5 Tips For Creating Cohesive Social Media Graphics

I recently asked for some feedback on Twitter about where people feel they struggle or are stuck with branding. I heard back from some people and there was some concern about creating cohesive social media graphics. I thought we could talk about that today, since for a lot of us with online businesses social media is responsible for growth and success. 

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REFER TO YOUR STYLE GUIDE

In this post I talked about creating a style guide for your branding. This will definitely contain rules that carry into developing your social media graphics. For example, maybe you have already set the precedence that you use Raleway font or that you emphasize things by switching to a heavier weight. Carry those rules from your website, or printed collateral, into your social media graphics. Create them to reflect the same stylistic decisions – colors, fonts, spacing, and so on.

Depending on how in-depth you previously were in your style guide, this might be a good opportunity to update it with more detailed information. As stated in that post the more specific, detailed, and elaborate you are – the better.

With social media graphics you’ll want to create versions (or sizes) for different platforms, but follow the same feeling across the board. You can have some room for variation – especially if your branding incorporates things like stock photos. My social media graphics for TheCrownFox are extremely consistent across the board – the biggest change being in color. There are other examples of great branding that are less obviously consistent, but keep things like black and white stock photos with whatever typographical treatment to tie things together. You can definitely be less obviously consistent than me, but you’ll want to keep things like your fonts and colors as consistent as possible to be that visual reminder of who’s social media graphic it is.

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USE TEMPLATES

If you’ve already caught the Systemize Your Branding Masterclass you saw my templates for social media graphics in use. My favorite tool is Adobe Illustrator and I use it to create a multi art board document with all the variations of my graphics (since my variation is color based, there are 12 options of how my graphics might look).

I can’t stress how vital making a template is, whether you’re using Illustrator, Photoshop, or even Canva. Having a pre-made, already designed in the right way graphic, where you just need to update text will save you so much time and give you so much consistency. Creating something new each time will leave a lot of room for error, difference, and not build up that cohesive approach. In general, if there’s an option to create some sort of template for any avenue of your business – I strongly recommend doing it.

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POINT TO YOUR WEBSITE

I recommend having your website visible on your graphics, so that even if at that point and time someone isn’t clicking through to your website, they still are being shown in multiple times.  For example, a lot of my blog post pins on Pinterest say the word “branding” somewhere in the title, and my website is on it. Over time the hope is that you’ll see branding and TheCrownFox in conjunction enough times that when you have a question about branding or need a graphic designer I will pop into your head.

To the last point, in your template, keep your website in the same consistent area of your graphics. The standard seems to be just at the bottom of your pins, but if you want it elsewhere that’s fine – I would just keep it pretty similar across all your graphics. This will help to start building up that recognition for people viewing your graphics on Pinterest or Twitter or Instagram.

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LEAVE ADJUSTMENT ROOM

Earlier this year I updated my graphics because my original design had no room for adjustments and had become incredibly limiting. I used to justify everything and try to put the emphasis word of a blog post title into the center. This became SUPER limiting on how I could title blog posts and caused some weird design rules to be broken. I realized the error in my ways and have since created a design that has a little bit more wiggle-room, which has made my life much easier!

So I recommend this to you too. Think about practically, not just the one thing you are designing when you make your template. Think about how you usually word your blog posts titles (or quotes, or whatever it is you are posting the most of). Make sure what you are using will fit that easily. If you are starting to feel too limited by your social media graphics, then it might be time to switch it up and use this newfound knowledge to create something easier to work with.

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KEEP SIMILAR ELEMENTS

Depending on the rest of your branding and what special or unique details you have, you’ll want to carry those into your social media graphics too. So I use the bottom color bar across graphics on my website, which then made sense to carry into my social media graphics as well. Just another visual reminder or cue to anyone finding me on any social platform or on my website that I’m the same business.

If your website graphics look way different than your social media graphics I recommend you take the time to find consistency between them. If someone was to navigate to your website via a social media graphic and then it looked completely different they might think they found the wrong website and leave. The aim is always to represent the same cohesive branding and business across all the possible ways someone can see or find you.

Take time to find what these unique details are that you might be drawn too, or be using elsewhere, and then pull them into your graphics. If you like emphasizing words with another font, then pull that into your graphics. If you double underline important things, then pull that into your graphics. I will say – less is more with social media graphics (and with branding in general, in my opinion) so don’t put 100 unique details and the kitchen sink on your graphics, but do pull in a way that someone will be able to recognize them as your graphics.

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5 Ways To Focus Your Business on Building Community

I’ll be honest; this past month or so has been hectic for me. I’ve missed out on some of the community building that I was focusing on in January of this year and am itching to reconnect and refocus on what truly matters to me – building friendships, connections, partnerships, and business relationships with fellow online business owners or entrepreneurs (and creating opportunities for them to connect with each other, too). Having a community and having people that support you and understand you is such a huge relief on this journey through starting and running your own business.

