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Creating Engaging Content for your Website & Organic Posting

how to design a website

Your Introduction to the Power of Visual and Creating Beautiful Visual Content for your Website and Organic.

In this Weekly Marketing Roundup: 07/02/2020 we chat visual with creating an engaging brand on your beautiful UX-designed website, and how to carry this visual taste into your brand on organic posting platforms like Instagram and Facebook. We hope you enjoy

Understanding Visual Elements for your Website

Web design is what creates the overall look and feel when you’re using a website. It’s the process of planning and building the elements of your website, from structure and layout to images, colors, fonts and graphics. Web design is not limited to websites as it includes other uses such as web apps, mobile apps, and user interface design.

Written copy

Fundamentally, the look of a website and its words go hand in hand. The two should never really be considered separate. Having your designers and content writers work together, instead of in sequence, can enable a more powerful design. Fonts When designing a website, it’s imperative to choose easy-to-read font pairings that complement the design. Tools like Canva’s Font Combinator can help you find the perfect match for your font. Web design tools like PageCloud even include numerous font pairings within their appColors Colors are one of the most important elements to consider when designing a website. Keep in mind that here are a lot of misconceptions about the psychology of color. When choosing colors for your site, it’s important to focus on aligning your colors with your brand and the message you are trying to convey.

color text box

Layout

How you decide to arrange your content will have a dramatic impact on both the appearance and functionality of your site. Although there aren’t any specific rules when it comes to website layouts, there are definitely some principles you should follow. Shapes The use of graphical elements in web design has really taken off over the past few years.

Mokhtar Saghafi webpage

Spacing

There is a space that exists between every element within your design: the images, the paragraphs, the lines…

Ivory group webpage

Images & Icons

Using images and icons within your website help to draw attention to specific areas of your site, as well as trigger emotion and help bring a side of personification to your site. Both great imagery and the use of icons further improve the user experience (UX) of your website as up to 90% of all information that humans process and perceieve is visual. They help to transmit a connection between that person and your business or brand.

As well as logically, they aesthetically style your site and help create a theme to your brand. If you’re in the process of looking to re-design your website and want to know where you can find free images and icons, see below:

You can also find premium versions on the following website:

Videos

Videos are a perfect way to engage your audience. In this day and age, it is important to create a connection with your audience by showing what you do, people you work with and more via video which allows them to get to know you, trust you and like you. Videos keep your audience interested, no matter your product or service. Another idea is that images keep people on your site for longer, it’s all part of the user experience of your website.

Understanding Social Media Metrics

As of 2016, Instagram has introduced their business platform with a built-in Insights tool. This incredibly useful instrument can be used to view follower information and which posts resonate best with your target audience. Third party operating systems – such as Simply Measured – further assist in gauging the success of Instagram campaigns and page growth over time.

With data to back up your decisions, you can create a constantly modifiable social media content calendar – with plans for when to post what content. Adjusting and updating your objectives will orientate you towards your central strategy, while you keep your finger on the pulse of what works and what doesn’t.

Sporadically scrolling through Instagram, liking random photos and uploading content of your dog in pyjamas (or on a swing) might work for individuals on Instagram. But when representing your brand online, a deliberate marketing plan will build a community through consistency. Your strategy should include:

How often and when to post

When you maintain a regular post schedule, you won’t overcrowd your message or bombard the user – the right amount is best discovered through trial and error with your business. Once you’ve figured out your tone, a content calendar is the best way to manage the frequency of your message.

Content themes

Keep your content identifiable to your brand, but don’t keep it the same. Change up your themes to liven up your Instagram page, whilst targeting different demographics that use your brand or product. This will increase your audience participation and keep your posts on brand.

Style and tone guidelines

Your style guide should cover all the ways your brand makes itself visible, unique and consistent. Your captions, image style, and content should all adhere to the guidelines you set.

Engagement guidelines

These guidelines should cover when and how your brand reacts with your audience. This includes all replies to comments on your page, and brand actions on other pages. Do not automate this. It must be authentic and personally approach the potential customer.

How to Create an Engaging Brand on Instagram

On such a visually crowded platform it is important to have a look that is iconically you – one that builds a recognisable brand identity through your content. So don’t speak to the audience, show them what you’re about.

