This article, "4 Ways Visual Design Can Improve Your Social Media Marketing" describes the importance of your brand having a visual presence online and how successful brands go about doing that. Having a strong visual presence is important because it  "helps you connect with your community and effectively convey your brand's personality". It makes consumers remember your brand. One way companies can do this is by setting a color palette. Most brands already have a palette associated with their brand, whether it is their logo color or product packaging color most consumers already associate your brand with a color, so it is important to make that connection and brand recognition with your viewers online. An example the article used was Virgin Mobile, all of their social media posts are dark, bold reds. The same color that is used in their print, television, and any other advertising. The next thing brands can do is determine their brands fonts. Similar to the color palette, your brands font helps your viewers make that brand association and they both should correctly reflect your brands personality. The next is to use photo filters. This can also help add to your brand's personality, but it is important to use a consistent filter on all of your photos. Whether your are going for a dark, bold, black white vignette like the fashion retailer Zara, or just the opposite a bright, whimsical, sunny contrast like Tigerlily, your choices here are a reflection of your brand. Finally, it is important for companies to design consistent templates. Once you have kept all of the other elements in mind is important to consistently keep these posts the same. A great example of this is Oreo, you can see that they use the same design for different social media posts, all while using the same color palette and font. Combining all four of these elements is the best way to make a successful, visual, social media site.

This article goes over the four different ways that a company can use photos to promote the company on social media. The four points are: set your color palette, determine brand's fonts, use photo filters, and consistent design templates. 

It's important for a company to determine a specific color palette that will allow consumers to recognize them from certain colors. The colors that they choose should be consistent with the atmosphere of the brand. For example, Google has primary colors, that are bold, and stand out. 

Another way for consumers to recognize a brand is from their font choice. They should be sure to use a font that relates to their brand image, and it would benefit them if they steer away from a font similar to their competitors. 

Photo filters allow the company to change the feel of the pictures they post. If they want all of their photos to have the same photo filter, they can be consistent with the message they're trying to get across to the their customers. For example, a company with a more relaxed feel, they could use a filter that's soft, and vintage. 

Finally, a design template for the pictures they post should be consistent. For example, Oreo did a campaign where they posted for 100 days. Each day they had posted a simple picture of an Oreo with a design and a post, making it recognizable to their customers. 

When strolling through their feed, customers are more likely to stop and recognize a company's post when it's visually consistent with their other posts. 

4 Ways Visual Design Can Improve Your Social Media Marketing

This week I read an article by Zach Kitschke, who discussed the importance of visuals while promoting your social media marketing.   I felt this article was important especially for our project to promote the College of Business.   Kitschke breaks down the key aspects into four easy steps to implement this into your own content.  The first thing a company needs to do is determine their color palette.   For example everyone knows that McDonalds has the golden arches on a red background.  This allows customers to recognize your brand.   If a company does not have a color scheme, it is important to think about the company’s personality when picking the colors.  Next, it is important to determine the font your brand uses.  Not only should a company pick a font that reflects them well but they should also be consistent with this font throughout their content they share with the public.   Kitschke then discusses adding a filter to the photos a company incorporates in their social media content.  Lastly, it is important to be consistent with your templates.  So each and every time a company uses their fonts, filters, and colors they should be used together to promote the company’s image in a clearer manner.  Kitschke touched on four key topics for company’s to remember, and steps as simple as choosing a color scheme to represent the personality of a company is something that some might not think of before reading his article.  For example, I never thought to that choosing a filter that fits best with your current design elements is something I would not have thought of prior to this.  

This is how we do it!

I agree the possibilities are endless. I like the thought of being able to  utilize this in healthcare to have a person explore their own body with data supplied from analysis, and to bring statistics, formerly interpreted by doctors only, to make visual sense to the patient. Now that's a game changer!

If you haven't seen memes like the "Grumpy Cat" shown above, you simply must be a hermit.  Memes are great ways to depict stories and add a little sarcastic humor to advertising.  Any advertising with creative content (according to this article) will generate 94% more views than those without.  So why not utilize them for your business?

"That is why more than 90% of marketers are using content marketing, but only 42% rate their content marketing efforts as effective, according to a recent study." -  Visual is what is changing this bottom line.  That is the majority of content my 18, 16 and 13 year olds engage in - visual and video.  

Need a little help creating visual content?

Hubspot is a popular marketing software platform that helps various companies with their marketing plans. This article from the hubspot blog gives a great guide to visual content creation.

Pictures will always speak more than words.

How to use kinesthetic activities and technology to engage students in learning.