Author: Franz Malten Buemann

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At least once a month, I discover a new brand and take a quick peek at their profile. Within a few seconds, I decide if I’ll hit that “follow” button or exit the page.
In those few seconds that I’m assessing the brand’s profile, I’m asking myself two questions: Is their content visually appealing and am I interested in the type of content they will be posting?

I’d bet many social media users take a similar approach. This is why social media design is an instrumental part of your social strategy. So much of social media is about perception and design plays a big role in determining that.
How can you make sure your design attracts the right audience? We’ll cover that and more below.
Nowadays, social platforms are often the first place consumers discover brands. As such, making a great first impression is the first step to building a robust social media presence.
Your social media design will also impact your brand perception. Every post you create and publish tells a story and contributes to your brand image. You want to make sure that story aligns with your overall messaging and builds a connection with your audience.
This is particularly important on platforms that prioritize visuals, like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. But you’ll still need to make sure your designs are consistent on all platforms.
What to Consider For Social Media Post Designs
Before you start working on your design, you’ll want to consider a few things. The first is your brand identity – your social media platform will be the visual representation of it, so you and your team must have a clear idea of what it is.
The next step is conducting market research to understand your audience. Questions to answer include:

What are they looking for in a brand?
What are their values?
What are they interested in?
What are they concerned about?
What do they like to see on social media? What do they like to see on X platform?

This will serve as your frame of reference to drive your design approach.
You’ll then want to look at your competition’s designs. While you have your unique approach, it’s useful to know what visual strategies they’re using and how consumers are responding. The more information you have, the better equipped you will be to design creative assets that resonate with your audience.
Tips For Designing Social Media Posts
1. Aim for consistency and cohesion.
Consistency is key when designing your social media page. Why? Because it helps with brand recognition.
Imagine if every time you saw a brand, they changed their brand colors and logo. You would probably confuse it for another brand or forget it altogether. Brand recognition is important for building trust and loyalty with your audience.
Beyond posting regularly, consistency on social media also means sticking to a visual theme. Is it dark and moody or light and airy? Do you want your page to evoke calm, excitement, balance, focus, or something else?
Whatever your answers are to those questions should be reflected in a cohesive design. One way to do this is by using the same filter or editing style on all of your images to ensure they all fit within your branding.
2. Use colors to mirror your brand identity.
It’s no surprise that colors affect how consumers perceive your brand. That’s why popular food brands are usually associated with the colors red and yellow, and financial institutions with blues.
There are a few ways to incorporate color into your social media design. The first is in your templates. If you plan to use templates when posting graphics, you’ll want to incorporate your colors to increase your brand recognition.
For your images and videos, you can also highlight certain colors to stand out.

Image Source
In the example above, Urban Skin consistently uses two main colors in its design: peach and turquoise. While they may have other colors in their images, these two are always front and center.
Another strategy is designing your social media posts to align with a particular theme and color. For instance, let’s say you’re a fashion brand and you’re planning February content. Given the association of February with Valentine’s Day and the color red, you could build your creative assets around that theme for the month.
3. Use social media design templates.
If you want to scale your social media strategy, you’ll likely need to have templates.
They’re a huge time saver and ensure consistent branding. Platforms like Canva make it easy for teams to create and share templates that have been approved by the branding team and align with your strategy. Jump to that section [here].
Be sure to have a diverse set of templates that can be used for various content types, such as infographics and videos. For instance, this brand Mateo New York likely uses templates that produce a sleek and attractive layout that stays consistent.

Image Source
4. Adapt your design to the platform.
Every platform has different sizing and content guidelines.
For example, Instagram Reels are formatted to be viewed on smartphones, which means videos must be filmed in portrait orientation. Facebook, on the other hand, is formatted for landscape videos – similar to YouTube.
For videos in particular, you want to avoid having content with black sidebars, as that isn’t visually appealing.
Beyond sizing, you also have to consider which platforms are appropriate for certain designs. For instance, an infographic probably wouldn’t do well on Twitter. Breaking that content down into a text thread is a better strategy.
Following these guidelines will make your content more likely to perform well.
5. Follow design best practices.
The main goal of your social media design is to create visually appealing content that captures your audience’s attention and encourages them to engage.
While several factors influence this, there are general design rules that are known to create appealing visuals. The first is white or negative space, which is when an area in your frame is left empty. Using white or negative space helps draw the eye to what you want your audience to focus on.

