Maximize your Social Media feeds by transforming images into branded content. Your updates will be instantly recognizable. View original post at: http://blog.dlvr.it/2014/09/create-branded-images-to-improve-social-media-performance/

1. Turn Images into Branded Content to Stand-out in Your
Followers Busy Social Media Stream
blog.dlvr.it/2014/09/create-branded-images-to-improve-social-media-performance/
Bill Flitter
(#MarketingMonday) One of things I enjoy most about my job is interacting with
customers. Either on the phone or through our customer service application, I
spend a considerable amount of time each day listening to and learning about our
customers. Through this, I also hear what they like or don’t like about social
media. This gets me thinking about what we can do better, sometimes resulting in
an “aha moment” – keep reading for the revelation below.
I was on a call recently with a dlvr.it customer who mentioned how much they liked
the simple but attention grabbing ads Monster.com publishes to Facebook.
While we jointly pulled up one of these posts, I noticed a very subtle but
significant technique Monster uses to bring attention to certain types of
social media posts.
Like most companies, Monster shares various updates with their followers
throughout the day. Assuming the average person has (200) Twitter followers and

2. (300) Facebook friends, it’s important to do what you can to help your followers
and friends quickly spot things of interest. This is what caught our customer’s eye.
Especially, as in Monster’s case, it uses a subtle reminder that if you are in the job
hunt market, they are available to help you.
To distinguish themselves from other updates in the social steam, Monster uses a
static graphic calling attention to their job hunt services. This graphic is slick and
modern and gets their message across by cleverly using the hashtag, #sendhelp
which flows nicely with their company tagline of #findbetter.
The “Aha!” Moment
In general, image space in social posts is under-utilized. The real estate it
occupies is a significant proportion of a social media update. Which I am sure is
why Tweets with images increase engagement by 94%!
If you look at your social media stream, the probability is high that you will see
some great images attached to updates. Remove the text of the update and
most likely, you will have no idea who just shared it.
Here’s the “aha moment”:
Create branded images to increase social media impact. Besides the

3. additional real estate gained to communicate a message, this branded content can
help your readers:
1. Notice your updates in a noisy stream
2. Instantly recognize your brand across social media platforms
3. Quickly find the updates that are of importance to them
We’ve been experimenting with adding various branding elements to the images
that accompany our social media updates. Below are just a few examples. They
all incorporate the dlvr.it logo, text and a stunning photograph. It’s a work in
progress.

4. These images have evolved over the last few weeks. There are many quick and
simple things you can do to take advantage of your image real estate. For
example, you can add a:
1. Call-to-action

5. 2. Logo
3. Text overlay
4. Custom graphic
Create a Template to Reduce Time
To be consistent and avoid creating the wheel each time we add an image to a
blog post or social media update, we designed a template using Snagit. See
below. Once the template was completed, this saved us a tremendous amount of
time. Here are the steps we take now:
Step 1. Find a relevant image and upload it to Snagit
Step 2. Open the branded transparent template created and drag it on to the
image
Step 3. Upload the newly branded image to WordPress and add it as the Featured
Image in the blog post. If you have any questions on image optimization, check
out our post on the perfect image size using the 2:1 aspect ratio.
Now it’s your turn. Maximize the image real estate in your social media posts and
instantly catch your reader’s attention. It only takes seconds!
Featured photo credit: Sarah Le Clerc