5 Questions Authors Need to Ask about Social Media Design

Getting your social media in order starts with visual appeal. I brought in an expert this week to ask a few questions about why design is important for authors and social media

Why is design important for authors with their social media?

As an author, you want people to read your books and for them to sell, so you are an entrepreneur as well. That means not only writing the book but promoting it too — so design becomes a key supporter.

Design will assist in developing a strong brand image for the book as well as a personal brand for the author, which is vital for getting recognition and increasing influence online. This is as essential for authors with publishing contracts as it is for those who are self-published, as publishers anticipate their authors to play a role in marketing their books too. But if you self-publish, you are also accountable for the design of the book — inside and out.

Design brings all these elements together — branding, marketing and book design — into an attractive total.

Why should a writer use a professional designer?

Professional, custom design will not only get you a striking cover that is on target for your subject matter and market, but will also help institute your personal brand so significant for a robust marketing effort when promoting your book. A holistic approach becomes predominantly imperative when you try to maintain a constant presence throughout all the assorted social media and online channels, including your website.

A good, well-rounded designer will consult with authors on the overall marketing plan and design beyond just the book cover, bringing their entire presence together into an efficient parcel. That’s why I think it is imperative to hire a designer who does more than just book covers — someone who looks at the big picture and advises on things along the way you may not have thought of.

What is the downside to using services like Fiverr?

You mean services that offer designs “starting at $5?” The trouble with things like that is they leave the most imperative feature of doing good quality work out of the equation — the relationship between designer and client and overall design procedure. Good design is accomplished by partnering with a designer you trust. That’s the only way to create efficient design that pleases the author certainly, but just as important, design that pleases the audience for which the book was intended. 

 Good design is not produced in a void where the designer goes off to his creative dungeon only to surface days later with the perfect design. That may create an attractive product that is agreeable to the eye, but one which doesn’t essentially support the content or the market being targeted. Design should be more than just mere surface adornment — good design is about encapsulating and visually communicating the gist of an idea (your book!) in a simple, powerful, compelling way that gets people to take notice and act. 

 What are the most common mistakes you see with social media design?

People who are otherwise very smart and well-respected with dazzling credentials often present themselves online in a way that kills their reputations. I find that mind-boggling.

Everywhere you look there are blurry, low resolution images, bad logos that look muddy when small, and run-of-the-mill or worse — busy, cluttered, indecipherable page designs. I think it’s mostly the result of someone opening a new Facebook or Twitter page one evening, perhaps with well-meaning intentions to make it better someday, but then that day never comes. As an author selling a book, you can’t afford to let that sit — you need to begin establishing yourself and increasing your presence now — as you’re writing the book if not earlier. And it needs to be buttoned-up to be effective.

You did a fantastic job on my social media design work. Can you explain how you chose the colours and style for my social media design and blog?

I usually lean to focus more on the on the whole design and typography more than I do colour, which is most likely one of the more subjective things you can engage in. Colour decisions are typically arrived at during the overall design process and working through an assortment of components.

Colour should be a factor of what is suitable for the project, the audience, and sensible deliberations such as what will be most decipherable or reproduce better when printed. It is less about what someone’s personal preferences are. For personal branding, however, colour does become as much a purpose of who the person is and what they are comfortable with as it is what makes sense from a business viewpoint.

A tricky balance for sure, but based on all the positive feedback you received and what you’ve accomplished, I think we achieved that! And yes, we also used your favourite colour.

Why is it important for design to be at the front of the branding process and not an afterthought?

Since design is a primary constituent of the brand policy, it should be involved at the earliest stages. If it is tagged on at the end, then it’s just a layer of adornment on top of an approach that may not be sound or well thought through. Although the policy informs the design, design is also essential to the procedure as it is being shaped.

Oftentimes when design is brought in late, issues occur that should have been corrected much earlier, leading to costly fixes or worse, a flawed plan left as is because it’s so late in the game.

What other design tips do you think are important for authors to build their social media platform?

Most people tend to think of designers as decorators who make stuff look first-class. But good designers take a much broader approach and if you want to achieve your business objectives, design is so much more than that.

My single most significant piece of advice is to think of designers more as business and marketing strategists, and less as artists. Design is surely an art, but professional designers are as savvy at business, psychology and communications as they are at being imaginative. Good designers know how to ask the right questions and distill your messaging down to its core, setting the groundwork for a graceful design explanation that will meet all your different marketing and communications needs — only then do we also make it look great!

If you don’t know where to begin, I propose hiring someone you belief and listening to them as they direct you through the design process. A good designer will listen to you and support in defining your objectives to get you where you need to go.

If you don’t know any designers, the social channels also offer the tools you require to find them and the social proof to back it up. Ask around — check and see what they’ve have done, how much experience they have, how they engage with people online, how responsible they appear and what they’re recommendations are like. It all adds up to a pretty solid picture of what your experience with them will be like too.