Yvonne Koné uses white space in its social media design, which reflects the brand’s simplistic and minimalist identity.
Here are a few other design principles you’ll want to consider when developing your creative assets:

Hierarchy – Arranging your visual elements by order of importance. You can do this by playing around with sizing, contrast, space, and other elements.

Balance – Having equal visual weight in an image, which creates harmony, like in this example.

Contrast – Putting elements with opposite colors, sizes, or textures to make them stand out.

6. Don’t forget about your profile.
While the main focus will be on your social media posts, don’t forget to design your social profiles.
Your profile picture, cover photo, and other visual elements should be a top priority when designing your social media. Here are some tips to follow:

Be sure to use the same profile picture, i.e. your logo, on all social platforms.
Use a cover photo that aligns both visually and contextually with your brand.
Only update your profile to highlight events or holidays that are important to your brand. For instance, some brands add a rainbow pride flag to their logo in June in solidarity with the LGBTQ community.

7. Rely on creative professionals.
Your social media design will only be as good as your investment.
When it comes to images and illustrations, it’s worth consulting professionals who specialize in creating high-quality content. They can guide you through the creative process and make suggestions that will elevate your design.
If your team cannot invest in a full-time creative, consider independent contractors. With this approach, you can work on a project-by-project basis and experiment with different designers.
How To Find Social Media Design Templates
If your team wants an easy way to source templates, there’s a cost-effective way to do so without sacrificing quality. Many online branding companies offer customizable templates that have been designed by professionals. Here are a few to consider:
1. Canva
Canva is a graphic design platform with over 250,000 free templates available for personal and commercial use.

In addition to templates, Canva also has an extensive stock library with photos, animations, and videos for brands in any industry. The platform is free for individual users and has professional and enterprise options for larger companies, with pricing going up to $30/month.
2. Lucidpress
Lucidpress is a brand templating platform that makes it easy to create everything from social media posts to ebooks.

The platform is free to start using. To gain access to unlimited templates, pricing starts at $10 a month and can go up depending on your business needs.
Your branding doesn’t stop at your logo or website. It also extends to your social media. By investing time to develop a brand-specific social media design, you will get one step closer to connecting with your target audience.

Whenever a new feature comes out on social media, I am usually a late adopter.
Back when Instagram launched Stories, a worthy Snapchat opponent, I thought, “Hm, I don’t know about this.” Perhaps it’s because change, even if slight, is uncomfortable or just because I’m naturally a cautious person.

But here we are a few years after its launch and I barely look at my newsfeed. Where am I? You guessed it, endlessly swiping through Stories.
The feature gained steam on Instagram but was then integrated on Facebook. Now, every brand with a Facebook Business Page has gained another marketing tool to reach users.
So, what exactly can you post on Facebook Stories? Get inspired by these eight brands.
Examples of Facebook Stories for Business
A Look Behind the Scenes
Back when Facebook only allowed brands to publish posts, brands were probably more selective about their content, knowing it would stay there permanently.
Now that Facebook Stories is here, brands can have a little bit more fun with what they post knowing the content will only be available for the next 24 hours.
That’s why behind-the-scenes content is perfect for Facebook Stories. It’s not necessarily important enough to be featured on the news feed but it can be a great way to create some buzz around an upcoming release.In this example, Woven Nook, a home decor company, posts a Story to tease an upcoming project. The Story allows the brand to create some anticipation around the project and also gauge the audience’s interest in this type of content.
Another important element in this Story is that it features one of the founders of the company. In recent years, studies have shown that consumers connect more with brands who pull back the curtains and show the faces behind the business.
Woven Nook could have posted the sneak peek without the founder. However, having a human featured in the image can leave a stronger impression than just a setting.
Polls and Surveys
Facebook Stories isn’t just another publishing channel, it also has great features that help brands connect with and engage their audience. Engagement is vital for building brand loyalty and understanding your consumers.
The better you understand them, the better equipped you are to deliver content that resonates.
The grocery delivery company Instacart hosted its own trivia game on Facebook Stories to test its audience’s food knowledge.

