In order to have an engaging and follow-worthy presence on social media platforms you will want to post visually appealing, quality photos that resonate with your target audience. Our social media managers work to create visual content that can be posted across all platforms during your social media campaign in order to reach as many online users as possible.
So how do you know what to select when it comes to social media photos? What is the best content marketing strategy to capture the attention of social media users?
Social Media Today shares this helpful information for increasing your engagement online by selecting the best images for your social media below:
Stay relevant to your campaign.
Those who are new to social media often mistakenly assume that all pictures are equal in the eyes of the user. Not true – when you post a plug for an article you’ve written, or a sale that your company is having, the image has to relate to the content, or the two main parts of your social campaign will clash. Yes, photos of cats and dogs are cute, but unless your social marketing campaign is for an animal shelter or pet store, they are irrelevant. I mainly write business advice pieces, and as much as I would love to include that picture of a cat wearing a tie with my social plugs, it is a cheap tactic and readers who would otherwise be interested in my post could pass it over or worse, won’t take me seriously. Your social marketing campaign needs to be planned out and focused, so your images need to tie to your ultimate marketing goal – whether it’s finding new customers, bringing in readers to your blog, or spreading brand awareness.
Don’t rely solely on memes.
I understand why social marketers use memes – I’ve used them before myself. Much like a well-known and loved brand, a meme carries recognizability and, typically, some sort of positive emotional connection. Take for example the extremely popular “perma-kitten” Lil Bub whose face has launched a thousand memes, a book deal, and a place in the upcoming 2014 Puppy Bowl halftime show. Who doesn’t love this kitten? Facebook, as it turns out. Though to be fair, it isn’t Lil Bub specifically that’s being targeted – Facebook’s recent edge-rank update is affecting the use of all memes. These changes gutted organic reach, and made it much harder for businesses marketing on Facebook to get onto their followers’ news feeds.
MyCorporation Facebook AdvertisementBrand pages that have used memes before were hit particularly hard as Facebook felt meme-based posts were ‘low-effort.’ Facebook is still the most active social site around, so the changes it makes define the course of social marketing. As such, memes are considered to no longer be useful marketing tools and increasingly, they can also come with some serious copyright problems.
Make sure you have permission to use the images you choose.
Though a culture of ‘free’ permeates the internet, most images you’ll find online are copyrighted. And while fair-use doctrine protects certain uses of these images, the fact that you are using them to market means you need permission to do so. Memes, cartoons, stock images -no one cannot appropriate these images and use them without permission, and if you do, you are at risk of being faced with a lawsuit. Social marketers also can’t slightly edit a picture and then claim it as their own – the only legal options to work with here are either use photos in the public domain, or pay for the rights to market with them.
Dimensions and measurements are important
Different posts have different optimal sizes, and while I could spend an entire article on the optimum sizes for images, I’ll save some space and hit on the big three – Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Facebook crops posts from your business feed when displaying them on someone else’s news feed. Any image you post will be cropped into a 403×403 px image, with the center of the original image remaining the focus – you thus need to choose and design images that take advantage of that size. Twitter crops images attached to shared links to 60×60 px, and shared images are confined to 375×375 px. Finally, Google+ allots a 150×150 px box for images attached to shared links, and 497 x 373 px for shared images. You don’t text to be cut off, nor do you want these sites to crop out the main part of your image, so you’ll fire up some photo editing software and test how your chosen pictures look with the above constraints.
A picture is still worth a thousand words, but today it’s also worth a thousand pins on Pinterest or hearts on Instagram. Any social marketer worth their salt will spend some serious time choosing the perfect images for their campaign and consulting everyone on the choices beforehand on the options. Size, color, and legibility all matter, but so does the image’s relevance to, and impact on, your overall campaign. Make sure you have permission to use the photos you like, and then spend some time pairing them with the marketing posts you’d like to plug. The right image will boost your total reach, help ensure your campaign’s success, and if it’s particularly aesthetically pleasing, may even go viral.
Work with HOUSBM to Upgrade Your Social Media
If you do not have the opportunity to take original product images, be sure to get creative when using stock photos, use the correct social media image sizes, and remember your instagram posts aren’t the only place you should be posting visually appealing social media posts.
SEO Marketing For Businesses in Houston, TX
Your website is more than an extension of your business, it is often your first chance to make a lasting impression on potential customers. Our team helps you to optimize your website so that you do not fall behind your competitors. As the gap increases between the amount of effort your competition puts into their online marketing and how little work you put into your website, the more difficult it will become to engage with customers online.
The Houston Small Business Marketing team works hard to help your business stay relevant in this online-focused world by tracking the latest strategies in online marketing for businesses. If you are tired of giving away potential customers to your competition, we can help you. Reach out to us today to learn how to outrank your competitors online as a new business.
We dedicate ourselves to working closely with business owners to come up with a marketing plan that helps them succeed. We provide each customer with a free consultation for your website and social media to let you know how you can improve your ranking and reach your goals.
Houston Small Business Marketing
713-492-0025
1415 North Loop West #950
Houston, TX 77008
View our Website
View our Facebook Page
View our Google Listing
