How to Create Effective Visuals for Social Media

Wouldn’t you like more traffic coming to your website from diverse channels?

Using social media to generate traffic seems like a logical choice here: Social media platforms are diverse and can expand your audience by sending clicks.

And yet, social media traffic is not easy to achieve.

What you need is to create an effective visual marketing strategy to ensure your social media updates and ads stand out and trigger well-targeted clicks.

We used to talk about images as something you may want to use in order to improve your results.

These days visual marketing is essential.

Every brand – however small – is into publishing awesome images and visuals on a daily basis. It can be hard to stand out from the crowd.

So how can you create effective visual content for your brand’s social media channels? Here are a few ideas.

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Innovate: use new tools

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen out there is being overly dependent on an old set of tools. Lots of marketing teams and freelancers have been using the same well-known image editing tools for at least 5 years.

How can your content stand out if you are using the same tools as everybody else?

New technology brings new inspiration, new capabilities and more ideas.

I know embracing new technology is tough: Oftentimes you need some training for your team. Image creation becomes slower because it takes time to learn the software.

And yet, it is well worth it.

I have found that simply playing with the trial version of a new tool immediately gives me new ideas as to what I can do for an existing channel or even which new social media platform to try.

And when it comes to image creation, there are a few powerful visual marketing tools that don’t require much training to figure out.

Lightricks Photoleap is one such example: It offers you advanced layer-based editing options allowing you to blend pictures, and apply visual effects and filters – all right on your iPhone.

Photoleap offers a free 7-day trial if you want to experience its power.

If you are looking for an ad creator, give Creatopy a try. The ad creation platform offers advanced editing and analytics options allowing you to put together effective social media ads. 

You can create and edit one ad in multiple sizes, collaborate with team members and freelancers, as well as track your campaign performance.

Make the most of topic associations

The real power of visual marketing is its power of building associations, mentally connecting your brand to the niche. If your company is selling wristbands, you want your customers to think about it when thinking about wristbands.

That’s the higher-level goal of any visual marketing strategy out there.

And therefore association-driven visual marketing is what you need to focus on.

Text Optimizer is a great tool for exploring niche associations based on semantic analysis of Google’s search snippet for your current keyword. Simply enter your keyword and let the tool do the job:

Another great tool for exploring niche associations is – quite predictably – Google. In fact, it’s Google Images which as of recently has started to smartly suggest refining your search by choosing a group of images:

Google Images provides more abstract associations with your core topic, so it make sense to combine the two tools to create images that build the desired image of your brand in your customers’ heads.

Create consistency across multiple channels

They say your customer may need at least 7 touchpoints with your brand to remember it.

A touchpoint is anything from a Facebook like to a purchase.

This means that you need to pop into your customers’ eyes again and again for them to start recognizing your brand and engaging with your business. 

Visual marketing helps a lot with that. Thanks to its ability to catch an eye and get stuck in the mind, images help make the most of each touchpoint, but only if you do them right:

• Each image should contribute to the overall association you want your brand to inspire (see above)
• All the images should adhere to your brand’s visual identity (logo and color palette) to remind your target audience of your brand
• All the visuals should be consistent across multiple channels for people to see them again and again.

These are the fundamental rules of building brand recognizability. But the key is being consistent.

Remember that brand recognition takes time, and every detail counts. You create your brand’s digital image every day, image by image. To keep things organized, try setting up your brand’s visual identity using Visme that allows you to create a Branding Kit which would store your brand’s visual elements and help apply them to every image your team creates:

If you don’t have your visual identity set-up yet, give Namify a try. The tool will help you pick a logo that reflects your niche and brand name in the best possible way:

Once you have your visual identity defined and the consistent visual marketing process set, use those images everywhere:

• On your own site (for people initially referred to your page from social media to see the same or similar image they saw when clicking the link). Creating cross-channel consistency is the fundamental driving source of conversions. There are quite a few useful widgets that bring images from your social media feeds to your site automatically.
• In social media ads, and especially in your remarketing ads: You can reach your site past visitors through retargeting ads to remind them of your brand. Facebook remarketing can be set up using Facebook pixel.

Keep an eye on your competition

Finally, what are your competitors doing to create a memorable brand image?

This is not about copying your competitors’ visual marketing tactics.

Competitive research and monitoring is not so much about doing what your competitors do. You can never surpass your competition by copying them.

What you really want here is to learn from their followers and customers.

What do their followers respond best to? What do they seem to ignore?

Social listening is one obvious way to follow your competition and their audience. Buzzsumo is one powerful social listening tool that also comes with great competitive research tools, like Facebook Analyzer allowing you to easily identify most effective visuals on your competitor’s page:

Page monitoring platform Visual Ping offers you a powerful competitive intelligence tool set allowing you to monitor your competitors’ social media profiles. You can get alerted when they publish a new update or a new update on a particular topic. Or you can use Visual Ping to monitor hashtags on Instagram to get daily visual marketing inspiration:

Conclusion

Visual marketing is a powerful way to generate traffic but it is even more powerful in creating a strong brand. So when setting up your visual marketing strategy, keep in mind that you need to focus on building your brand recognition through creating association-driven images that reflect your brand’s visual identity.

Consistency is key when it comes to creating a strong marketing strategy, but so is creativity. Keep experimenting with new and emerging visual marketing technology to keep your images fresh and attention-grabbing.