While this may not necessarily give the brand valuable insight into their audience, their engagement with the post may tell them a lot about the type of content their followers enjoy.
Want another way to use polls? Tie them to a product or service.

Alaffia posted a simple poll asking its audience about its product.
This accomplished two things at once: It introduced followers to a product they may not yet know and it had an interactive element that encouraged audience engagement.
User-Generated Content
One of the most popular uses for Facebook Stories is user-generated content (UGC). UGC provides what’s known as social proof, a psychological phenomenon where we tend to look to others for guidance on what to do.

Adjourn Teahouse leverages UGC to show the various ways in which consumers use its products. Because of the Facebook Stories repost feature, the brand can fill its Stories with content already created by others, saving both time and money.
One thing to note is that because Facebook now owns Instagram, you can repost another user’s Instagram content to your Facebook Stories – something that’s not available between other social media platforms.
The brand Curls uses this same approach to promote its products.

What brand doesn’t love free promotion? This type of UGC helps brands gain credibility and earn new customers.
Direct to Website Traffic
Have an article on your website you want your Facebook followers to read? Take advantage of the “‘See More” feature on Facebook Stories. Blavity, a news and media company, often uses this feature to lead Facebook users to its blog posts.
While this brand mostly directs traffic to its blog posts, businesses can use this feature to lead their followers to landing pages, product pages, or any other webpage.
What’s great about this tool is that it makes it easy for users to navigate to other channels from the brand without ever leaving the Facebook platform.
Giveaways
If you’re hosting a giveaway, you’ll likely create a Facebook post so that users can access it beyond the 24-hour window. However, it’s important to promote the giveaway on other channels to give it more visibility.
Note how beverage company BLK & Bold promoted its giveaway on Facebook Stories. Instead of posting all of the giveaway details, like the rules and eligibility requirements, the brand highlighted what its audience is most excited most: the giveaway itself.
If your giveaway is hosted on another social media platform – say Instagram or Twitter – you can still promote it on your Facebook Story and use the “See More” feature.
There’s no right or wrong way to post on Facebook Stories. It’s all about finding what stories resonate best with your audience.
Every Story you post is an opportunity to connect with your audience and learn more about them.
While some of these strategies may not work for your brand, they’re worth trying out. Because even stories that don’t perform well give you as much insight as those that do.

To understand what peer-to-peer (P2P) marketing is, let’s start with an example.
Recently, I was looking for a new face moisturizer. Of course, I could’ve trusted the numerous influencers I follow on Instagram, all with strong opinions regarding the “best, most effective” options available.
But I wasn’t convinced these influencers had my best interest in-mind. Yes, most influencers’ (and micro-influencers) are successful because they promote valuable products. But they’re getting commission off those posts, too.
So I handled my problem the old-fashioned way — I texted my friends and asked what products they use.
This isn’t to say influencer marketing is ineffective. Quite the opposite: When done right, influencer marketing is a fantastic opportunity to expand your brand’s reach and increase sales.
But depending on your team’s budget, influencer marketing could be limiting. Plus, influencer marketing inhibits your brand from reaching those consumers who still trust their peers above all else.
Enter: P2P marketing.

