Tag : Social Media Imagery

The Most Common Design And Visual Mistakes Social Media Marketers Make

Design Mistakes
4Apr

In our previous blog, we discussed five techniques to incorporate into your social media marketing strategy when you are creating visuals. We promoted these so you can avoid big mistakes that many brands (even major ones) often make. With that in mind, you might be asking about the biggest foul-ups you should avoid. That’s why we created this list.

These are the biggest branding blunders you can make on social media. As you read, you may find yourself itching to log into Facebook, Twitter, or even Pinterest and fix these mistakes immediately. Don’t panic, however. Even the biggest brands make mistakes– that’s the beauty of social media marketing, there’s always room for improvement.

1. Controversial imagery. A few years ago, major clothing retailer Gap made a major faux-pas by creating an ad that was perceived as racist. They took down the ad and withdrew it from all their channels, but the damage was done. Dove, Peta, Pepsi, and Sony have all made similar huge mistakes by not thinking their imagery all the way through. The results ended up offending a group of people and backfiring on their brand considerably. Do yourself a favor and look at your marketing from ALL angles.You can cause a firestorm if you’re smart.

2. Poor quality imagery. You would be surprised at how many brands don’t see a problem incorporating blurry, pixelated or poor quality imagery– especially when designing a cover image for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or another platform. Make sure your images are at least 300 dpi and used in its more optimal form. Of course, there are other mistakes that could be made. Typos in superimposed texts, content that doesn’t match your branding, off-subject content, and more. 

3. Cut off imagery. You spent hours designing that cover image. You uploaded it and it looks great. So why is your VP of Sales calling you saying it looks all wonky on her iPhone? When you’re designing your imagery, you need to accommodate for all screens and platform specifications. While it is possible, it can be quite challenging without a team of designers helping you. Even more frustrating, they have changed these dimensions before and continue to do so, so your team must be ready to adapt their catalog of files at a moment’s notice.

Take a moment and do a quick Google search for marketing mistakes. You will find countless examples of big brands that have made these errors and in some cases, continue to do so. Make sure you get the right kind of publicity and market appropriately.

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The 5 Secrets To Improving Your Social Media Imagery

Go! Blog Image Templates (900x350) (42)
2Apr

Let’s say you’re looking at a house online. Sure, knowing the dimensions, numbers of rooms, and statistics are all vital factors to learning about the property. But what you really want is a large album of photos to check out. Even though they were angled and staged by a professional photographer, we prefer to have a visual of the real deal. It’s the photos that make you want to contact the realtor. Without great pictures, you would never even consider visiting the home. 

Your social media marketing should abide by the same laws.

Take a look at some of the most recent updates your brand has published on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms. What do the images look like? Is it the content you want to represent your brand? Are your proud of it? The truth is, social media is quickly becoming the first piece of content many consumers see when experiencing a brand for the first time. The last thing you want is to present your brand with shoddy images.

Since it’s spring time, you might want to consider some spring cleaning on your social media images. These five techniques are used by professional content marketers when they are creating quality work. Are you ready to get creative? 

1. Crisp, clean, and quality photos. Photos that capture certain elements of your company are effective on social media due to their originality and human nature. However, you want to make sure that these photos are high-quality. If a quality camera isn’t in the budget, most smartphones come with a decent camera of at least 12 megapixels. This will allow you to take a clear photo and minimize blurriness. When deciding on your subject manner, make sure it is in the center of the photo and is self-explanatory. No one wants to try and decipher what the subject of your photo is. Photos can be action shots of your employees helping customers, snapshots of your latest products, or even pictures of your organization’s location. All of these are great ways to add a bit of originality to your strategy.

2. Stock photos. If you’re not ready for the camera, you might want to consider high-resolution stock photos. These files should be large in size and as clear as day. One thing worth noting– if you’re going the stock photo route, keep in mind that because of the number of people that use these purchased images, they may come off as inorganic. Some of these photos have cheesy actors or props in obviously fake scenarios. Weed through the stock photo sites such as iStock and find ones that don’t look staged. Another good rule of thumb is to avoid clear cut face shots of the actors. It’s all about capturing a certain element of your business, not identifying a person to represent your business specifically.

3. Logos. For some businesses, this one is fairly simple. Others may have to go back to the drawing board. When creating a social media page for your business, you should have your logo as your profile image. This should be the latest version of your logo and be as high-quality as possible. If you have this logo in vector form (.AI, .EPS, and smart .PDFs), that would be best since you will need multiple different files with dimensions that meet platform image specifications. In other words, the image you use for Facebook may be cut off on Twitter, or vice versa, depending on the platform’s current standards (which often change).

