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Written by: Justin Adams
Social media involves interacting with clients, potential prospects and other financial advisors. This means that it’s essential to do everything possible to increase engagement and get your name out there. After all, the whole point of being on social media is to grow your audience, which is where images come in. However, it’s not as simple as just creating or looking up random images to use. There are strategies that will ensure that the pictures you choose will create the most positive social media impact.
To demonstrate, this blog will show how selecting the best images can boost your social media presence, and include a few strategies to get it done.
Why You Should Use Visuals
Besides the obvious reason for using images to make your post more appealing to the eyes. Visuals are a great way to significantly boost engagement and interaction on your posts. Most marketers know that images can increase engagement, but did you know that content with images receives up to 40% more shares than those without? People are more likely to share your posts because they’re more visually interesting and entertaining. It’s important to remember that social media is about showcasing your brand’s personality. And in this instance, it’s about showcasing your company and interacting with your audience.
Images are also a great jumping point for sharing short stories. They say an image is worth a thousand words, and that’s what you should be aiming for. For example, instead of sharing a post with a long-winded sentence explaining statistics, share a graphic that shows that data. If statistics prove true, the image will receive more engagement and interaction. Which I don’t believe any financial advisors would have a problem with.
Considerations Before Selecting Your Images
There are certain aspects for a financial advisor to consider before selecting the images that they wish to share. Including but not limited to brand rules, proper image sizing, and following copyright laws.
Define Your Brand Rules
First off, before starting any image selection, it’s important to define what rules you want to follow in accordance with your brand. How would you describe your brand’s voice? This can greatly influence the types of visuals that are best for your social media post. For instance, if you’ve established your brand to be more personable, sharing more serious images will confuse your audience. On the other hand, if your brand has been a more business-focused voice. It would be out of the left field for you to all of a sudden post a funny image like a meme. There’s a slight chance that this change could increase your engagement, but it’s more likely to backfire and confuse your audience.
Understand Proper Image Sizing
Next, it’s important to understand proper image sizing for all the social media you use including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Using the wrong dimensions can end up with blurry images, weird picture dimensions, and hard-to-understand visuals. To demonstrate the most-common sizes for each social media site, check out this list:
- Facebook 1200 x 630 pixels
- Instagram is 1080 x 1080 pixels
- LinkedIn is 1200 x 627 pixels
- Twitter is 1600 x 900
Make Sure to Respect Copyright Law
It’s extremely important to follow copyright laws to ensure that you don’t infringe on others’ property. There are a number of ways to avoid breaking any copyright laws. The two easiest ways are to either create your own images or use royalty-free image sites. Using your own images alleviates all chances of you breaking copyright laws because it’s content you created yourself for your own use. Royalty-free image sites are great because most of them allow the use of their images with minimal worry. The only caveat is that some sites prefer or restrict you from utilizing their images for commercial use. Of course, that doesn’t apply to all sites, so just be sure to read any rules they may have.
One great site for images is Unsplash, allowing users to search a large database of high-resolution photos provided by creators for creators.
Additionally, Google offers a simple way to check what images you can use and share. Google Search Help has a page made specifically for finding images that offer licenses for reuse. Here are the steps to check to see what images have info on reuse:
Should I Stick to Stock Images or Create My Own?
This is the biggest question any financial advisor will be asking themselves when it comes to posting images on social media. Do you want to quickly share pictures created by another person or take the time to make your own? And while it may seem like a pretty simple problem to answer, there’s more to think about than you might’ve imagined.
Stock vs Original Pros and Cons
Stock images and original images both have their own set of benefits that make them an enticing prospect. For example, stock photos are available to everyone and tend to be very easy to find. But they’re also unoriginal and don’t tend to leave much of an impact. On the other hand, original videos can take time to make but they’re unique and are more likely to catch the attention of social media users.
It’s a balancing act of what you feel is necessary for your business. If you want to show off your branding, then creating your images will be your best choice as it allows you to keep with the brand voice. For those who don’t care as much for brand voice, then stock images might be the best choice for you.
Where to Find Stock Images?
You’ve decided on stock images for your post, but now the question is where to find them. There are numerous sites that offer high-quality stock photos for all to use. As mentioned earlier, Unsplash is a great site as it provides quality content without asking to see a single cent. Of course, you can always upgrade for a larger selection of images, but it’s not necessary to get the job done.
How to Create Your Own “Stock” Images
You’ve decided to take the path less taken and create your own images, but now the question is how do you make those pictures? We recommend checking out Canva as it allows financial advisors to create beautiful images with a library of free elements. Canva is easy to use and will any financial advisor feel like a graphic design pro. The best part is that Canva is 100% free unless you want to unlock additional features, but they’re not necessary at all. Even better, FMG is partnered with Canva which means image creation is baked right into FMG with accessible integration.
Related: Lead Generation for Financial Advisors: 10 Tested Tips to Generate Leads