Given 93% of consumers trust friends and family over all other influences (including review sites, blogs, and social media platforms), it makes sense why P2P marketing works.
And P2P marketing, a form of word-of-mouth marketing, isn’t new. People have been giving personal opinions about their favorite — and least favorite — brands, products, and services long before social media.
Some older forms of P2P marketing include Yelp, reviews on personal business’ websites, and good old-fashioned conversations between your consumers and their friends and family.
However, there are some new tools that help businesses leverage P2P marketing on a broader scale. Amazing Brands, for instance, helps businesses generate customer reviews and referrals, guarantee event attendance, or even increase in-store foot traffic.
The tool ultimately relies on the premise of P2P marketing, which is that there’s nothing more powerful than peer recommendations.
Other tools, like Higher Logic, work to establish a sense of community among existing consumers, and increase brand loyalty — a critical component of P2P marketing. (Since consumers won’t refer products or services towards which they don’t feel loyal.)
However, if you’re learning about P2P marketing for the first time, you might be wondering — why invest in P2P marketing, instead of more traditional forms of influencer marketing?
And what’s the difference, anyway? 
What’s the difference between P2P marketing and influencer marketing?
Over the past couple years, influencer marketing has been one of the most popular and effective opportunities for brands to reach new audiences by leveraging those influencers’ built-in communities.
However, as mentioned above, consumers still trust their own peers more than anyone else. And influencers can often feel like celebrities to the general public — in fact, sometimes, they are actual celebrities, like George Clooney with Nespresso. This removes a level of authenticity you might be striving for as a brand.
Additionally, many small and medium-sized businesses can’t afford the typical influencer cost. Celebrity or macro-influencers charge between $3,000 and $500,000 for a single post — and while micro-influencers are undoubtedly cheaper, they can also charge upwards of $500 per post.

Ultimately, P2P is a form of marketing that can feel increasingly trustworthy and authentic through real, genuine reviews from peers who have no incentive to promote businesses they don’t care about.

To further explore the difference between P2P marketing and influencer marketing, let’s consider an example. 
Jessica Alba’s business, The Honest Company, has a referral program in which they credit existing customers $20 for each invited friend who makes a purchase. 
This is an example of P2P marketing. 
Influencer marketing, on the other hand, refers to the influencers on Instagram (as well as other social platforms) who tag posts with #honestambassador, signifying the post is sponsored by The Honest Company. 
These are both equally valuable marketing options, but they achieve different goals. The P2P marketing initiative (in this case, the referral program), aims to tap into The Honest Company’s existing consumers to reach new prospects.
The P2P program is likely more narrow in reach, but has the potential to convert more quickly than influencer marketing, since it’s leveraging the power of an existing relationship between customers and their friends or family. 
The influencer marketing program, alternatively, is meant to spread brand awareness about Honest Company to a wider audience. 
P2P marketing can take many different forms depending on your brand and business goals — including creating a referral program, encouraging reviews on your site in exchange for a small discount or prize, or organizing events meant to increase brand awareness to the larger community.
Ultimately, P2P marketing comes down to increasing the incentive for your consumers to share your product or service with friends and family, which is undoubtedly one of the best long-term strategies for success.

Facebook is an undeniably powerful channel for marketing purposes. In fact, 91% of B2B and 96% of B2C marketers currently use it for advertising and marketing.
The success of your social media marketing strategy depends on engagement, typically in the form of Likes, comments, or shares. But high engagement rates are easier said than done.
One opportunity to increase engagement on your business’ Facebook Page is by embedding your Page on your website — which could increase likes and comments on your posts without driving viewers away from your site.
Here, we’ll explore how to embed a Facebook feed on a website. Whether you host your website on HubSpot, WordPress, Squarespace, or Wix, we’ve got you covered.

How to Embed a Facebook Feed on a Website
1. HubSpot
If you want to embed a Facebook feed on your HubSpot-hosted site, it’s incredibly easy to do.
1. First, go to Facebook’s Plugin Page.
2. Copy-and-paste your business’ Business Page into the “Facebook Page URL” box.

3. Then, adjust the width and height to suit your preferences depending on your website and placement. Once you’ve adjusted the timeline, click the “Get Code” button.

