Graphics tell stories, convey feelings, create awareness and capture moments. Some, though, do just the opposite. Photography, graphic design and imagery is an enormous part of the social media manager’s life. Whether it’s telling your story, communicating emotion or creating brand awareness, everyone can appreciate effective design.

1. Tell Your Story

As designers or designers in training, we convey messages, and with that we bear a responsibility. If the story is to be heard it must have the basics of good design. We must first present a legible product. Text overlay is a huge trend in social media marketing because it gives you precious extra characters to give your message a final kick. However, that doesn’t mean you need a size 100 cursive font covering your image. Even Facebook and Instagram ads don’t allow you to cover more than 20% of the image with text.  Always choose strong images first and build off of them for your campaign.

2. Engage Your Audience

Marketers preach that content is king – and they’re right. But that doesn’t mean creating content means paragraphs text. Infographics capture visual learners who otherwise wouldn’t consume your message. Creating images with statistics will challenge you as a marketer to boil your post down to the critical take-aways. Blogs that incorporate video, podcasts should also add in images with statistics. Encourage those who may choose to read or be short on time to receive your message.

3. Strengthen Your Social Community

You’ll get more engagement with your content if you make your audience believe that they can do something. Add value to your audience’s experience with your brand by empowering them rather than pitching your product. Imagery is the perfect way to explain how to use your service more efficiently or the best way to prepare for your event.

To keep your following on social platforms you must show them, not tell them why.

For tools, you can use to create effective and creative graphics, check out our list of social media management tools