May the luck o’ the Irish be with you today and all year through.
Here’s a little piece of art we whipped up… feel free to use in your posts today! (Click for full-sized image)
Category Archives: Graphic Design
Social Media Holiday Cheer: Don’t Skip This Important Branding Detail
You might be decorating your office, sending out holiday cards, or having a Holiday Open House for your clients. But have you thought about how you’re going to celebrate the season on your social media channels?
Your branding affects the way clients view your business and differentiates you from your competitors, and social media is no exception.
Help your clients learn about your holiday and New Year specials with a pack of custom cover art. Our Creative Director Marnie will help you project the perfect image for your business this season.
Buy a multi-pack to save 10% to 20% off your entire order!
Facebook Timeline Cover 1 each (May substitute Google+ or Twitter)
Almost 27k Shares? How NorthWest Music Scene Did It.
WOW — this Facebook post from NorthWest Music Scene blew us away. Okay – almost 1,000 likes is nice (2.3% engagement rate), but not crazy considering they have over 42k fans. Look at the number of shares they have gotten (so far)? 26,290! That number represents close to 62% of their FB fans.*
Now, I don’t have an answer to the guitar question, BUT what I DO find interesting is the way the NorthWest Music Scene approached this post.
They kept the text down to just 13 words: “Who is your favorite guitar player of all time. This should be interesting.” It’s simple, easy to read as you scroll by, and by saying “this should be interesting” they indicate that they really want to know what you think! Who wouldn’t want to chime in?!
The graphic contains a few key elements:
- They asked the question on the graphic. This is a great practice. But — this in and of itself is not out of the ordinary or what impressed us.
- They asked for the share on the graphic. This is a really savvy move for a few reasons: 1.) Most posts have the majority of the words in the text area, versus in the graphic. People don’t always make the time to read a long post, especially from a brand. The graphic is more likely to catch the user’s eye as they scroll down their news feed. 2.) By asking for the “like, share,etc” in the graphic, they are skirting FB’s new clamp down on “like-baiting” completely. Confused? See this post for the deets.
- They used a casual phrasing style: “…see what your friends say” feels really personal and friendly, versus spammy.
Want to share your favorite guitar player of all time? Or just have a comment about the NorthWest Music Scene post? We’d love to hear from you!
*Of course not all 26,290 shares came from their fans. Some were friends of fans who shared the post = viral).
Free Printable Social Media Valentines
Hi there! I’m Marnie, Cosmetic Social Media’s Creative Director, and I am super excited to be writing my first blog post about what makes good design that people will share, like and pin to drive more traffic to your social media pages, and of course, your business.
To begin, I thought I’d introduce you to social media design in the best possible way–by giving it away for free! I will be sharing tricks of the trade and designing *free* digital downloads that you can snag directly from our blog so be sure to sign up for our e-newsletters.
Our very first digital download is for the heart of all holidays: Valentine’s Day. It’s such an easy way to show your clients how much you care. While we live and breathe all things social media related, a handwritten note goes a long way, especially one with a piece of candy attached to it. You can be sure that your message will not get lost in a stack of business cards. Old-school (traditional) marketing and social media should stick together like peanut butter and jelly: the more active you are on your social media pages, the more unique and thoughtful your printed materials will become.
Creating these valentines for your clients will cost you under $5 and take about 30 minutes of your time but the gesture will be something folks will remember when they are thinking of making their next appointment or purchase. You probably have most of the materials listed above in your office. We purchased the marbled heart lollipops at the 99 Cents Store and grabbed some ribbon from our art supplies. The 99 Cents Store always has a great selection of ribbons in their decorations department. Altogether I spent about $4 on card stock, candy, and ribbon (yes, I had some but I couldn’t help buying some more).
I designed four valentines that are perfect to hand out to your clients. The design not featured is our bonus valentine for those of you encouraging people to follow you on social media. We strongly support that!
