How To Create A Social Media Aesthetic That Attracts New Customers And Satisfies Current Ones
Finally, companies are seeing social media as a necessity of their marketing strategy. Today, in 2020, we see over 90% of all businesses utilizing social media with each of them on an average of four different platforms. More and more consumers want to see consistency from brands they purchase from. However, wanting something and actually doing something are two different things. Are you putting your words into practice?
Social media is tricky. Hard even. It takes time, dedication, patience, and a purposeful approach to everything. Platforms are not designed for dumping low quality, random content. Everything you do as a business needs to be part of a strategy. In this article, we will go over tips and practical suggestions to transform your social media.
Before we head into figuring out how to create a social media aesthetic, you should know the benefits of doing so. Here are some basic reasons why this should be a priority for your brand.
1. Flexibility with social media managers
You can utilize multiple people that will all have the same idea of what to post, how to post it, and the language to use when posting. A lot of times businesses will have multiple people running their social media with each of them having their own style or idea of how the brand should look. This is detrimental to cohesion and brand identity.
2. Brand Positioning
It is impossible to portray your brand in the way you want if you do not have a shared vision, goal, and strategy. It is even more impossible to strategically differentiate yourself from competitors. Most brands can iterate why they are different and special from competitors, but they don’t portray it across social media. Social media is your one chance to interact with your consumers and tell them exactly who you are in multiple ways. These ways include your language but also the theme of your page, colors, tones, and fonts.
Okay, let’s get into the steps.
1. Figure out your brand (and your competitors’ brands).
Social media should reflect your company as a whole, including your tone, style, and colors. Is your brand sloppy, unorganized, colorless, and random? Probably not. However, the way you are portraying yourself on social media could be reflecting this. Figure out your target audience, purpose, and goals. Then, factor all of those into your brand kit.
One of our clients, Craftmade Aprons, is an amazing company that designs and sells high quality, durable, and affordable aprons. They are for the restaurant community, not necessarily the home cook (although many cooking enthusiasts purchase their aprons as well). Part of their mission is to provide community outreach for industry members suffering with mental and physical impairments from the cooking sphere. Craftmade Aprons focuses on family, community, and unity. These characteristics are crucial because they will help determine colors, tonality, and theme of the brand’s social media.
Another helpful tip would be to brainstorm with your team. Sit down with everyone and have them write down the three words they would use to describe your business. We recently did this with a client we are building a new website for, Hustle and Heart Salon. They’ve never had a website before and only rely on social media and word-of-mouth marketing. We asked the owner to choose three words for us to reference while building the new site that correlate with her business model. She said, “bright, friendly, and sustainable.” Having just three words can help transform your online presence because you will have a clear mission to go from.
2. Build out a “Social-Media Kit”
This is where you start to figure out the colors, tonality, fonts, themes, and language of your social media. This should also be congruent with your website and previous branding projects to add consistency and brand recognition. A great place to start for inspiration would be Pinterest. On Pinterest, you can create your own custom board off of inspirations from other brands and individuals and start constructing your dream look.
Let’s go back to our example of Craftmade Aprons. During our consultation process, we went through several different tones, moods, and inspirations and experimented with unique options. From that, we created a board as part of our branding kit that we frequently reference. This can also be of assistance when choosing fonts for your brand.
Before we took them onto our team, Craftmade Aprons deployed a very light, airy, and simple tone on their social media. Why? Well because everyone was doing it, right? It wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t what their brand truly stood for. Our team strategized that Craftmade would look better with a dark, rustic, urban, “rough around the edges” feel. This was not a fluttery and light brand. It was for the hard workers, the restaurant owners and members who slave away every day, and it should be treated as such.
Since switching Craftmade’s tone just a couple months ago, we have seen an increase in followers, engagement, and actual comments from customers saying they love the new look. In order for us to really see this, though, we had to look at other apron brands on the market. Sometimes looking at other businesses can help you see your own brand in a new light and distinguish yourself. Many apron brands in the market were aiming for a bright and airy, almost minimalist style. We knew that Craftmade was entirely different than these competitors, so we designed our social media to reflect this change.
3. Templates
Now, a lot of people struggle with creating their own “custom” social media kit. If that is you, there are a million templates and already built social media kits. You can find these on Canva and a ton of different apps. If you are more advanced, you can create your own using photoshop. These templates have sizing details for different platforms and allow quick and easy import and export settings to get your content in and out faster than doing it on your own.
Here are some examples.
Creative Market Social Media Bundle
4. Content
Content is vital, but it is also expensive. In an ideal world, you would get professional content for everything you post across your different platforms. However, you may not have a budget for that. We are going to consider different scenarios.
If you do have money for content, reach out to your in-house photographer or a photographer you typically work with. Explain your updated brand guide to them. Maybe you figured out you want to be light, airy, and clean instead of using warm tones with high contrast. Remember, you would have decided this after considering the unique elements of your brand. Explain how you would like new content to match that.
Let’s say now that you don’t have a budget for an in-house photographer or even to outsource to one. That is totally fine. Your brand may also require fast turnaround times for products with absolutely no time for photographers to come in. That is also totally fine. Still, you will need to attain that “look” that you determined in the previous steps. If you read our creating content on a budget article, you can see some practical and easy ways to capture content by yourself.
Final Thoughts:
Consumer minds are tricky. Oftentimes, a purchase decision is made from an unconscious decision. Aesthetics can be extremely important. They can make a consumer trust, interact, and act on purchase decisions. Plus, they add a level of professionalism and maturity to your brand. If all of this seems like a bit much and you want to focus on what you do best in your organization, reach out to us through our contact form. We live and breathe social media and would love to help, even if it’s just to offer more advice.