4. Branded images. Combine steps 1-3 for this step. Harness the power of graphic design and create images with your branding superimposed upon relevant images. Whether you just add your logo or further graphics that match your tone, colors, and style, this is an important part of a your content rollout. One of the best ways to create this is through Canva. The team at Canva has created a world-class platform in which you can generate and share truly original designs that are sized to each platform’s specifications.

5. Videos. Ask any professional in the social media marketing world what the most crucial part of an image strategy is, and they will say video. This medium must be incorporated into your monthly content calendar because of its effectiveness but also because of how it takes priority in the current platform algorithms. Incorporate production-quality videos showing demonstrations of your products or services, Q&As, behind the scenes, announcements, interviews, and much more. Camera shy? No worries. A collection of pictures can be morphed into a slideshow that matches your branding.

It’s time to jazz up your imagery. With the above 5 techniques in mind, how does your current content stack up? If you’re starting to see room for improvement, that’s a good thing. You’re taking your first steps into a better understanding of quality content. But here’s the issue many face– each one of the above requires a team with both skilled creatives and analytical managers. That’s where The Go! Agency can step in. Every day, we create a variety of quality imagery for our clients so they look their very best online! 

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How To Pick Your Pic: 4 Easy Steps On Getting Social Media Imagery Right

How-To-Pick-Your-Pic-4-easy-steps-on-getting-social-media-imagery-right.-200x300
28Jun

Here in social media country, creative writers and graphic designers alike can find a home. Social media thrives on the visual as much as it does the textual. With the written word, there’s plenty of rules to abide by. SEO rules will get your posts higher up on search engine results. Hashtags will get your updates in the right news streams. User names will grab the attention of the right people. Anyone who even reads social media can see there’s obviously some formulas to follow when writing. Yet what about imagery?

From the earliest days of social media, visuals have been just as important than anything written, if not more so. We talk a lot about how to formulate awesome content, but pictures tend to take a back seat. For an image to be eye-catching, there needs to be a few elements present. For the picture to actually help your social media campaign succeed, you need an additional set of things to consider. Here are the most important items to make your pic rock!

  • Clarity. The idea of clarity covers two fronts. First, the obvious. A picture shouldn’t be blurry, pixilated, warped, or blown out. Unless your posts are about those old bigfoot pictures, clarity shows you’re a professional. You’ll need a high resolution image of at least 300 dpi to make sure that it’ll be crisp and clean on most screens. Large pictures are always good to pick so you’ll have peace of mind that your social media posts won’t look like a vintage video game. However, you should also keep in mind that huge pictures will take time to load. You’re also going to want to steer clear of any images that have watermarks or another company’s logo somewhere on it. The second side of clarity is subject matter. Don’t have your followers trying to guess what they’re looking at. If they can’t figure out what’s going on in a picture, they’re going to give up and scroll away quickly.
  • Subject Matter. Most of the time spent on images will be on pictures that accompany posts. Make sure the picture you pick out actually makes sense and is appropriate for the subject and audience. Obviously, this means no obscene pictures plucked from the dark corners of the web, but also that it fits in with the tone of your brand.
  • Optimization. There are many ways to make an image jump off the screen. You could spend hours trying to make a picture just right. First of all, colors are important. If you have very specific rules with your company’s colors, be sure to adhere to them. You may want to consider some basic design laws. Choose colors that complement each other. Lastly, GIFs and animations have become popular once again, and you can take advantage of this. These will add a bit of motion to your images and it might help attract the right set of eyes.
  • Professionalism. Having high-quality, professional images is an element of all three prior items. However now we’re referring exclusively to your profile and cover images. For businesses, logos are always a great way to go for the profile image and a nice clean accompanying graphic for the cover image. If you’re representing yourself and you need a headshot of yourself, be sure it is a high-quality image, you’re wearing something appropriate, and you know…smile! A word to the wise: just because it’s your personal page, doesn’t mean recruiters, clients, and potential employers aren’t looking through your stuff. Get those old party pics out of there.

There’s no question about it, images can make or break any post. These are the kinds of things that social media marketers truly strive to achieve perfection with because we understand how quickly an image can bring a whole new wave of attention to a page.

What do you think about imagery’s role in social media? Comment below!

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