The social media market is constantly changing and developing and audiences are in a constant need for new content on social media. We are all on a mission to keep the audience engaged and interacting with our brand. We should all ask our selves the question:
How can we affect engagement rates on our social media content?
I would like to share my experience as a graphic designer in a social media agency and how I have learned to use the power of the creative artwork and videos to stimulate engagement.
Let’s agree on the fact that we all love visuals that are attractive and have a clean design. That is why a well-designed visual will get more engagement that a poorly designed visual. In fact, Visual content is much more effective than textual content. According to one study, “The human brain processes visuals 60,000 times for more than text”.
After two years of working at Hashtag Social Media Agency, I’d like to share a few things about my experience working on the Almarai Instagram account:
1-Video isn’t a luxury, IT’S A NECESSITY.
Audiences are much more likely to consume and engage with video over text. They are happier when they see video information than when they read it. In fact, video content is 22x time memorable than text.
Video is becoming so important that recently Instagram swapped the likes count to views on video content.
Instagram has realized that video content is the most important type of content and has since started moving to be a VIDEO platform. In fact, we can expect a number of Social Media platforms to shift their focus towards Video over 2016 & 2017. Like Facebook did in the past 2 years.
2-Funny content.
People love to laugh and they typically turn to their mobiles to check their social media accounts and escape from the routine of life. That’s why content should always have a sense of humor. When you leave people with a positive, smiling state, they will not only engage with you, but they will share the content and keep coming back for more.
3-After using the entire color spectrum on our platforms, we have noticed that certain colors got higher engagement rates than others. For example the color Yellow tends to lead to the highest levels of engagement. So it’s not just about nice designs, it also about the colors that we use in those designs.
4-LifeStyle pictures is the mirror of the culture.
Because people love to relate to images, Lifestyle imagery tends to generate high levels of engagement. We can all relate to the day to day activities that go on, so tying the brand into our daily lives gives them a sense of belonging and familiarity.
It can be as simple as taking a picture of the product while you’re setting with your friends and family using your mobile camera. The best type of lifestyle content is that simple.
There are a lot of ways we as designers can effect the engagement rates of posts. These were just a few examples. But most importantly, is to keep yourself updates and to come up with new interesting and relevant content.
Khaled Tomar
