[AD] 5 ways to create beautiful and inspiring social media content
I’m a freelance social media manager and lifestyle blogger, and being able to create beautiful social media content primarily for Instagram and Pinterest is key for both myself and my clients.
There are many advantages to having beautiful content and imagery. It makes your business or your personal brand look good, which is turn helps to sell. Plus it also encourages people to engage with it, save it and re-pin it. For both my own work and my client’s work, my created content needs to be inspiring, engaging and ultimately keeps my audience coming back for more.
So here’s how I do it, here are 5 ways that I create beautiful social media content.
Take beautiful images
This is where you need an eye for design and style, and being able to take good photos. For this blog and my Instagram account I am forever taking pics of my own home, and when I do this I take a lot of pictures at the same time, and I do this on my iPhone XR, there is no flashy camera involved.
You’ll need the area to be tidy, clean and the light needs to be right. It’s harder to do during this time of year, and when the days are shorter. Make sure that your picture fills the social media post dimension, for Instagram that’s square (1000 x 1000 pixels) and for Pinterest it’s portrait (900 x 600). Ensure that your subject fills the space, and that there are no large empty areas when the image is added to the social media post. The more pictures you take, the more posts you create, mean that you will start to learn what works, what doesn’t work, and what needs to be placed where to fill a shot.
Source your own imagery
Another option is sourcing your own imagery and social media templates. There are many places where you can do this including free stock image libraries. Or by using Design Bundles who have a beautiful range of templates, images, illustrations and logos that are available for you to create or add to your social media posts. Perfect for any business from cat lovers to vets where you can download cat svg images. Or if you’re creating assets featuring leaves and autumnal foliage you can download leaf svg assets. All are beautiful, and it’s a brilliant way to create unique content for your business.
Create content for your audience
Once you’ve worked out whether you’ll be using your own imagery or sourced content, you should make sure that your images and graphics are tailored and right for your Instagram (or Pinterest) audience.
To do this think about who your audience is, their location, their age, and ultimately the people you want your business to be talking to. You can check your Instagram insights to see your audience profile, so keep their demographics in mind when creating your posts along with your target customers.
Once your post is created, and your copy written, take a second look at it in the mind of your ideal customer, and ask yourself – Would this post appeal to them, and does it give them a reason to engage with the post (and your business).
Be consistent
There are two parts of being consistent. The first is posting regularly and showing up. The second is creating content that has a consistent look and feel so that your audience at first glance know that it’s a post from your business.
Think about your posting schedule. For Instagram this should ideally be a minimum of 3 grid posts a week, and Instagram stories every single day. For Pinterest you should be aiming for 10 pins a day. By sticking to that schedule you should start to see your social media engagement pick up.
For Instagram you can create consistency and a cohesive grid by taking lots of pictures at the same time that you can use at different times throughout the weeks or months ahead whilst talking about different topics, helping to tie your grid together. If you’re using sourced content download and create your assets at the same time.
My one tip is to avoid doing this in a stop start fashion, and instead create a group of posts at the same time, and schedule, this way you can see how your future content will look on your Instagram grid.
Are you happy with it?
My final point before you push anything live is to make sure that you’re happy with it. Your social media posts are the online shop window for your personal brand or business, remember that it could be the first point of communication that a potential customer sees.
So make sure that you’re happy with it, does it shout your business to your ideal target customer, does it encourage them to like, comment, share or re-pin, and lastly does it inspire.
Those are my 5 tips for creating beautiful and inspiring social media content, I hope that you found this useful, and I would love to hear yours?
Claire x
Disclaimer – This is a collaborative post