SOCIAL MEDIA POST DEVELOPMENT
This section shows how to generate content for social media. You can use the same guidelines for creating social media advertising content. Aim to post at least 1 -2 times per week.
SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT
First off, we will refer back to our theme (Anxiety & Depression) to see how to adapt it for social media. Take your completed blog article and identify snippets of important information.
For our Pandemic Related Anxiety topic, you could extract an impactful quote for placement:
MAKING EYE-CATCHING PROFESSIONAL POSTS
For social media in particular, we need to ensure that you display your content in an appealing way as it is an image based platform. For website articles and email, using a single high quality image (relevant to the subject matter) will suffice, as they are set against a branded template. With social media, you have a couple of choices relating to how you display your content.
For Instagram in particular, the overall collection of posts on your profile is called your ‘grid’. The more cohesive this looks, the better, as it demonstrates consistency and professionalism - see sample to the right. By keeping imagery in line with your branding, your overall social media presence will become a highly effective arm of your marketing activities.
Your main choices are to use imagery or text. For both options, you should apply your brand style, whether that be colour, font or a consistent filter.
CREATING IMAGE BASED POSTS
from Instagram
There are many free stock image sites that you can browse to find a picture to reflect your subject matter:
Unsplash
Pixabay
Stockvault
Pexels
Reshot
Nearly all images on these free stock sites have a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. This means you can distribute the images without requiring author consent, and do whatever you want with them.
In order to make images reflect your brand, you can apply an Instagram filter to the image to alter its colour and other properties.
HOW TO CREATE TEXT BASED POSTS
Looking back to our grid example, you can see that many post formats are an impactful quote or fact. If we take the sample of ‘You are not alone - 1 in 5 has significantly increased psychological distress (anxiety, depression) since the pandemic’ you can highlight part of the statement to stand out and encourage viewers to read on.
You cannot type straight into an Instagram or Facebook image space however there are many apps available that are relatively easy to use, great for for social media, and do not require a degree to operate! They can also be used for other design elements such as creating print materials, email banners, blog banners etc.
Apps to create professional posts and templates:
Canva
Adobe Spark
pablo By Buffer
Desynger
Snappa
CANVA
For this kit, we are focussing on CANVA as it offers a free account and can meet the needs of a standard Psychotherapy practice. As it resides on your phone, you can easily transfer your images to your social media accounts.
Free accounts offer a range of templates for all types of social media posts, with the ability to alter for your specific brand design. For those who feel confident using the app, you can upgrade to a paid account (€11.99 per month) that allows you to access 400k free images, use an animator function for stories, add team members etc. This is not necessary for Psychotherapy practices but good to have the option if you find yourself a budding content creator!
