponsored content, it’s no wonder so many businesses are utilising social media in their marketing strategies. In addition to placing sponsored advertising on social media, businesses can cultivate communities online around their brand and engage directly with consumers. Pretty amazing eh?
These days, social media is one of the most important tricks brands should have up their marketing sleeve. As a result, it’s important for small and large businesses alike to understand the importance of content creation and how visual communication tools such as graphic design it can be used in their online marketing.
In a nutshell, high-quality graphic design can help your business…
Appear more professional
When it comes to your brand image, there is nothing more important than appearing professional. Ensuring you’re publishing professional, high-quality content will help your business appear more trustworthy and legitimate to your target audience.
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Boost brand recognition
By ensuring your business has strict brand guidelines, you’ll be able to create immersive graphic design that is visually consistent and instantly recognisable. This is known as brand recognition, which as the name suggests, plays an important role in drawing in existing customers who will recognise your branding and gravitate towards it.
Improve engagement
On social media, engagement is everything. When done correctly, it can help you connect with your target audience on a more personal level as well as assist your business in fostering a community around your brand. Creating enticing, on-brand graphic design can help your brand better communicate with users and encourage them to engage with you and other customers online.
Decrease your bounce rate
Your bounce rate is a metric used to measure how long a visitor spends (or doesn’t spend) on your website. However, it’s also a useful tool for your social media. When a new or existing customer is scrolling through your profile, you want them to stick around for as long as possible. Ensuring your content is engaging and thought-provoking will increase the likelihood of visitors looking at your posts as well as hitting that follow button.
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Content creation at Priority Pixels
Ensuring your brand is communicating effectively on social media through graphic design is the key to your survival and your success. It’s also one of the best ways of establishing a presence online.
In a world more saturated than ever with enticing imagery and online videos, it’s not difficult to understand why so many businesses are opting for visual content. However, it can be difficult to know where to start.
While there are many offline tools that help you create basic designs and imagery for your social media, it might be time to call in the professionals. Fortunately, the content creation team at Priority Pixels have been designing beautiful, visually immersive graphic design since 2016 – we’d be delighted to help your business foster a community online with professional, on-brand graphic design and imagery.
For more information about our graphic design and social media services, get in touch with the content creation team today at 01626 245061 or email us at hello@prioritypixels.co.uk.
