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6 Tips for Creating Quick SocialMedia ImagesBy Jade Furubayashi – April 3, 2015

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Visuals drive engagement on social. This isn’t news to anyone. According to our Q4 2014Twitter study, photos made up 57% of all engagement.

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However, even if you’re fortunate enough to have a marketing designer at your company, youknow that these people are always swamped (just ask our designer, Matt Knorr). We work insocial media. We didn’t get design degrees and we don’t have enough time to learn how touse Photoshop. Luckily, companies have flocked to solve this problem (my favorite beingCanva). So now, you don’t necessarily need to be a Photoshop wiz or have an eye for design.I can’t even draw a straight line, but I can whip up an effective social image by just sticking toa few best practices.

1. Choose Your Colors Carefully

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One of my favorite sessions at SXSW was a behavioral science lecture that explored thesignals that ellicit reactions from most internet users. A major portion was dedicated to theapplication of certain colors in the buying / reading / sharing process. For example, bluesignals trust, red encourages action, yellow activates excitement, etc. This psychology ofcolor isn’t necessarily something that has to be followed to the T over-and-over, but it’s justsomething to keep in mind before you choose neon pink as the background for your socialimage. You can learn more about color psychology on social here.

2. Utilize LogosSomething we learned early on here at Simply Measured through trial and error is that thepresence of a recognizable logo helps images perform better in terms of engagement. If you

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have the opportunity, include a logo in your image and watch your engagement skyrocket.

3. Keep it Consistent

Make sure the text on your image and the text in your Tweet copy are similar (if notidentical). Keeping it consistent is crucial, especially since people choose whether to clickthrough or not based on the text on an image. You want to make sure they know whatthey’re getting into by clicking to avoid high bounce rates.

4. Connect the Image to the Story

Similar to keeping the copy consistent, you also want to make sure that you include arelevant graphic. Think of your image as a story, you want to make sure that all the elementsare in line with the message you’re trying to convey. For example, if I’m talking about socialmedia analysis, there would be no reason for me to include a graphic of a magnifying glass.However, when we’re talking about finding the top social media jobs for March, it’s moreapplicable.

”[NEW] Launches – What This Means for Marketers:

#Twitter #Periscope

http://t.co/hBHrBM3XNT pic.twitter.com/1M2ccaCqLZ

— Simply Measured (@simplymeasured) March 26, 2015

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5. Minimal Text

The less text, the better. This is one I learned from our designer, Matt Knorr. Don’t bombardyour clean and simple image with paragraphs of text. A picture is worth a thousand wordsafter all!

6. Sizing

Nothing looks worse than a Facebook size photo on Twitter. Each network has theirrespective image sizes and it’s crucial to adhere to them (yes, it is annoying but necessary).You can either create your own template or use a program like Canva, who serves you auto-sized templates for each network.

Now you’re set! Don’t push out that new blog post without an image. Sign up for Canva and

”

”

The Top of March: #SocialMedia #Jobs http://t.co/6f1TAjVPlF

pic.twitter.com/nUezojurIn

— Simply Measured (@simplymeasured) March 29, 2015

[NEW] 12 Tips to Track a Hashtag Campaign Effectively:

http://t.co/0Avs0EwKJ2 #smm

#socialmedia pic.twitter.com/Ugkp2sqy3U

— Simply Measured (@simplymeasured) April 1, 2015

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Jade FurubayashiMy name's Jade and I'm a social media addict from Seattle, WA. I'm the CommunityManager at Simply Measured, so my job is basically to talk to you fine peopleeveryday- which is awesome. Aside from that, my favorite things are dogs, tacosand Beyoncé.

follow these tips to quickly create engaging social media images.

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• Reply •

Ross Cranwell • 3 days ago

I've been using WordSwag [app] as a quick way to add cool text to images - if you don't have time to play with Canvaon your desktopFor quick quotes, I've used tryspruce, but I know that Buffer also has this functionality now, too

△ ▽

• Reply •

Jade • 3 days agoMod > Ross Cranwell

Hey Ross,

Those are all great options too. Thanks for the tips! 1△ ▽

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