Word count: 874 Reading Level: College Student Reading time: 3.18 Mins
A comprehensive content marketing strategy should also include a style guide to help quickly create attractive images for posting along with text content, but also the thumbnail for any videos. As a matter of fact, any piece of content to be promoted, especially on social media, should come with a selection OG tagged images. A good Social media image will comprise of factors like colors, fonts, text, ratio of text to image and much more. Compiled here are some of the resources which will help you to extend your social reach and increase click through with compelling social media images.
A shareable social media image is generally comprised of; an emotive image, eye catching color, typography and most importantly relevance to your target audience.
Images should be emotive:
An image that can conveys the emotion of the content is one that will create a buzz in social media. Sometimes a rough personal picture, taken with a phone, can be much better than nicie nice stock art. However, ensure that you can backup your picture with your content otherwise clicks will lead to bounces. A picture really can instantly convey your character, sass and the internal content held within. To sum up, try to convey your feelings through your imagery. Additionally, ensure you are using OG tags so you are displaying the right images when you and others are posting to different social platforms.
Images need to be Relevant:
Relevance is such an important factor that can differentiate an intriguing image from a tired one. When people see your image literally and subconsciously try to match what they see with the title and they make a guess at the context and quality of the content . If there is a disconnect they won’t connect and won’t click through. Therefore, if the image you choose does not fit with your brand and industry, people are going to pass be turned off and not be interested.
Note: You can also use the extreme to stand out. For example if you if you are in the fitness industry and generally content consists of pictures of exercise and very fit good looking people. A polar opposite picture, but in the correct context can make your post stand out for all the right reasons.
Choice of Color:
Studies conducted by different marketing experts have revealed that colors are a major influencing factor that can prompt people to take an action. A study conducted by Georgia Tech by sampling most of the images on Pinterest posted between 2009-11 quotes the colors: Pink, Red and Purple as the most influential ones.
Editors note: Colour preferences are a trends, fashion and have a strong cultural factor, which are pron to change. Also selecting green because it is a wealth colour is not going to magically have people throwing money at you.
Typography:
Choosing a font for your image should be part of your style guide if you are branded, but should also be in keeping with the image. large fonts are really popular at the moment, however platforms like Facebook will not allow you to boost a post with more than 25% text in the post. A Font should reflect the body language of your image and can impart just as much to your reader as the image alone.
Create the same image with different fonts and color combination, to test and measure the response with your market. Consult your designer or better yet have your design create them in your brands ethos. Always ensure that you choose a font that is readable over all others. [Editor: Don’t you dare choose Comic sans, just don’t]
Secret Bonus Point:
It would be great to try this solution, prior to implementing what you just read. Believe me; I have been trying this for sometime now, with great success. Go to social media sites especially twitter and Facebook and check out the post of some of the prominent brands especially digital service providers. Checkout how they handle their social media posts, the fonts they use, the color of images and other anything pertinent to your business. Make sure you go way back in their profile to see if any have been re-posted differently. Also check to see how many likes, shares each post got. Note the poor and Great and see if the content quality matched the image. For example, A great looking image, but the posts was weak and very short and the post might have a lot of click throughs or likes, but not many shares. Users will often like the image/post before reading, but share it after if it actually was really good. This should give you an idea on how to go about your high converting social media images.
Pro tip
Faces are very compelling for humans. We have a part of our brains especially devoted to facial recognition. Therefore, having a face in your images naturally draws a users eyes towards it, conscious or subconscious their brain is going to be doing some mental gymnastics analysis on it.
Bibliography:
Canvacom. (2016, no-date). Design Awesome Graphics For Social Media With Canva. [Weblog]. Retrieved 9 July 2016, from https://www.canva.com/create/social-media-graphics/
blog.bufferapp.com. (2015, no-date). The Best Typography, Colors, and Templates Used in the Highest-Converting Social Media Images. [Weblog]. Retrieved 9 July 2016, from https://blog.bufferapp.com/how-to-create-shareable-social-media-images
