Let’s face it. We’ve all been there. We need to save every penny we can as a business owner, especially when we’re just starting out. There are definitely ways to trim the fat. You can make sure you’re using coupon codes when you’re ordering office supplies. Unscrew a couple light bulbs in the office to save a little bit on the energy bill? If your eyes can handle it, why not?
One area where you really shouldn’t skimp is on content creation.
According to Forbes contributor Scott Goodson, brands are the combination of psychology and science brought together. Brands outlive products and convey things like trust quality and experience.
So when you’re starting out building your business do you really want to build an image of a “fly by night” company? A mistake often made by businesses is to handle creating their social media content in-house. The thought process is that they know how to use Facebook and Twitter, so they want to just apply that knowledge of sharing an occasional meme (which I’m definitely not opposed to) and posting a picture from time to time.
The problem is that human beings are drawn to certain things, and repelled by others. If a consumer is browsing online for a vendor and two companies have very similar offers it may come down to which company gives the customer a better “feeling” while they shop. It’s helpful to add images to your social media posts, but poorly designed images (think: tacky clip-art) may give a customer a bad vibe.
You may be surprised to find out that there are lots of options to help you create better imagery and improve your professional appearance on social media. Fiverr.com is a good resource for social media content creation, with a lot of options. The nice thing is that you don’t have to go through the trouble of hiring someone for this role. If things don’t work out you’re not out much, just the cost of the deal you made with the vendor on Fiverr.
If you ultimately cannot afford to pay someone to design your content then there is the option of using Canva.com which has many templates that look good and professional for free. I hope that at the very least, after reading this article you’ll stay away from the clip-art.
Dave