How To Perfect Visual Branding for Social Media Success

Your health and wellness business needs a face.

And visual branding sets that face apart from other faces.

It’s called having a strong visual strategy!

Yet, 36.7% of marketers struggle with creating engaging visuals, statistics says.

Why?

Because they fail to understand precisely what visual branding means especially on social media.

Visual branding is the clear and consistent look and feel of your visual content in social media—from your cover photo to your social media posts.

To break it down, your visuals should have consistent elements of all social media channels –color scheme, fonts, images or symbols and imagery style.

When you are able to build a strong visual strategy for your branding, you’re on your way towards boosting your business’ credibility and reliability.

But businesses which fail to stick to a unique visual social branding can look dividing and confusing to the audience.

If that’s your case, your business needs a facelift.

Lucky for you, we narrowed down some ways on how you can boost your visual strategy and maximise brand awareness.

Follow these to have your health and wellness business remembered, respected and referred in social media or in any marketing channel.

Quick view: 5 hacks for visual social branding

1. Add your business logo
2. Use your brand colours consistently
3. Use the same standard font
4. Create social media templates or add your logo to social media visuals
5. Go big with simple designs

Any visuals you post should have these key branding strategies consistently.

Branded visuals stand as the glue that helps stick your visual content with your business branding.

Branding visuals are more than locking ownership of your visual content, it’s about shouting out your brand personality, sass and creativity.

It’s about being clear on who you are and what you stand for in the health and wellness niche.

So make your visual strategy and branding stick with your audience every time you share a visual content on social media. That’s consistency.

Your audience can only recall and connect your business with the creativity and impact of your visual content.

Understand why Social visual branding matters

Info by: mammoth infographics

The social media space is vast, crowded and battling for attention. That’s why it’s a visual universe. Because research and statistics have long supported the fact that visual content increases engagement.

Let’s take into consideration these compelling research:

• Our verbal intelligence is dropping while our visual intelligence is rising. (Webdam)
• 93% of the most engaging posts on Facebook have images (Socialbakers)
• The audience spends more time looking at images than reading texts on a post. (Nielsen Norman Group)
• Tweets with images receive 89% more favourites than tweets without images. (Buffer)
• Facebook posts with images see 2.3 times increase in engagement than those without images.   (BuzzSumo)
• Anyone who sees an information in a picture can recall 65% of it compared to 10% recall on an information without any picture. (Brainrules.net)

In their 2017 industry report, Social Media Examiner also found that 85% of the 5,000 online marketers surveyed now use visuals, up from 74% in 2016.

The verdict is clear: if you need to stand out in social media today and every day, you don’t just need visual content, you need social visual branding.

Now let’s break down every consistent strategy you can execute in every visual. That is, if you want to stand out in the crowd and leave a memorable footprint among your audience.

1. Add Your Business Logo

The easiest way to visual brand your health and wellness business is by simply adding your logo to any image you post or share online.

Choose the minimum readable size for your logo and place it in a position that won’t overpower the image.

This is what we encourage everyone to do when they download our visual content bundles on Healthinomics

This way, you brand all your visuals without being distracting.

And whatever size you choose for your logo, stick with it for consistency.

While you can place your logo on the lower right side as a general rule, feel free to move it to the centre top or bottom.  

Depending on where your audience can see it as you adjust the logo position to complement the elements of the image.

Check out our examples here.

Our Healthinomics logo is strategically placed at the top bottom in the middle of the image so the image can still capture your attention and clearly tell you who it was posted by.

Healthinomics logo here is placed at the bottom centre. Notice that while the website has been added, it still doesn’t distract away from the image.

2) Show Your Brand Colors Consistently

Did you know that the world’s favourite colour is blue?

That explains Facebook and Twitter. Colors influence brand recognition. So be consistent with your colour scheme.

Information by: social marketing writing

Because if you can observe major brands, they use their brand colours consistently from their logo to social media. Cadbury is purple, Coke is red, Starbucks is green. You get the drill.

Try doing the same approach. Brand colour consistency will make your health and wellness business more recognizable and strengthens brand recall when your audience constantly sees the same set of shades with your visuals.

Research even found that around 62-90 percent of consumer decisions are colour-based.

Hence, colours affect conversion. So make use of yours, big time.

Choose at least two dominant colours that resonate with your band to connect with your audience.

You don’t have to force yourself to use these colours 100% of the time but a good rule of thumb is that 50% of your visuals should always display your visual branding color scheme.

3) Have Standard Fonts

Fonts don’t just add characters to words, they can emphasize emotions.

Read the same words below and feel the emotional difference both set of texts convey.

In this visual from Buffer which emotion do you prefer in the same message?

It depends on the intention.

The first one sounds apprehensive and scolding.

The second one borders on amazement and playfulness. See the difference a font can bring?

Your choice of fonts shows off your spunk, personality and authority.

