Images are an advertiser’s opportunity to catch hold of a user’s attention as she scrolls through her social media feeds. Images speak to us on a deeper and more instinctive level than text. We process the content of images thousands of times more quickly than we read. The right image can catch the crucial split second of focus that makes all the difference to the impact of your paid social ads.
Original Images Perform Better
Image sharing sites with free high-quality images are widespread. Unsplash is one example among many. The images on these sites are good enough to be used in advertising, but original images have more impact.
The best free images have been used thousands of times on blogs, social media posts, and ads. They are recognizable and say nothing about the uniqueness of your brand. Original images don’t trigger the sense of familiarity that users associate with low-effort advertising.
Be Bold (But Tasteful) with Color
Your images should be obvious and attention-grabbing without being discordant or garish. Think of the Instagram posts that stand out most to you. They often use a small number of complementary and contrasting colors to catch users’ attention. Create a color palette relevant to your brand and easily distinguished from the colors that surround your ad in the feed.
Images are Part of the Message
Inexperienced social media advertisers see images as a space to display copy and nothing more. In the best social media ads, the images and text work together. The image reiterates, strengthens, and complements the copy. The copy riffs on or completes a thought present in the image. Copy can contrast with images to create humor or pathos. Images can generate the emotional or conceptual context that helps the copy hit home.
Choose Images That Evoke Emotions
Images that make us feel something engage our attention and images are far better at generating a fast emotional response than copy in the context of a social media feed. Images that evoke emotion are more memorable and they are more likely to elicit engagement.
This is true of a whole range of emotions: happiness, nostalgia, coziness, admiration, aspiration. The emotions that images evoke should be coherent with the advertiser’s brand and marketing strategy. A luxury watch brand deals in aspiration, whereas a brand advertising back-to-school equipment is better served by images that evoke the contentment of deep focus or the joy of learning.
Follow Platform Design Guidelines and Recommendations
Each platform—whether Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter—publishes guidelines for images and videos. For example, Facebook recommends that images for ads in the feed have a size ratio of 1.91:1 to 4:5 in the highest possible resolution and in .jpg or .png format. The guidelines differ by social media platform, ad format, and device. Failing to follow these guidelines can result in ads that don’t look right, are more costly and lower in quality.
Images are the foundation of a successful social media campaign, but copy is just as important, as we’ll explore in the next article in this series on social media advertising creative.
