What’s the status of your social media page design? Whether you’re looking at Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or any of your other accounts, remember that your profile picture, cover image and background images are opportunities to communicate your brand. Luckily, designers can help you put your best face forward.
Before you launch a contest for some eye-catching visuals, here are 9 tips for choosing the perfect social media page design.
1. Showcase your branding, services and community
First and foremost, your social media page designs should be consistent with your company’s branding, demonstrate your products or services and include a strong call to action (if the design is for a promotion or campaign). It’s always good to consistently update the imagery to keep things fresh and interesting.
2. Use the right image size
Your images will display at different sizes on different devices, but here’s a list of file dimensions that will provide the best image quality across multiple devices.
Facebook: 1702 x 630 cover photo, 180 x 180 profile picture
Google+: 2120 x 1192 cover photo, 800 X 800 profile picture
YouTube: 2560 X 1440 cover photo (template link here), 800 X 800 channel icon
Twitter: 1252 x 626 cover photo, 73 x 73 profile picture, 1600 × 1200 background image
Linkedin: 646 x 220 banner image, 100 x 60 company profile picture
Make sure your designer sends you either a PNG or a JPEG file of the finished design.
3. Keep your designs visually consistent
To establish a strong brand identity through social media, make sure that all your designs are visually cohesive across platforms.
5. Devote more space to images than to text
Image-based content is proven to generate more re-tweets, Facebook shares and other types of engagement than text alone. Facebook actually used to have a rule that cover photos could not have more than 20% text. Even though the rule is no longer enforced, it’s not a bad number to keep in mind when designing your cover/banner image. Keep the content image-based.
6. Pay attention to placement
In terms of composition, don’t let a profile picture overlapping the cover image hide any valuable content that you want your audience to see. For easy viewing of a Facebook page, make the main content of your cover/banner image more oriented to the right side of the image than the left. For a more creative approach, try making the profile picture and the cover image purposefully interact with each other.
Google+ crops profile pictures into a circle, so make sure that you leave enough white space so that nothing gets cut off.
7. Make sure your designs abide by the rules
Most social media guidelines forbid the use of nudity, celebrities, obscene or threatening images, profanity and copyrighted images in both the profile picture and cover image. Each site enforces these rules differently, but if your design violates them, you risk your account being suspended or terminated.
8. Keep promo designs simple
For a featured promotional campaign on your social media page, use compelling imagery, short copy and a simple call to action.
9. Make it visually engaging
Here’s the bottom line: the purpose of a social media page is to engage with your audience and get them to share your content, which includes the cover/banner image. Social media pages that have appealing content and visuals are much more likely to be shared and increase engagement. So definitely feel free to choose more out-of the-box designs, just as long as the visuals are consistent with your company’s branding.
Want a perfect media page design but need professional help? Then Rimidesigns will be more than glad to help you. Simply email us at info@rimidesigns.com.au & tell us what you’re looking for & we will take care of the rest.
