As a small business owner, you’ll know that it can be tough to stand out on social media.
It seems like there are a million and one startups offering similar products or services to your own, and many have endless hours to spend on ramping up their social media strategy.
To give yourself an edge, you should consider the benefits of using custom graphics.
Below, we have put together some of the reasons why…
More professional than stock images
Perhaps the most obvious benefit of using custom graphics on social media is that they look more professional than stock images.
Although websites like Unsplash and Pexels offer some great royalty-free images, the truth is that most of them have been overused, and it’s easy for your content to get lost in the crowd if you’re the 1,000th brand to use the same image.
And though we always recommend a mix of stock images and photography from your own business, some firms don’t have the means to spend hundreds on a photographer or work in an industry with many photo opportunities. Custom graphics are the perfect middle ground.
Adding your branding makes posts more attractive and professional-looking.
Can be reused elsewhere
Though paying for graphic design or social media management may indeed be more expensive than running your own social media campaigns, custom graphics can be reused as many times as you’d like and adapted for different uses.
Create an attractive graphic for your Twitter page, for example, and you can repurpose it on Facebook and Instagram, use it as the featured image for your blog post, and even use it as a banner on your homepage.
We encourage clients to reuse and recycle existing content every month or so. If you spent an hour creating a graphic for social media, then it makes sense to repeat it every so often so as many people see your posts as possible and you get the highest return on investment.
One of our clients reuses our graphics on their website.
Creates eye-catching content
Another benefit to using custom graphics over standard images and text-based posts is that more people are likely to see your posts.
Tweets with images are 34% more likely to get retweeted than tweets with no images, and it’s a similar story on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Share custom graphics as well as videos, images, text-based posts, polls, and links to your blog and website and you’ll build an engaging content mix that followers will want to like and share. If you’re too heavily reliant on one of these formats, users are unlikely to stick around.
Increases brand awareness
Finally, custom graphics increase brand awareness.
You can’t shove your products and services down followers’ throats every day, but you can subtly promote your brand and encourage customers to think of you when they’re next in the market for something you sell.
At 99social, for example, we’re big on pink, and make sure all of our graphics incorporate our logo, signature pink, and fonts.
Over time, this has helped us to create an attractive social media identity that our customers have come to expect. You can do the same; choose a colour and font, and create consistent graphics that demonstrate the value of your brand.
Our Instagram page has a clear and consistent theme that hammers home our pink branding.
Need help creating graphics for your social channels? Depend on our affordable social media management services, starting from just £99 per month, which include attractive custom graphics as standard.