Looking for social media design tips?
You’ve come to the right place.
Professional social media marketers never discount the value of engaging social media graphics. Knowing how to use them to your advantage can make a campaign catchy, well understood, and meet its objectives.
Engaging social media graphics capture attention, simplify your message, and make it easier for audiences to remember. That’s perhaps the reason why nearly 56.2% of marketers say visuals are very important for their digital marketing strategy.
Image via Venngage
To make sure you're creating social media graphics that tick all three boxes, here are some social media design tips worth a shot.
Here are some important social media design tips that you can leverage to boost your engagement in 2025.
Want people to remember your page and engage with it more often? Provide value. Value-adding visuals are among the top social media design tips that support and reinforce the message that you want to communicate.
The next time you’re about to post something on social media, ask yourself: how do the graphics I’m about to use add or detract from my intended message? Do they support what I’m trying to say, or do they make it harder for the audience to understand?
By carefully examining your graphics, you can boost the relevance of your social media posts and ensure that people understand what you’re trying to say better. Using such social media design tips will also make them feel your page and its content are more valuable.
Here are a few creative social media design tips through which you can provide value with relevant graphics:
Here’s how Daniel Wellington creates stunning visuals using a combination of images and custom designed graphics to engage their audience.
Image via Instagram
One of the other important social media design tips is to keep things simple. There's no need to use fancy fonts and complicated graphics on social media. Too much detail makes a graphic overwhelming and can cause confusion, which can obscure the main idea.
Think about social media items that had the most impact on you. You’ll realize that the most engaging graphics are beautiful and memorable in their simplicity. They are also powerful because they convey a message.
Using different shapes, sizes, and colors to emphasize your message is one of the effective social media tips to guide readers' focus.
However, one of the most important social media design tips to remember is to choose colors and a look and feel that represents your brand instead of just the current post.
When in doubt, stick to your company theme. This includes your chosen font styles and color schemes.
Here's how you can make sure that you don't go overboard with graphic design:
Here’s how Unbirthday does a great job of maintaining brand colors by adding a hint of pink and green in every Instagram post.
Image via Instagram
Use quality content using contrasting colors to grab your audience’s attention as they browse through their feeds. This list of social media design tips is incomplete without talking about colors.
If a thumbnail lacks contrast and colors, it will be lost and easily disregarded in a sea of other posts.
Use Contrast To Highlight CTA Buttons and Links
One of the other important social media design tips is to include CTA buttons within your graphics. These can also help increase engagement and drive traffic to your website. The smaller the area for the link or button, the louder you’ll want to make it since contrasting colors help ensure it stands out from the rest of the graphic.
However, be mindful when using contrasting colors.
For the best results, ensure that colors complement each other well. You can play light colors off dark ones or the other way around. Contrast makes important elements like text stand out by making them more readable and appealing.
One of the effective social media design tips is to maintain a 4.5:1 color contrast ratio in your graphic design for cohesiveness. The 4.5:1 color contrast ratio ensures readability and accessibility for individuals with visual impairments or age-related vision loss.
Feelings of anticipation, mystery, and curiosity are all key elements in designing social media graphics that can increase engagement. These are some of the most important social media design tips for brands that are looking to hook their audience to their posts.
When designing content to encourage clicks, one of the top social media design tips is to include visual cues that communicate what viewers can expect.
For example, if you're showing a food item as a part of an ad, use a picture with just enough detail to whet people's appetites.
This social media design tip can help you craft visuals that not only attract attention but also drive engagement effectively. You can also use video editing software or online video makers to help create short visual cues for your content.
Here are some ways you can incorporate visual cues into your graphics:
What do you want people to do after they've seen your graphics? Write a comment. Share it with their friends? Setting a goal for your design is one of the most important social media design tips for your brand.
The goal will help you determine what kind of graphics you should use, why, and how. It’ll also affect the copy of your graphic and the caption.
