Stand out on social without sucking serious sausage

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I do feel sorry for my team at time’s you know

This week I’ve tasked all of them to deliver me an item of valuable content

They never give me the subject line or opening but…

…so I feel I HAVE to to fuck with them a little bit eh?

Anyways today is all about creating eye-catching, pattern-interrupting, thumb- stopping images and graphics for your social media

Hence I hand over to my head of memes – yes that is his real job title – Mr Chris McCluckie

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Do your social media images need a helping hand.

Are you looking at other peoples graphics and wondering, how can I do that?

Here are some tips to help you stand out and be more unique.

Some are practical and some are psychological.

But they will help your social media images stand out and get more attention

Especially now that everyone is using their social media to take their offline businesses online

Here are 10 easy wins to help you stand out

1. SOCIAL MEDIA IMAGES ARE USED TO SLAY ZOMBIES

I keep going on and on about this, but it’s so important.

People turn into zombies when they are on their mobile phone.

They lose their sense of time, where they are and all but the basic brain functions turn off while they surf social media.

You go into a trance and zone out – it’s what this type of media is designed to do!!

Our job is to recognise this and provide an image that is different to the standard, boring images that people use.

Different always gets noticed.

Getting noticed slaps people in the face and brings them out of the trance long enough to read your post.

And that’s what we are trying to achieve – get their attention in and around the noise of social media

2. USE BIG BLOCKY TEXT IN YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA IMAGES

0.5 seconds is what it takes for someone to flick past your post.

Don’t have some font that requires effort to be read as people will make an instant unconscious decision that it’s too much effort to read it.

And they will flick past you quicker than you can blink.

Go for the unsexy, big, chunky and blocky font.

3. USE CAPITAL LETTERS IN YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA IMAGES

Capital letters are easier to read at a glance.

This is why newspapers use capital letters for their headlines, especially for the front page.

We have already talked about how quick people decide to read your post or not.

Around 0.5 seconds.

Capital letters stop them thinking as they are easy to read at a glance.

So use them.

4. THINK OF THE WAY YOU DISPLAY TEXT – IT HAS A HUGE EFFECT ON THE OUTCOME

Look at these examples

THINK OF THE WAY YOU DISPLAY TEXT – IT HAS A HUGE EFFECT ON THE OUTCOME

THINK OF THE WAY YOU DISPLAY TEXT
IT HAS A HUGE EFFECT ON THE OUTCOME

THINK OF THE WAY
YOU DISPLAY TEXT
IT HAS A HUGE EFFECT
ON THE OUTCOME

3 different ways, which one feels the most comfortable to read??

5. DON’T USE TOO MUCH TEXT IN YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA IMAGES

We are not trying to write a novel, or sell with our images – that is not their job.

It’s so easy to keep adding text so your readers can “understand you better”

The images job is a pattern interrupt plain and simple.

No more and no less.

It’s there to stop people long enough so they come of of their trance and read your post

This is where you can write a novel and sell your stuff, not the image.

6. MARK YOUR TERRITORY IN YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA IMAGES

I used to put up my social media handles on my images, and it worked well.

But I decided to experiment with putting my website address on.

I never thought it would make a difference, after all I was just marking my territory, right?

Page views went up massively over night and I was able to attribute it to the extra traffic coming on google analytics.

7. PATTERN INTERRUPTS RULE

This is the job of a social media image.

It’s a pattern interrupts job, to take people from the unconscious autopilot that is zombie mode and snap them back into fully conscious humans that are able to read your post.

Look at what your competitors are putting out, then do the opposite.

Most people copy the big guys in an industry, the problem with this is everyone ends up looking very similar.

They end up blending into the social media noise.

8. BE LAZY – HAVE TEMPLATES YOU CAN CHANGE FOR YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA IMAGES

There is nothing more soul destroying than staring at a blank screen and waiting for inspiration to strike.

Templates are a lifesaver as 50-60% of the image is prebuilt and just needs text and an interesting pic to make things happen.

9. PEOPLE READ LEFT TO RIGHT – TOP TO BOTTOM

In the western world we read from left to right and from top to bottom.

Because of this I like to put the important info on the right hand side of all my images with the contact deets (remember – mark your territory) directly below this.

It makes it more comfortable to read and less jarring to look at.

So the image is generally on the left – text on the right with contact deets below.

10. IF IT’S SHIT, YOU CAN ALWAYS DELETE IT – BE BRAVE

There is nothing more likely to stop creativity dead in its tracks than fear.

Does this look silly?
Is this professional enough?
Does it make sense?
Is this rubbish?

Social media half life, the amount of time your posts disappear from your feeds and stop getting likes and comments is really quick.

A few days on facebook? Same on insta and Linkedin?

So if you design something and its shit, which happens to us all.

You have 2 choices – delete it or ignore it and know that in a few days it will have disappeared from your feed and be forgotten about.

I hope you manage to implement some of these and see the rise in engagement on your social media.

More engagement means more eyeballs.

More eyeballs means more sales.

If you want to learn more or have me create graphics and templates for you please reach out to me on chris@nolimitsmedia.uk

Thanks for reading

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Believe it or not that’s the trimmed down version…it was 2500 words long to start lol

Chris?

Knows his stuff

His images have = made me a fair few quid

And if you follow his advice (or give him some dollar to do it for you/show you what to do?

Y’all be ahead of the other boring buggers on social

Anyways hope you enjoyed that, few more to go

#wedontstoptillthejobisdone

And my job for the rest of the day is mainly memes…gotta stay sharp

Lol

Hope y’all had a good week!

D