In our fourth installment of Social Media Best Practices, we discuss the importance of creating compelling creative content. Whether you’re managing a digital ad campaign for a client or simply posting organic content for your own brand, pushing out content that grabs your audience’s attention will lead to success in engagement and reach. If you missed Best Practice #3: “Chooses the Right Objective,” click here.
Create compelling creative content
First and foremost, you’ll want to make sure you are formatting ads correctly using the preferred specs of the platform, which are prone to change every year or so. At the time of writing, square 1:1 images work best in most placements across Facebook and Instagram. The square format takes up more vertical space in the news feed and has more of an opportunity to catch the audience’s eyes. Images should be exported and uploaded at 600 x 600px in order to render without compression.
Once those basic formatting boxes are checked, you can start to think about visual content, which is a much more complex issue.
This is another good moment to take a step back and ask: What will catch the eye of someone who doesn’t have any pre-existing connection to your brand or organization? It’s a good idea to play into the content types that work well for everyday people using the platform. Memes, important facts, beautiful photos and custom designs work well because users appreciate the effort. What creative assets can you put together that will be sharable or genuinely inform people?
Take note: Facebook prefers images without text. Text-less images are less ‘spammy’, more emotional experience in line with the core social experience. They are also much more adaptable to the many screen sizes and placements across the Facebook and Instagram platforms. To push advertisers in the direction of text-less images, the platform has provided many different ‘Headline’ and ‘Description’ text areas that can be used to add detail to posts. Playing within these confines helps Facebook generate ads for you that are optimized to get the most out of their algorithms. While it may be tempting to build your ads around eye-catching text, there are legitimate trade-offs to consider.
One more tip: Take advantage of the many customization options Facebook provides when advertising with multiple placements by default. Instagram Stories, in particular, have a variety of copy length limitations and animation options that may help your content perform better.