4. Switch to the IFrame tab, and copy the custom module.

5. Next, open the Editor tool on your HubSpot Landing Page, and select “Source Code”.

6. Now, paste your IFrame code into the Source Code section of your page. Then click, “Save Changes”.

And voila! Your timeline is officially embedded on the HubSpot landing page of your choosing.
2. Squarespace
If you host your website on Squarespace, you’re going to follow most of the instructions listed above. However, the third step varies for this website hosting platform.
Let’s explore how to embed a Facebook feed on Squarespace. It’s important to note: Adding JavaScript or IFrames to Code Blocks is a Premium feature available in Business and Commerce plans, so you’ll need a Premium account to proceed.
1. First, go to Facebook’s Plugin Page.

2. Copy-and-paste your business Page URL into the “Facebook Page URL” box. Then, adjust the width and height to suit your preferences depending on your website and placement.
Once you’ve adjusted the timeline, click the “Get Code” button. Copy the code in JavaScript form. 

3. Next, click “Edit Post” on a Squarespace page, then click an Insert point and choose “Code” from the menu:

4. Next, choose Javascript from the dropdown menu, and then copy-and-paste your Facebook code into the box. Then click “Apply”.

If you have additional questions on adding unique code into your Squarespace page, take a look at Squarespace’s Code Blocks FAQ page.
3. WordPress
WordPress varies slightly from the instructions listed above.
Instead of using Facebook’s custom code, you can use a WordPress plugin. (Note: You will need to upgrade to the Business plan on WordPress to use this plugin feature.)
For our purposes, let’s use this Smash Balloon Social Post Feed plugin, which is 5-star rated and has over 200,000 active installations.
Before proceeding with the following steps, ensure you install the plugin on your Business plan WordPress account. You can install either via the WordPress plugin directory, or by uploading the files to your web server (in the /wp-content/plugins/ directory). Then click “Activate”.
1. Navigate to the ‘Facebook Feed’ tab within WordPress to configure your feed. Then click “Connect a Facebook account” and choose your Business page.

2. Next, copy the shortcode [custom-facebook-feed] to embed your feed on your site. (You can also display multiple feeds of different Facebook pages by specifying a Page ID directly in the shortcode: [custom-facebook-feed id=smashballoon num=5].)

3. Paste it into the body text on your new or existing WordPress page.

4. All set! Once you preview your page you’ll see how the timeline looks in Live mode.

4. Wix
For Wix customers, you’ll use a third-party tool — Elfsight — to create the unique code that you can use on your Wix website, which is why there are a few additional steps in this list.
1. Create your own Elfsight Apps account, or login to your existing account. (It’s free to embed one Facebook feed code. If you need to use Elfsight often, consider the Basic plan, which is $18/month for startups and new businesses.)
2. Click on the “Facebook Feed” application, under the Social Tab.

3. Select the template you want to use, which will determine how your Facebook feed looks on your Wix site. For instance, you can choose to have a small-widget Facebook feed, or a full-screen Facebook feed. Click “Continue with this template…” when you’re ready.

4. Next, click the “Connect to Facebook” button to connect your business’ Facebook Page with Elfsight. You can also click on the “Layout” tab to change the height and width of your widget.

5. When you’re ready, click “Save”. A pop-up will appear that provides you with the code you need to embed your page on your Wix website.

6. Now, open your Wix ADI and select “Add” at the top of your Wix page. Click “Section to Page”.

7. Choose “HTML Embed” in the navigation bar.

8. Now, click on the section design you prefer. Then fill in the title, subtitle, and paragraph. When you’re ready, click the blue “Settings” button on HTML.

9. Choose the embed type — in this case, you’ll want “HTML code”. Then, paste the HTML code you got from Elfsight into this section. 

10. Finally, click “Publish” on your Wix page to add your Facebook feed to your live Wix site.
How to Embed Facebook Event Feed on Website
To embed a Facebook Event Feed on your website, go to the Page Plugin and paste your Facebook Page URL into the box. Then, type “events” into the Tabs section.
Now, click “Get Code” and copy-and-paste that code into your existing site using the steps outlined above.   
And there you have it! You’re now ready to embed any post, timeline, or event onto your website to increase engagement to your social pages.