Design Mistakes to Avoid on Social Media

Let’s be hon­est, mak­ing your brand stand out from the crowd is a chal­lenge. We care­ful­ly plan our con­tent to impact and attract our audi­ence. While our copy may be very valu­able, we will always be attract­ed to visu­als first. If we are able to peak inter­est, then, peo­ple will want to know more.

Design mistakes to avoid on social Media

Design mis­takes can cause our audi­ence to lose inter­est very quick. Why? Because our visu­als can often con­fuse them. And that’s not help­ful when you have ded­i­cat­ed so much time to gen­er­ate com­pelling con­tent! There is hope though. We want to empow­er you with ways you can eas­i­ly pre­vent this! You CAN improve your visu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion by avoid­ing these design mis­takes on social media.

1. Oh, So Many Fonts 

This is one of the most com­mon and mis­takes! If your copy men­tions the impor­tance of orga­ni­za­tion, strat­e­gy, clar­i­ty, struc­ture… and so on, you must back it up with visu­als. Stick to 3 or less fonts. Too many fonts cre­ate visu­al clut­ter. Ran­dom font selec­tion results in ran­dom results. Just like this eagle cow below. When fonts don’t com­pli­ment each oth­er, they will fight for atten­tion. And in the end, they over­shad­ow the impor­tance of your content.

2. No Visual Hierarchy 

When cre­at­ing your social media graph­ics, con­sid­er includ­ing only the most impor­tant copy. You want to guide your view­ers with the copy you want them to read first, sec­ond and so on. To achieve this, make it a great read­ing expe­ri­ence by using dif­fer­ent text sizes. But don’t over do it. You can learn more about that on our typog­ra­phy tips for mar­ket­ing post.

3. Color Contrast Issues 

The read­ing expe­ri­ence we cre­ate can have a big impact. If peo­ple have a hard time read­ing our con­tent, they will move on. When plac­ing our text over sol­id col­or back­grounds, make sure that it is easy to read. If you see some sort of visu­al vibra­tion around the let­ters, that means your back­ground is around the same inten­si­ty as the type. This makes your text very hard to read.

If you encounter this sit­u­a­tion, try chang­ing the one of the col­ors to a dark­er or lighter ver­sion. A sim­ple col­or change will make all the dif­fer­ence. When you feel it’s easy to read, so will your audience.

4. Confusing Visuals 

Pho­tog­ra­phy and illus­tra­tions are visu­al assets you can use to dri­ve your mes­sage. If a brand is all about empow­er­ing and lift­ing oth­ers, using dark, moody photographs/illustrations will not align with the mes­sage. As a mat­ter of fact, it can com­plete­ly change the tone of your copy.

When cre­at­ing your visu­al con­tent, con­sid­er the impact con­fus­ing visu­als can have. Let’s say we want­ed to be bold and edgy. And we change the above image to a dark­er one, think­ing it could help encour­age oth­ers to have bold courage.

Do you still feel encour­aged after the changes below? The mut­ed image feels washed out and cer­tain­ly makes it scary to take a change into some­thing out of our com­fort zone. This is a sim­ple change you can con­sid­er as you design your con­tent for social media.

5. Too Much Copy

We all want to share our brand sto­ry. How­ev­er, too much text in a small graph­ic is one of the most com­mon design mis­takes in social media. It can be easy to get excit­ed about what we want to share. But remem­ber we want to cap­ti­vate our audi­ence, not over­whelm them. As you cre­ate your graph­ics, give your audi­ence a sen­tence, or two, that peaks enough inter­est for them to want to learn more. If you need to share more, use that on the cap­tion of your post.

Now that you know what design mis­takes to avoid on social media, your con­tent is set to stand out and have high­er chances of engage­ment. All the hard work you put towards your con­tent cre­ation will pay off as you apply these strate­gies when design­ing your social media content.

If you know any­one that would ben­e­fit from this blog post, we’d love it if you share it with them!