You could take a cue from the Spiritual Word and create something along similar lines. By asking viewers to vote, you can easily garner a lot of likes and comments on your posts.
Image via Instagram
However, if you want people to share content with their friends or subscribe by entering their emails, then you should create something more interactive and engaging.
When setting goals, you should typically stick to a few things like:
Depending on your goals, you'll have to get creative to ensure that the goals you set are met. A common suggestion from social media design tips is to tailor your content to match your objectives.
For instance, if you want to boost shares, then create a shareable post that provides value to your viewers, such as a branded meme.
One of the most common mistakes in social media graphics is the misuse of white space. When considering social media design tips, remember to use sufficient white space so readers can easily read your content and see your CTA buttons and links.
White space can help create contrast between various elements in a graphic. This, in turn, will guide the reader's attention to certain parts of your post, a principle emphasized in many social media design tips.
In addition, you must also decide on what your spacing should look like in your graphics. You can use a 1:1 ratio or 2:3. Sometimes, even a 3:4 ratio can work, depending on how cluttered your graphic design is.
You won't always have the time to create high-quality graphics. Running a business can be time-consuming, and there will be times when you’ll need to come up with a social media post right away.
If you run a small retail business, flash sales and time-sensitive promotions are great examples of opportunities where you’ll need to produce social media content quickly.
And the best part?
You can find templates for all kinds of social media content online.
These social media templates can help you quickly create engaging posts for your brand. However, according to social media design tips, they should follow your brand's overall look and be easy to customize with the information you want to include.
To make it easy for you, here are a few elements that should be interchangeable in your templates:
Arming yourself with templates can speed social media marketing because:
Nothing spells amateur like a distorted and incorrectly sized image.
For example, platforms like Facebook and X are more flexible. You can upload graphics in various image ratios.
One of the key social media design tips is to ensure your posts appear professional and visually appealing.
Platforms like Pinterest and Instagram have strict dimension requirements. Fortunately, you can customize image dimensions for different social media platforms using any graphic design software.
Additionally, there are good free resources available like the Attrock Image Resizer to quickly adjust image dimensions for various platforms without the need for advanced design software.
Before uploading anything, define your brand persona. Is your brand insightful, deep, and thought-provoking, or is it light, fun, and playful? What qualities do you want your brand to be associated with? This will help determine the look and feel you employ across your images.
Establishing this foundation determines the look and feel of your images. It’s one of the essential social media design tips that helps build brand awareness.
Once you’ve decided on how you’d like to be perceived, make sure that all the graphics, icons, logos, etc. line up with the qualities you defined. Another key social media design tip that you should pay keen attention to is consistency. Failing to maintain this consistency can result in the wrong public image.
Can you deviate from this?
Sure, once in a while.
But make sure that the bulk of your collateral projects a consistent visual identity that stays true to the look and feel you want to project.
You may also want to keep an eye on current trends and viral posts. When used with the right social media strategy, you can use them to boost visibility. If you use graphics that are trendy and have the potential to go viral, then your audience will take notice and share them.
Applying these social media design tips helps keep your visuals fresh, relevant, and engaging for your audience.
Augmented reality (AR) is a hot trend that many brands like Nomis Jewelry are capitalizing on to establish and drive awareness.
Image via Lenslist
While it's a good idea to keep up with the latest trends, you don't want to just copy what everyone else is doing. One of the biggest social media design tips here is to make sure you think of new and interesting visual content that your brand can be known for.
Some companies even go as far as creating one-of-a-kind posts that their audience can easily identify with. For example, Coca-Cola had a social media campaign that involved posting pictures of the soda shared in different scenarios.
The strategy was to make the brand more personal by adding names to the bottles. By utilizing this and other social media design tips, they were able to attract more viewers and create higher engagement with social media users who liked the idea of sharing photos of their own Coca-Cola and food/products.
