How to create a social media-friendly brand, website and logo design

Most of the discussion about social media marketing focuses on creating content – how to write great blog posts, develop unique Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn updates, and use the written word to spark conversations with your customers and prospects.

But one of the most important and often overlooked aspects of social media marketing is social media design. Graphic design – presenting the image, values and personality of your company through visual elements – is one of the most powerful ways to effectively communicate to your audience. “A picture is worth a thousand words,” as the old saying goes, and this is still true today in the world of social media. If you have a good, social media-friendly brand, website and logo design that is created with the needs of social media in mind, you’ll be more likely to get a bigger audience, gain valuable interactions with your audience, and enhance the credibility of your company via social media.

Here are a few examples of how social media-friendly design can help your company:

Logo designs

Just as your company website needs to be designed and written with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind, your company logo needs to be “optimized” for social media. Does your company logo fit easily into a Twitter thumbnail image or Facebook cover photo? Many company logos get shrunk down to size when company reps are making comments or responding to customer questions via social media – make sure that your company’s image isn’t getting lost in translation. It might be worth designing a new streamlined logo or adapting your logo for social media purposes. Make sure that the essential design elements don’t get lost – you want your customers to recognize your company logo wherever they see it, whether it’s on Twitter, LinkedIn or on a piece of direct mail that comes across their desks.

Twitter background

Creating a unique Twitter background is one of the best ways to immediately welcome your Twitter followers and remind them that they are interacting with your company and your brand. Your company is not generic, so why settle for the generic background assigned by Twitter? Here are some easy resources to create a custom Twitter background for your company’s Twitter profile.

Facebook cover photo

In the same way, your company’s Facebook page should have its own unique cover photo that welcomes visitors to your page and reminds them of your company’s brand. Here are a few websites that make it easy to design custom Facebook cover photos for your company Facebook page.

Website design

Is your website design social media friendly? There are a few things you can do to get more social media interaction from your website:

• Include social sharing buttons (so people can immediately share your content with a single click).
• Make it easy for people to connect with your company on LinkedIn, Twitter or other social networks.
• Make your website mobile friendly. More people are using mobile web browsers than ever before – if your site takes too long to load, you might lose customers who are checking out your site via a smartphone, tablet or other mobile device.

It helps maintain consistency to have the same look and feel of graphic design across all of your company’s social media presence. Whether prospective customers find your company via a search engine, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, you want them to see consistent logos, colors and design elements so that your company brand is more recognizable and credible. Smart social media-friendly graphic design is one of the best ways to maintain credibility and ease the introduction of your company to prospective customers.

Gregg Schwartz is the Director of Sales & Marketing for Strategic Sales and Marketing (SSM), one of the industry founding lead generation companies specializing in major account B2B lead generation.