You need a graphic designer—no ifs, ands, or buts. But what do you have them do once they’re hired on? Before you start sending job offer letters, it’s best if you figure out what your new employee will be doing.

Since you don’t want to hire someone without having work for them to do, I’m going to show you exactly what projects your new graphic designer should start with. Let’s talk (photo)shop!

Create a Branded Style Guide
Graphic design is so much easier when everyone is working off the same page. For this reason, you should have your new hire create a branded style guide that breaks down exactly what your visuals and graphics will look like going forward. This way, you can approve the style and make sure it’s conveying the message that you want for your brand, and your graphic designer will know what they need to deliver to make you happy!

Create a Logo
If you don’t already have a logo (or you have one you made yourself), then this should be where your graphic designer starts. Your logo is going to be prominently displayed on your website and across all social channels, so it’s important that you’re presenting something appealing for your audience! This also helps establish your branding color palette moving forward.

Create Email Signatures
You might not believe it, but email signatures go a long way in making sure that correspondences with your business are more professional and respectable. A professional will make sure that the signature is aligned with your business’ color palette, font, and overall style! Your emails will also be a lot more impactful once you have a professional signature!

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Create Ebooks
By working with your copywriter, your graphic designer will be able to combine great content with visuals that keep your readers moving through the ebook. Mixing text and visual materials is not only a great way to make sure your reader understands your points, but it breaks up the ebook and makes it easier to read!

Create Videos
Whether you want an animation or just a high quality video to showcase your business, this is all in the realm of graphic design. Video content is more popular than ever, so start pushing out some video content! Don’t overdo it, but it would certainly be worth your time to have your graphic designer create a few short videos and see how they perform on your social media channels.

Create Building Branding Elements
Whether you’re a brick and mortar store or an office, you’re going to have clients/customers stopping by eventually. Make sure that your location looks like it belongs to your brand! Your graphic designer can make room tags, signs, and other materials that will bring your brand’s identity into your physical location.

Create Name Tags
Never underestimate the power of a good name tag! Your name tags should follow your brand’s color palette and feature some sort of visual—preferably your brand’s logo. This way, when you’re interacting with clients or customers, they know that they’re dealing with a professional and are more likely to take you seriously!

Don’t Wait to Get Started
We’re still early in the year, so take this opportunity to try something new for your business. It might be a little pricy, but paying now is better than investing in subpar social media and branding work! You know why you need a graphic designer, and now you’ve got a list of tasks for them, so there’s no reason not to dive in and make this investment for your business!

Do you want to discuss what you can expect from your new graphic designer? Schedule your free consultation with The Go! Agency!

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Visuals are a vital part of social media marketing. As humans, we’re not just lazy and refuse to read—our brains are hardwired to better retain visual information. So while we’ve established that you need a writer and even given a few suggestions about work you should have them do, none of that is going to take you very far without a competent graphic designer!

You want to get a great return on your investment into digital marketing, and I’m here to make sure that happens. Here are five reasons you need a graphic designer right now!

1. First Impressions Matter
Before you’ve fully formed an opinion about something, your first impression has already been decided. The instant you see a site without a consistent color palette or a blog post without accompanying visuals, you’ve already decided that what you’re looking at is amateurish and probably not worth your time.

A graphic designer changes that entire experience. The homepage is crisp, clean, and comes together to create a visual narrative. The blog comes with a relevant image that helps you understand the sort of content you can expect when you click the link. In short, your work stops looking shoddy and lazy and instead appears well-crafted and professional!

2. Your Brand Needs an Identity
Your copywriter will help you develop a unique voice for your brand, but that voice needs to extend to your visuals, too. Acting on your own, your visuals will probably lack the consistency that develops your brand identity, and your audience will be unsure of who you are or what your business’ angle is.

Conversely, a good graphic designer can keep certain elements the same in visuals, which will build your brand’s voice. If you’re operating a brewery, your graphic designer would probably use photos of people in their 20s and 30s rather than images of people 60+. This tells your audience that your brand is youthful without you ever saying a word!

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3. Grab Attention
Let’s be honest—people are rarely paying attention to what they see when they’re scrolling through social media. Great copy is informative and draws the reader in, but only if they stop to actually read it. Visuals are better for grabbing attention!

Visuals give information in an instant rather than the few seconds it takes to read. If you see a man picking up a can of soda, you’ll understand what’s happening much faster than if you read my description of what he’s doing. Saving that time is key to getting your message across before a social media user swipes past your post!

4. Vary Your Content Mix
There are certain kinds of content that really only work with visuals. Quotes are a great example! An inspirational quote is very shareable content that showcases your brand’s values, but it’s pretty dull without an accompanying graphic. Once you add in a visual, though, it instantly becomes a viable way of encouraging your audience to engage with your brand!

Graphic designers also allow you to post videos, graphs, and a host of other content that would be impossible without a professional graphic designer on staff. If you notice that your competitors’ social media pages are looking a little bland or stagnant, this is a great way to get ahead of them!

5. Things Look Clean
I’m sure that there’s at least one person reading this who’s sure that they could handle all of this graphic design work even though they have little to no experience. To that person, I respect the confidence, but the reality is a little different.

Good graphic design means monitoring visuals for consistency with brand image, kerning, spacing, style, color palettes, and a thousand other things that nobody but a professional has the time or experience for. So sure, you could probably post a stock image of a woman laughing, but that’s not nearly the same as having a professional on staff creating quality, compelling visuals for your brand.

Find the Right Professional
It’s tempting to cut corners on things like this, but that’s only going to hurt your business’ social media in the long run. If you want to manage your own social media, then there’s nothing to do but bite the bullet and hire a professional. You’ll be glad you did when your page has consistent, polished visuals going out!

Do you want to discuss the realities of hiring a graphic designer? Schedule your free consultation with The Go! Agency!

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