The Importance of Graphic Design in Social Media: 6 Key Reasons

You know social media is important, but do you know why and how graphic design can help you utilize these channels best? Learn about it here.

My grandma has Instagram. Yes, she sends five different reactions to each of my stories, but even if she doesn’t understand the ins and outs of fit, even she sees ads on social media these days.

It’s a well-known statistic that half of the world’s population is using at least one social media channel, and spends an average of 2.5 hours on social media every day. Over 70% of marketers consider it an effective marketing tool, and over half of social media users browse products on these channels.

To help make your next campaign a success, we’ll look at some notable examples that highlight the importance of graphic design in social media marketing.

It helps you build a strong brand

Having great products or services or a great website design is very important in building a strong brand. But it’s highly unlikely that people will visit your website every day, even if they like your company. If they follow you on social media, however, you can provide them with regular updates so that they maintain an interest in your business and you can build brand awareness.

With a skilled designer, it’s not too difficult to create nice-looking visual content for social media (you can even do it yourself with templates or DIY software like Canva). But for social media to be on brand, you’ll need designers to create consistent graphics that are in line with your brand identity: the look, values and messaging that you’ve previously defined or settled on.

A design strategy can provide art direction for your social media pages and help potential customers to remember your brand. If you take a look at some of our Instagram posts before our rebranding this winter, you’ll see that although the graphic design is of high quality, it doesn’t really help potential clients to form a mental image of our brand.

Since the new look of ManyPixels, you’ll see our Instagram page looks much more coherent and professional, and our brand colors create a signature look on different types of posts.

It helps you stand out

With so much time spent on social media exposed to a flood of content, our attention span is getting shorter by the day. So one of the most important roles design has in your social media marketing strategy is getting people to stop and actually notice what you’re advertising.

In a world where every Instagram mom uses #foodporn for a humble brag on her cooking skills, it can be pretty damn hard to impress people with photos of foods and drinks. Chambord is a well-known producer of the famous raspberry liquor, and you’d probably expect drinks made with it to be pretty “instagrammable” on their own. But the company also uses the power of great graphic design to create these eye-catching posts that stand out from the usual drink photos we’re all so used to seeing on our feeds.

It shows professionalism

After Google, YouTube is most commonly used as a search engine. Same as with SEO optimization and Google, having a great YouTube thumbnail can help boost clicks and get people to actually watch your video content (that requires so much effort and work to create!).

If you have a professional channel, a unified look of your thumbnails and cover art shows that this isn’t just a side project, but rather a valuable free resource for your clients. Which in turn, builds trust and creates a stronger brand image.

If you use YouTube to promote your products, and especially to create video tutorials for your customers, you need to make sure the thumbnails have a professional design. This suggests that the quality of your video content is high, and shows you prioritize helping your customers, over just selling something to them.

Hubspot is a great one to learn from. They combine a unified professional look, with a bit of fun and edge, perfectly fitting for their audience of (mostly) younger digital natives.

It helps you connect with your target audience

Social media platforms are powerful marketing channels thanks to extensive targeting options that allow you to present ads to people that are more likely to be interested in making a purchase (based on demographics, location and preferences).

So while you can make sure that the right target audience sees your ads, you need professional graphic design to ensure that they actually interact with your ads. Design can greatly improve your storytelling, and help bring the key information, data or messages to your customers in a fun, accessible way.

Dollar Shave club gained internet fame with their wonderfully funny YouTube ad, but beyond that, they’ve mastered the art of verbal and visual communication. Their key value proposition is that self care for men doesn’t have to be overpriced or complicated — but you can still embrace it.

If you take a look at their Facebook page, you’ll notice that the graphics have a toned-down style that is fitting to the brand values, enriched by funny and clever copy. Instead of just posting something that looks good, think about how you can use social media platforms to engage and connect with your audience. Ask them questions, provide them with “taggable” content that they will love to share with friends.

It can increase profit

Using social media to promote your business means reaching people that are actually interested in your business. Once you have them as followers, it’s much easier to pitch a sale than using, for example, cold calls and selling to people that might have no interest in your offer.

Graphic design can help you make more sales in a number of ways. For example, you can spruce up product photos so that they’re more attention grabbing and stand out. Or, you can build a branded online store on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, and sell directly over social media. This means a shorter sales cycle and showing your customers that your business is relevant embracing new technologies.

Where to get great social media graphics

Now that you know why a Canva template just wont help you build brand recognition and a long lasting connection with your audience, you might wonder where you can get this type of graphic design work (simple and affordable, of course).

Well, at ManyPixels we design graphics for thousands of clients every day, so feel free to look at our vast portfolio!