How to Create Awesome Visual Content for Your Social Media

Do you want more engagement on your social media content, do you want to reach a broader market with your content? Infusing visual content into your social media can help you increase your engagement by as much as 51 percent.

Visual content also makes for a successful marketing strategy as it includes photos, videos, infographics, etc. This kind of content helps consumers process information 60,000 times faster.

But, don’t make the mistake of posting visual content for the sake of it. Ensure that when creating visual content, it is;

• Relevant
• Compelling and
• Formatted correctly.

This article will teach you how to create visual content that can help you reach your marketing goals.

How to create visual content for social media

1. Create visual content in line with your content marketing strategy

Firstly, to create visual content for your social media, you have to ensure that it aligns with your content marketing strategy.

Your content should communicate with your audience through visual storytelling. It should have a clear message that everyone can spot immediately.

2. Use the rule of thirds

Next, using the rule of thirds is a pleasing way of creating visual content for your social media. Using this rule helps your content sync with the way a consumer’s eye scans an image. You are thus making your visual image more appealing.

To create content using the rule of thirds;

1. Divide your image horizontally and vertically into grids of thirds. This division will create intersections of lines on your image. According to the rule of thirds, the intersections are where human’s eyes are most likely to be drawn.
2. Next, move key elements towards these intersections, so they aren’t in the center.

3. Use white space

Whitespace is significant in every visual work as a failure to use it can;

• Make your work seem clustered.
• Cause your content to become distracting.
• Make it difficult for people to understand the content.

So, when you create content for visuals, ensure you are using white space to enhance your content’s core elements. A pro tip is to remove any component that doesn’t add to the content’s visual conversation and increase the spacing between unrelated elements.

4. Repurpose brand information and insights into your visual content

Another great way of creating excellent visuals for your social media is to use your existing brand information in the content. You can use some of your most essential brand information to develop infographics and even video content for social media.

By doing this, you ensure that;

• All your brand information is reduced to easily digestible bits.
• Your audience can easily share brand insights and information
• Visual content creation remains fresh.
• You are repurposing content, therefore not wasting already created content.

5. Use color sparingly

As a brand, every visual content you create should remain true to your brand image. This includes adapting your brand’s color in the content, as well as font and style.

However, please don’t get carried away trying to execute this rule that you use brand colors even when they don’t work well with the content. Make sure you create harmony between the colors you use in your visual content.

A pro-tip is to pick a base color, then find complementary colors to use with it.

6. Tailor visual content to specific social media platforms

When creating your visual content, consider the platform you are creating the content for. Ensure you already know how the content fits the conversational context. Also, note your audience preference on the platform, and make sure your content aligns with it.

Another thing to take into consideration is content format on different platforms.

For example, on Instagram alone, the content format for feed posts is; IG is 1080px by 1080px (Square) 1080px by 1350px (Portrait) and. 1080px by 608px (Landscape). If you are creating video content for IGTV, video size should be under the 650MB file size limit. And, IG videos cannot be more than 4 GB.

This means that you can spend time creating visual content for Instagram, but if it doesn’t follow the content format, then it might not come out the way you envisioned it.

7. Use stock images sparingly

While not all brands can afford to use professional images in their visual content, make sure you aren’t using all stock images.

Hire a professional photographer to help you capture quality visuals that align with your brand. These images can help your brand create quality and compelling stories to attract your audience.

But, if you don’t have the budget to hire professional photographers to create visual content for you, then put your brand spin on stock images. By simply infusing a style or method of delivering stock content into your image, you can make it more exciting and attract the audience you want.

8. Use the right tools

Producing quality visual content from scratch regularly can be daunting and time-consuming. This is where tools and automation come in handy. Making use of the right tools can help you create visually appealing content for your social media.

There are numerous visual content creation and content writing tools out there. Tools like WordSwag, Inshot, Quik, JumpStory , etc. can help you speed up and automate your content creation process. They can also help you to edit images, craft captions, reformat images, create and edit videos, etc.

9. Stay on brand

Staying true to your brand is essential for whatever kind of content you create. So, ensure that the visual content you create for your social media is consistent across all channels.

Even if you are using user-generated content, ensure that your brand formatting is evident in the content. You can do this by adding your brand logo, infusing text in your font text or style in the image, etc.

Just make sure your design is consistent so viewers can recognize it when they see it.

In conclusion

Creating visual content for your social media can be quick, and easy, and substantially improve your social media engagement if you know how to go about it. Thoroughly read through this article, and start implementing all the ways you can create content for your social media.