Visual Consistency

A visual social media report from WebDam found that 60% of top brands on Instagram use the same filter for every post (Hootsuite). This creates a cohesive look that is identifiable to your brand. You need a look that stops people’s thumbs, especially amidst the myriad of photos that swamp user’s news feeds.

GoPro have a consistent stream of content that is both relatable and visually impressive. They’re able to showcase their product’s unique qualities, while creating an experience for the user.

Subject Matter

The focus of your content should always steer towards either what your brand represents to your customers, or topics related to your product. The former is usually centred around culture – to reflect a fun vibe that always bodes well with followers. You don’t have to be a lifestyle brand to post about your company culture!

Customers also have a natural curiosity about where their products come from – use Instagram to show them their whole lifecycle. Source images that capture your product’s journey in a fun and interesting way, especially if that journey is unique or leads to a positive brand image.

The Body Shop does this phenomenally well. They’re able to express the environmentally friendly nature of their products, while creating content that stops the user’s thumb.

Brand Voice

Your “brand voice” voice is important – your Instagram images and captions must be iconic to identify and express the essence of your brand. By all means experiment and try to differentiate, but stay true to your audience. If you cater to your audience’s interests and emotions they will react positively to your presence, even when you are using other platforms.

How to Create Content on Instagram

Here is an idea of the types of content you can start creating right now, and how to do it;

  1. The human element of your business displayed to followers. ‘In the moment’ stories can allude to your business culture, employees and overall relatable vibe.
  2. Stories are easily accessible, and are located in the top heading when Instagram is opened.
  3. It is easier to experiment with different creative content types: photos, videos, boomerang (GIF-like image), rewind and live video.
  4. You can tag other accounts e.g. @sydneydigital if used in liaison with brands, collaborators or influencer marketing.
  5. Story searches make your ’story’ more visible and discoverable to audiences. Stories can be sent as direct messages or can be clicked on through the user newsfeed (in the top banner) and your brand’s profile icon. Raw, real-time sharing allows you to now “share your highlights and everything in between” (Instagram). So use the platform to innovate your unique image.

How to Analyse Organic Results

The right Instagram feedback tools can provide analytics to inform your content direction and social media strategy. Below are 4 analytics tools for marketers in 2018:

Instagram Insights – Free

Instagram Analytics provides basic stats for assessing your Instagram marketing efforts, with access free for businesses through the app. You are able to view follower information and what your top posts are – to help you choose content that will resonate with your audience. Instagram Insights is a very basic tool suited to beginners. If you wish to analyse your Instagram data further, the following tools will assist you:

Social Bakers – Free

This tool provides a report on your most popular photos, filters and hashtags. it also includes all of your interactions with followers, displaying your most liked and most commented posts in descending order. This is highly useful for gauging what content your audience responds well to. Recommended changes appear in a “heads up” display menu.

Simply Measured (now Sprout Social)

This provides a comprehensive list of decisions around impressions, reach, engagement rates, saves, video views and carousel data. The tracking metrics provided on this site give you content type breakdowns that compare you to competitors. The platform even tracks your Instagram story data. It is a straightforward platform that provides direction without overwhelming you with numbers. It is arguably the best Instagram feedback tool on our list.

Squarelovin – Free

This is an in-depth tool that displays metrics on recent posts and growth of these posts. It covers monthly post analysis, and a history of your posts broken down into year, month, day and hour. Your top and average posts head up the engagement tabs. The engagement tabs go into further detail about when to post.

Without fully analysing what worked and what didn’t, marketing is a guessing game with a huge placebo effect. You can read all the best articles advising you what to post or what to include, only to find out what works for you is something different. This is why you must use trial and error to improve your online marketing aptitude. The tools provided above are a great starting point to reflect on your Instagram performance.

How to Improve Your Organic Marketing Strategy

If you’re pressed for time or you don’t quite grasp all the nitty gritty details that come with posting, we can help. Our team at Sydney Digital Marketing are experts in social media marketing. We are an organic marketing agency who run organic and paid campaigns with a focus on quality content through our signature lens of creativity.

We prioritise transparent return on investment, with sale conversions directly attributed to campaigns on Instagram. So chat with us and we’ll show you what we can do for you.