If you haven’t found your “spot” yet and feel too new, I have good news for you: this blogging/business world is so supportive. It’s amazing. I know people in so many other industries and businesses that are so intense, cutthroat, and competitive. It sounds stressful and lonely. Luckily for us in this online business world that is NOT the case. People who are technically my competition are some of my best friends. It’s incredibly and inspiring. I am so fortunate to be in this arena with great people.

If you’re ready to focus on community, I have five things I’ve implemented, experimented with, and seen direct benefits from. 

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BE AVAILABLE + ASK QUESTIONS

This has been one of the biggest assets to growing a group of people that I feel comfortable and connected with. I try to be as open and available as possible – whether it be by email or social media or hopping on Skype to chat. Building on that, when you are connecting with people make sure to put the emphasis on asking questions and getting to know them better versus talking about yourself. In getting to know people I generally can start to see how we can work together, collaborate, teach each other things, etc.

That’s something that I think transcends business relationships actually and applies to every type of interaction or relationship. I’m sure there’s an important quote about it, but I don’t know it off the top of my head. But my point is that the focus should be outside of yourself, if you want to build valuable connections. I try to approach every new person, especially in business, as “what can they teach me?” and “how can I help/serve them?” So far it’s served me quite well.

Being available can feel hard, especially when there are not enough hours in the day to do all the other things in your business – but it’s so valuable to your business. I think posting 10 things to Twitter a day is a good idea, but I think interacting with 10 people a day on Twitter is a much better idea.

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BE SOCIAL ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Building on that idea, make sure you use social media for its true purpose – to BE social. It’s not just a promotion platform. This is what I’ve been the most lax on lately (because I’ve been so busy) and I truly regret it! In January when I was more focused on social media and building a community I met so many amazing people daily just from being social on social media. I asked questions, answered questions, was on Periscope, was active in Facebook groups, etc.

So, clearly, that’s hard to manage time wise. I use time blocking so limit myself, but I do try to make a point to actually use social media and not depend fully on scheduling posts. Scheduling posts is useful but it’s not going to build a relationship. It’s not going to connect with someone on a personal basis. And if you want to focus on community – you need that personal element.

Another idea for managing time and social media is to focus heavily on the purpose/point you want to use each platform for. I talk about that more in this post but basically if you think Twitter is a great way to grow your peer relationships, then focus your energy and time on being social in that way while you are using Twitter (i.e. don’t waste time doing things that aren’t serving a purpose).

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INTRODUCE + REFER + PROMOTE

Once you start building connections and getting to know people better something amazing happens. People start to care about your business, talk about your skills, and send interested parties your way. It’s seriously mind blowing. Most of my clients have been referrals from my peers, which I can’t even begin to show how thankful I am for that.

But, that works both ways. There are a lot of things I could technically do for my clients, but these things aren’t necessarily my specialty (or what I offer). Instead of telling them a flat “no” I can instead refer them to peers that I know will be a good fit for the job.

So throughout your experiences and newfound community focus, make sure to actually remember and utilize the people you meet. It’s not a one-time talk that grows communities! It’s being a consistent role in their lives, and welcome their role in your lives (or businesses). Being able to easily recommend help to others (and be the person to introduce people to each other) really builds up your influence and trust, which ultimately grows your business.

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SHOW GRATITUDE

If you follow my blog you know that this is the MOST important thing to me for many reasons – but it applies to this blog post as well. You can most definitely never ever ever take the people who support you and your business and want to be along for the journey for granted. Ever. That is what makes your business successful! Without this support system you can’t grow to reach new heights.

Here’s what I mean: thank people for their support. It takes two seconds to say “thank you” when someone comments that they loved your post, or shares it with their audience. It isn’t difficult to be gracious; it takes just acknowledging the fact that someone supported you.

Something happens when you take the time to do it – suddenly there’s an opportunity for continued interaction and development. If you don’t take the time to show that you appreciate someone’s support then you don’t have the option to develop a possible friendship. There are people that I look up to for their business savvy, expert opinions, and amazing ideas – and that’s cool. But then there are also people I truly admire and want to bring in front of my audience, invest in products and services, and overall add to their success. What’s the difference in how I view these two groups of people? The latter have acknowledged my support, answered my questions or comments, and overall attempted to learn something about me – making me feel suddenly a lot more inclined to want to support them. 

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COLLABORATE

An awesome way to start developing a community is to collaborate with people. There are two different ways to look at this idea. First is that by collaborating with someone you can gain access to their existing community, or even just their audience (if they aren’t focusing on community yet). But another way is something that I am currently trying to implement in my own budding community – asking for collaborations (through guest posting on a blog, in this example).

Opening the doors to collaborating with people is such a good way to form partnerships and relationships because you are basically putting trust into someone else’s ability to do something and asking for trust from them. That’s the basis for relationships, right?

In my example I want to start a guest blog, so I sent out an email to my list and asked for submissions. I want to work together on a project and build each other up through this blog where we combine as one powerful resource! My thought was that starting this platform would be exciting, helpful, and allow cross-support between people involved. So, in your own community building plans think of how you can bring the interaction outside of “you” and “person” and make it more about “people” in general. A true community involves layers of support between everyone.

I hope this gives you some ideas about how you can approach building a community into your own business. 

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