This Share A Coke campaign was such a hit that businesses sat up and used it for their own promotions. Thousands of consumers also shared their own photos using #shareacoke.
Image via Coca-Cola
By putting their spin on things and encouraging audiences to create content on their own, they created a campaign that sparked the imagination of their consumer base.
The more unique and creative your content is, the more likely it is to be shared and spread by your audience. It’s not just a marketing strategy but also one of the effective social media design tips.
Plus, having highly unique content helps you stand out among competitors in the same niche.
Grouping graphic elements just for the sake of it can harm your design. For best results, it's essential to prioritize visual hierarchy.
But what exactly is visual hierarchy, and why is it one of the most crucial social media design tips?
Visual hierarchy is how elements are arranged in your design to show importance. Bigger or bolder things usually stand out first. Bright colors, contrast, and strategic placement can also help.
Why does this matter for social media?
Users will simply scroll past your design on platforms like Instagram and Facebook if it doesn't immediately capture their attention. That’s why prioritizing visual hierarchy is one of the most powerful social media design tips to keep your audience engaged.
Here are some effective social media design tips:
Think about the flow: Arrange text and visuals so they lead the eye naturally.
Q1. What are the most common improvements people need to make with social media graphics?
A. Some of the social media design tips you can use to improve your social media graphics are:
Infographics: When you plan on using text, you should create informative, shareable, and downloadable graphics.
Q2. How do you make awesome graphics for social media?
A. Here are some of the social media design tips through which you can create great graphics for social media:
Q3. How can I create engaging social media visuals?
A. When in doubt, one of the most important social media design tips is to stick to providing value. Take a look at your final image and think about how valuable it is. Is it something that would stop you as you look through your social media feed? By doing so, you’ll have a clear idea of what you need in your graphics.
Q4. What is the best way to design social media posts?
A. Stick to what you know and apply social media design tips to ensure your graphics and content are optimized for the platform you’re using. For example, what looks great on Facebook may not look good on Instagram. Make sure you account for these instances.
Furthermore, as social media design tips recommend, include your logo in your posts. This way, if your content gets shared without your permission, your brand is still advertised in some way.
Q5. What programs do I need for graphic design?
A. Depending on your skill level, you may want to look at popular platforms like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator.
For a more user-friendly option, use tools like PosterMyWall. It offers an extensive selection of pre-designed, social media-ready templates, simplifying the process.
Before you pick out a program, ensure you’re comfortable with it, and the learning curve isn’t too steep, particularly if you’re not a trained graphic designer. This is one of the social media design tips that cannot be overstated.
Q6. How important are social media content designs?
A. Using the right kind of graphics is one of the best ways to drive engagement and conversions. Nevertheless, it isn’t the only reason why you should invest in good graphics.
When you post a custom graphic on any platform based on social media design tips, it helps drive brand recognition. Anyone who sees your graphic will know that it’s associated with your brand, which, in turn, could help advertise your business for free.
Q7. How do you add graphics to HTML?
A. To add graphics to your HTML page, you need to indicate the image you’re inserting with the IMG tag. The IMG tag is closely followed by the location and the name of your graphic.
If you’re new to HTML and web development, social media design tips suggest trying a drag-and-drop web editor like Adobe Dreamweaver. Otherwise, hire a developer to make things easier for you.
Q8. How many social media templates should you have?
A. Around 4 templates for your social media platforms should be enough to see you through emergency posts that need to be posted quickly. One of the effective social media design tips is to ensure your templates are easy enough to edit so that you can publish them speedily.
When you have time, create more for good measure.
Creating engaging social media graphics shouldn’t be too difficult. There are a ton of social media design tips you can implement to make sure your social media campaigns are as successful as possible.
From creating templates to sticking to your brand’s goals, you should do it all to ensure that your graphics are top-notch.
To further enhance your social media strategy and boost engagement on Instagram, check out our Instagram Marketing Service and take your brand’s presence to the next level.
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