Do you want to come off as funny? Dramatic? Elegant? Playful?

Used consistently, a font can help convey your intended emotion better.

So when you create or share visuals for your social media posts, use two or three fonts in line with your brand style.

Be consistent to increase brand awareness.

The bottom line: don’t take fonts for granted just like your colour schemes, they can help convert clients.

4. Create Social Media Templates

Have you noticed the same element that pops up in this list up to this point: consistency.

Consider using the same font, same style, same colours and your logo for CONSISTENCY.

Nothing says that better than social media templates.

Coming up with a social media template is crucial to make sure every visual and content thematic, more memorable and aligned with your visual branding guide.

For example, Canva shares creativity tips in the same format, every week.

Source: Hub Spot

Don’t just stick to one social media template, create variations that will cover all your visual goals for your social media messaging.

Create a template for your quotes, promotions, announcements, testimonials, calls-to-action and the rest of your thematic images.

See how much visual content you can already come up for the entire week?

Templates are also great for engagement and brand recall, plus it’s a lot easier and time-saving than always creating visuals from scratch.

5. Go Big with Simple Design

Visual branding doesn’t have to be complicated when it comes to your visual strategy.

In fact, you don’t need to be a professional graphic artist to come up with effective and engaging visuals.

But it pays to have an eye for visuals that work.

Come up with engaging visuals that your audience would want to share.

At the moment, there’s no magic formula for a viral design but one visual principle that has proven its wealth since the beginning of design is simplicity.  

To quote the legendary artist Leonardo Da Vinci, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”.

Indeed, according to the psychology of design, images and logos that are clean and simple have the most impact—and gets the most response.

Given the overwhelming sea of information on social media, less is more when it comes to visuals.

Here’s an example. No offence to this ad below but it’s as good as an eyesore.

Source: Neil Patel

Whereas, simple designs cut through the clutter.

Another perfect example here is this design comparison from Buffer.

Both visuals share the same message but not the same style.

Which one stands out?

The one that is more pleasing to the eyes is the obviously the simpler one.

Plus, it looks like something you can do on your smartphone.

Here is another example:

6) Use High-Quality Images You Can Brand As Your Own

All these visual branding tips are definitely critical to your social media strategy.

Because it gives your health and wellness business an unforgettable face.

Unfortunately, not everyone has the skills, resources, and especially time to focus on visual branding.

Because at the heart of it is an amazing visual that most of us don’t have time to create one, let alone, brand it.

Remember that if you struggle coming up with your own images and mind you grabbing someone else’s image on Google isn’t the shortcut.

You’re toying with copyright infringement and other potential lawsuits here if you fail to attribute correctly or seek permission to distribute.

But here’s a hack: source high-quality images that directly speak volumes about your health and wellness business.

Don’t just pick any random health and wellness-related visuals from stock photos.

Download your social media images from our visual libraries that cater to your visual branding and health and wellness business.

Healthinomics Can Help Streamline the Visual Process

When you want to automate visual branding, streamline the visual creation process with Healthinomics.

We specialise in visual content for the health and wellness niche, where you can choose from hundreds of beautiful bundles that are packaged with 20 thematic visuals.

Topics about health and wellness are covered from A to Z like quirky facts, trivia, how-to’s, inspiring quotes, infographics, health tips, industry-specific content and loads more topics.

Each visual content covers all the requirements of visual branding. You even get to brand every image as your own. Add your logo, an overlay, filter or any design element, it’s your call.

Consider how much time you save when you skip the research, writing and designing process. So, you can focus directly on visual branding.

The best part: whatever bundle you choose is sure to engage and grow your following on social media.

It saves you time thinking about what effective posts to share in the next week, month or even for the entire year.

Advantages of Visual Branding

We’ve overly emphasized the need to brand your visuals to stand out on social media.

But in the long term, visual branding isn’t just a pretty face to display.

It’s one of the foundations of building and growing your health and wellness business.

Extend visual branding from social media to your blogs, websites, email marketing or wherever you want to put a message across.

Specifically, visual branding can achieve the following:

• Strong brand identity – your audience won’t just quickly recognize your brand, they can connect with you as you share bits and pieces of you and your business
• Better engagement – Anything you post will get more comments, likes or shares because you have a powerful visual branding as bait
• Positive association – share visuals that are relevant to your health and wellness business and your business will be the dominant name in your niche.
• More referrals – If your face value is high, your clients won’t think twice to recommend you because you represent trust, quality and authority.When people recognize and remember your brand, they are more likely to also refer business your way.
• More connections – Enjoy stronger connections with people who can connect and resonate with your visual branding

Lastly, don’t be afraid to be true to your visual branding. Be proud of what you stand for, your values and your vision. Everyone, social media or not, can see through it.

Remember, Healthinomics can help simplify your visual branding and grow your health and wellness business.

=> Click here to check out our full collection of social media images to choose from and download.

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