Social Media Design: Create Posts That Engage Your Audience
This course will help you create posts that engage and inspire people to like and share your content. You’ll learn how to conduct audience research, use tools to design posts, and test your designs before you publish them.
Create Posts That Engage Your Audience
Knowing how to create high-performing posts on social media is one of the most important media tactics you can use. But it’s not just about writing a great headline. Creating a post that gets your audience excited about engaging with your brand—and doing the things you want them to do—requires more than just whip-smart copywriting skills. The secret to create posts that engage is all in the content itself, and knowing how to use social media tools, like visuals, video and emojis, to communicate your message more effectively. Here’s how you can create posts that engage your social media audience.
Upload the right image size for each platform
When you’re finalizing your posting schedule, make sure to size your images correctly for each social media platform. While Facebook, Instagram and Twitter all use the same image sizes, LinkedIn and Pinterest have their own—so it’s important that you update your image sizes when switching between different platforms. You can usually do this easily in the app or browser on your phone by dragging the corners of the photo to fit inside a square.
Alternatively, you can use Canva Pro to create one template for your post images and change the dimensions within seconds. That way, you don’t need to take any extra steps when it comes time to post!
Write clear, legible text that gets to the point
High-quality and relevant content is the whole point of sharing, so making your text as legible as possible will ensure that it reaches the people who want to see it. The best fonts are easy to read, and the best font sizes are easy to read. Anything between 12 and 14 points should be clear on a smartphone screen—that’s roughly equal to the size of this paragraph. Don’t feel like you have to write a paragraph. A single sentence is better than nothing at all.
It’s also important to include an image with your post, especially if you’re writing in English. People process visual information more efficiently than they process text—and even when they do read, they’re more likely to retain that information when it’s paired with an image.As far as what you write goes, simple language is best; you don’t want your audience getting hung up on deciphering what you wrote, so keep sentences short and avoid using big words where smaller ones would work just fine.
Create Posts that Engage: Add a Link
While you might be tempted to add a link to each and every post, not all of your posts will call for it. A link would be useful for posts that:
- Promote new blog content or products
- Encourage people to visit your website
- Drive traffic back to an online service that you may offer, such as a free trial or sample
Add a hashtag to your post
The hashtag is probably the most widely known social media symbol of all time. They’re everywhere and you know how to use them well.
This is great for you, because hashtags are a very important part of the design process for your social media posts! Hashtags are useful because they help categorize posts in an easy-to-find way.
For example, if you want to see everyone talking about “pizza” or “cute cats” or “the best tips for using hashtags,” simply search for it with its hashtag—like this: #pizza, #cutecats or #hashtagtips! This will bring up every post that has been shared with that hashtag.
Hashtags can also be used in your own posts—but make sure it’s relevant! For example, if you just posted a photo of your cat wearing a hat…you might consider tagging it with hashtags like #catsinhats, #adorablecats or even just tag the type of hat (like #baseballcap). That way other people who love cats in hats can find your photo and enjoy it!
Add a call-to-action (CTA) to your post
Add a CTA: Before your audience can take the next step, you need to tell them what that next step is. A call-to-action (CTA) is simply something that prompts the reader to act. Examples include “click here” or “read more.” Make sure your CTA is clear and easy for users to follow through with. Avoid using more than one CTA in a post, as studies show it’s not effective.
A/B test different messages and images
A/B testing is the process of testing different versions of a web page against each other to determine which performs better. A typical A/B test involves creating two versions of a single web page that are identical except for one variation, usually in the copy, image, or layout. The two versions are then shown to website visitors in random order and the results are compared at the end of the test.
If you’re not sure where to start with social media design but want to implement some fresh ideas into your strategy quickly, consider taking inspiration from your competitors’ posts. This isn’t just limited to competitors in your industry; look at any brands whose social media marketing efforts have inspired you lately and analyze what they did well. Then try implementing those same tactics into your own messages and see if they improve engagement with your audience as well! It also never hurts to see what works for other businesses, even if their target audience is completely different from yours!
Social Media Designs That Work
For many businesses, social media offers a low-cost way to reach a lot of people. This is especially true if you have little money to spend on marketing and advertising.
Social media can be an effective way to connect with lots of people in ways that are more personal than traditional advertising methods. Potential customers might begin following you on social media if they like your content and want to see more. This can happen not only because you’re providing information they enjoy but also because they find the interactions between you and other followers interesting and engaging.
In the process of building awareness, trust, and interest through social media posts, you may drive more traffic back to your website—which makes sense because posts often include links to relevant articles or blog posts hosted there. But even if followers don’t click on these links, every time someone shares your post with their own followers, it helps build brand awareness.
