In an ever-growing sea of content, beautiful and creative design matters. For those who specialize in design, that's no surprise. According to a study by DMI, design-driven companies outperform the Standard & Poor's 500 - an index of the 500 largest publicly traded companies in America - by 228 percent. And sure, design should be considered when creating social media posts, as it now functions as a company's most important figurehead - even ahead of its own website. However, many companies still underestimate the high relevance of a professional social media presence. The big problem is that all too often they don't have the time or the know-how to design and prepare each individual post to a high standard. 

One of the most important points is the design. After all, it is the first thing that comes to the viewer's attention. And the decisive factor is whether this content is consumed further or not. Since "good" design is very subjective, we define it for this article as the preparation that 

• Attracts attention,
• enables the content to be understood as easily and quickly as possible,
• promotes a professional appearance, and
• fits to the company and creates recognition value by means of corporate design.

The challenge here is to constantly publish high-quality content. Since social media should ideally bring a very high benefit for companies at low cost, we have four tips for you on how you can use good design to advance your content marketing.

1. Create Brand Awareness

90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual. A visual or image or video material is processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text material. This should also be considered when creating social media posts. Continuous design throughout your social media posts will keep your business better in the minds of potential customers. 

2. Provide value 

Good design isn't just about presenting content prettily, but also in a way that users can "easily digest." Your graphics, facts and figures should be catchy and easy to understand. You can achieve this, for example, with animated snippets, short video clips that convey the information succinctly. But for your perfect social media post, a third part is still missing. 

3. Integrate a call-to-action

With graphics, images and videos, you can clearly persuade a potential customer to take the desired action. Most importantly, make the action you want to trigger through the post very clear. This can be achieved with a call-to-action, which directly catches the eye. Limit the number of choices, because if a prospect is offered too many options, they often end up not making a choice at all.

4. Position yourself as a thought leader

And that's how good design not only looks nice, but has a real impact. In numbers: 94% more page visits are achieved with illustrated social media posts than posts without visuals. Using coordinated photos, infographics, memes, illustrations, videos, etc. helps you leave your competition behind. This is because 91% of B2B companies are now doing content marketing and 86% of B2C companies also see it as a key strategy to attract new customers. However, only 30% of marketers create their own visuals. And videos are even rarer. A very nice opportunity to stand out from the crowd! So unique and creative design elements can be an effective way to stand out and position yourself as a thought leader.

With mate, before you build or renew your social media account, it's easy to build a library of content that specifically matches your company's corporate design. You can fill the existing templates without pixel pushing, without the risk of moving the template, formatting it incorrectly or disregarding individual components of the corporate design. Design skills are not necessary for this. And we can also support you in template creation with our network of talented designers. With a full content library, you can create your posts consistently and in your corporate design without making your feed look too rigid, as there are many different template variants available.

If you are interested, sign up for our next beta round and see for yourself!