Download (give them a minute to load – they are high resolution graphics)
- Social Media Valentine Cards 1 (Love Some Body)
- Social Media Valentine Cards 2 (Hey There Gorgeous)
- Social Media Valentine Cards 3 (I Love Your Beautiful Heart)
- Social Media Valentine Cards 4 (You’re Tweet to Me)
Once you have your materials, download your favorite or all designs and print it on to your card stock. Unless you have a fancypants printer, I’d recommend feeding one page in at a time to avoid any paper jams. You can also do a test print on a regular piece of paper to check your ink levels. Cut your cards out (I left enough room so that you can have white borders around the edges if you’d like) with either regular or scalloped scissors, punch a hole at the top of your card, slide your lollipop through the hole, and for the finishing touch, tie a ribbon or two around the neck of the lollipop. For this project I found the curling ribbons to be the best match as it’s hard to tie such tiny bows with satin ribbon unless the ribbon is very narrow. The curls looked sweeter to me but use any ribbon you like!
To finish, you can attach a business card, write a little note of thanks or better yet include a discount code for a Valentine’s Day deal on the back of the card. Now that’s love.
I hope that you have fun with these printables -let us know how they turn out in the comments section below! I’ll be back soon to talk about how to engage and excite your clients with visually compelling and thoughtful design. Until then, you can email me with your design questions or needs at marnie@cosmeticsocialmedia.com.
xo, Marnie
Is Your Social Media Company Marketing Themselves on Your Dime?
Every day we here at Cosmetic Social Media see both good and bad examples of social media strategy. Today we’re sharing what we consider to be an abomination: taking a client’s money to promote one’s own agency.
To illustrate what we mean, let’s take a global brand like Audi. Here is a photo from Audi’s Facebook page. Notice that BBDO (Audi’s ad agency) has not put any mention of themselves anywhere in the photo. Which is right… why would Audi want to spend their marketing budget to promote BBDO? BBDO has their own ad budget.
Okay… now let’s say you are Dr. Marty McHiggnebottom with a cosmetic practice in White Plains, NY and you hire ABC Social to manage your social media presence. They tell you they are “experts” in the field, and since it’s all Greek to you, you figure they must be experts, or why else would they say it? Plus, they seem professional and trustworthy. But, did you know, Dr. McHiggenbottom, that ABC Social is using your posts to do a little free PR for themselves on your dime? After all, you are paying them some a fee to administer your Facebook page, right? So shouldn’t the posts be all about you and your target audience (or at least nothing about them!)?
Unfortunately, this is a social media FAIL that we see on a daily basis. And without drawing attention to the offending party, we’ll blur out their name, (as well as that of their poor unsuspecting client), just show you an example:
Now, we want to point out a few things here:
- Even if the social media company took the picture themselves, they still should not use the client’s post as an opportunity for free advertising. Giving attribution to a photographer is one thing. Putting your company name on stock imagery for your own benefit is quite another.
- As much as we would like to say this is an isolated incidence, it is only one example of MANY we have found in the last week alone.
- A reputable social media company understands, and more importantly uses best social media practices, and knows to put the client (not themselves) first.
Remember the old adage, “Caveat Emptor”, (let the buyer beware)? Well… it has never been truer than right now in the social media space. Do your homework. Ask questions. Vet their work.
Questions? Just ask! Comments? Feel free to add them below!
by Monique Ramsey, Founder and Social Media Horticulturalist of Cosmetic Social Media
Gettin’ Jiggy with JPGs and More
Okay, the title is a bit weird, but how often do you find yourself trying to decipher the code of images? Between jpgs, pngs, and gifs, it’s enough to make your acronym-o-phobic! (Is that a word? If not, it should be.) And then there are vectors and rasters?! Oh my heavens.
BUT – images are an extremely important part of your online presence, and you need to use them to your best advantage. So we’ve found just the thing for you… a beautiful little infographic to help you! Check it out!
by stedas.