What to Consider When Selecting an Image for Social Media
One of the best ways to build a following and get more shares on social media is to incorporate images into your strategy, but not just any image will do. That might’ve worked in the very beginning of media integration on social, but not anymore. Nowadays, you need to put in some real effort to ensure your images get noticed and shared.
Taking the latest image trends into account, what follows are some tried and true tips that will help you select and optimise the best images for social media that will engage your followers and most certainly encourage more shares.
Beyond the obvious things that make an image high-quality, you need to think about the subject matter of the photos you use. That means, not just using any old high-resolution stock image. It means finding something that speaks to your brand and also leaves an impression on your target audience.
Here are some things you should consider.
Using images that say something
That is, pick photos that have a definite point of view and can offer something recognisable. Ideally, any image you select will be identifiable, as relating to your brand.
Selecting photos in motion
Static images are acceptable sometimes, especially as backgrounds. But when you’re sharing images to social media to complement your content, the subject should be doing something. Whether that’s physical movement by people or implied movement of inanimate objects, doesn’t matter. What does is that the photo shows something happening. It’s a part of a larger story.
Showing inspirational quotes
Quote photos are still a big hit on social media and can be adopted by just about any industry. Use them to offer some food for thought to your audience.
Offering information
Sometimes, the best images can act to directly back up your text. Charts, graphics, infographics and even screenshots work to illustrate whatever points you’re trying to make and help to break up the visual monotony of a wall of text.
Using shareable colours
Psychology plays a major role in what images people share on social media and which ones people tend to just gloss over.
Once you find an image that has the content you want, next you need to think about the primary colours it contains. Photos with red, pink or purple in them are shared much more often than those that contain green, blue, black or yellow.
Optimal social media image sizes
Once you find the image that you feel is perfect for your social content, you need to make sure that the size of the image is optimised for each service. This means resizing it so it fits within the specifications of each social service. Yes, you’ll likely need to create multiple versions of the same image.
Quick tip
If you’re not comfortable using Photoshop or any other professional photo-editing software, don’t worry, there’s a multitude of free image resizing tools and apps available.
Here’s a quick rundown of the optimal image sizes for each of the most popular social services.
Of course, most image sizes will work but each service will either skew or crop the images to make them fit. Your images could end up looking terrible. Nobody wants that.
You should also consider how you save your image files. Your social images can be indexed by Google, so it’s imperative that you use file names that are descriptive and SEO-optimised. You should use a hyphen or underscore in between the words in a file name.
Conclusion
Above all else, you need to think about what images will best resonate with your audience. And that’s kind of an art. But if you master it and keep the above tips in mind you’ll be golden.
SOURCE: Envato
