
7 Tips To Improve Your Social Media Images
03 March 2018
We live in a “Pinstagram” world, where everyday life looks dull compared to the beautiful images that fill up our social media feeds. From professional photographs on Pinterest to carefully edited Instagram shots, we’ve got a veritable art gallery on our screens every time we log on. With so much perfection in our feeds, users won’t give a second glance to sub-par social media images, which means yours have to look their best. To help you get noticed, here are 7 tips to improve your business’s social media images.
1. Quality Photography
Gone are the days where you could slap together a social post that uses a dimly lit photo taken with a shaky hand. This is particularly true for product images. Your post has a split second to grab somebody’s attention, and if your product looks unappealing in a photo, then the response to that image will be the same. Invest in lighting, a good camera, nice props, and photo editing tools to get the job done right. Of course you can still put up candid team photos on your social posts, but even then the lighting and focus needs to be well done, and considerations of your background and how people are arranged should also be a factor. Planning the photograph should be just as important as taking it.

2. Sourcing stock photos
3. Typography and illustration
Photography isn’t the only option for social media images, illustrations and typography can also be used to create stunning posts. B2B organizations often struggle to add a visual element to their messaging and these are a great workaround. Consider adding fun facts, statistics, and infographics into your social images. They will add a pop of color and are more likely to grab your followers’ attention than text alone. Keep a consistent style and post on a regular schedule, and before you know it your feeds will be filled with images that get you great results.

4. Layout
Creativity and the best intentions will only get you so far, and if you don’t have a designer on staff then actually creating your social media images can be a problem. Luckily, there are tools out there that can help. Canva, Snappa, and DesignBold all have multi-tiered plans (including free options), and provide templates where you can quickly swap out text and images to create a professionally-designed image in minutes. They are great for teams that don’t have strong design skills or simply don’t have the time to create designs from scratch.
5. Size your images
6. Keep a consistent style

7. Consider the share
A lot of the content we post on social media is shared from a website, and businesses need to be prepared for that. This means content (like a blog post) needs to have an image that will look good in a social media preview. This is often overlooked but can have a major impact on whether or not people click a link that is shared on social media. Images can be specifically assigned to social media previews in the metadata of a page (developers can do this for you or those of you using WordPress can use plugins like Yoast. If you want to get really serious about how your website content looks when it’s shared on social media, then take a look at Buzzfeed, whose remit is to create content that goes viral. Buzzfeed knows what types of content get shared on different social media, so they make sure to “consider the share” when creating their content. Click into any of their recipe articles and you’ll always find a massive image at the top, often including the title of the article and multiple images from it. That’s not for the benefit of the reader, it’s for the benefit of the share. Those large images take up much more real estate on sites like Pinterest where users love to share links about food.
Social media audiences can be fickle and the expectation for beautiful images has never been greater. By following these seven tips, you’ll improve the look of your social media posts and create content that people will want to follow and engage with.

Veronica has worked in digital marketing for 7 years and has held positions in digital agencies in the US and Great Britain. She has an MA in Globalization & Communication and spent 3 years in the Peace Corps.