New and old businesses know the importance of getting noticed and gaining an audience. A successful business will always have a social media presence and reach its customers through print marketing.
Social media creates a world that allows businesses to be easily accessible and showcase their brand. An engaging presence online continues the age-old marketing strategy, word-of-mouth. Existing customers will want to share your posts with their friends on Facebook. They have the potential to reach new customers by sharing your business’s page and posts.
Print marketing is a tried and true marketing method that businesses have successfully used for decades. Even though digital marketing is continuously on the rise, postcards, brochures, business cards, and other print products will always have marketing power.
You must ensure that every aspect of your business’s social media pages is perfect. Most importantly, every image needs to be high resolution. Low-quality, stretch, or cut-off photos will make your business appear unprepared and cheap. Don’t make silly mistakes that will deter customers. Know the basics of image sizing for social media and print marketing before you get started.
Social Media
To start, you’ll need high-quality imagery for your profile picture and cover image to attract an audience. Once you have that in place, you’ll need to post quality content to keep your followers consistently.
It might seem simple, just to upload any file of your logo and call it a day. However, half of your image could get cut off if the file is too large. Or, if you have to zoom in to a small image, it will appear pixelated and blurry.
Each platform has its sizes for the most common image placements. The requirements listed ensure that your images will appear as intended every time.
We’ve listed the top 4 social media platforms that every business should be using. If you would like for us to expand this list, let us know which platforms you need more information about.
*Pro-tip – all platforms require images to be JPEG or PNG. Also, Facebook profile pictures appear to be the best quality when uploaded as a PNG.
- Profile Picture: 170 x 170 px
- Header: 820 x 312 px
- Post: 1080 x 1080 px
- Stories: 1080 x 1920 px
- Profile Picture: 320 x 320 px
- Square Post: 1080 x 1080 px
- Landscape Post: 1080 x 566 px
- Portrait Post: 1080 x 1350 px
- Stories: 1080 x 1920 px
- Profile Picture: 400 x 400 px
- Header: 1500 x 500 px
- Post: 1200 x 1900 px
- Stories: N/A
LinkedIn (Brand/Company page)
- Profile Picture: 300 x 300 px
- Header: 1128 x 191 px
- Post: 1200 x 627 px
- Stories: N/A
More info and tips
Why Pixels?
Print requires you to design the specific dimensions of the final product. But designing for digital is different. Users can view digital content on other mediums: desktop computers, mobile, and tablets. Each medium has different-sized screens, and your content needs to look the same on all of them.
Responsive web design is vital for images to adjust with the different size screens while maintaining their quality. You can achieve high-quality images by designing at 72 PPI (pixels per inch). Most design programs, like photoshop, make it easy to remember by allowing you to choose between 300 PPI and 72 PPI before you start designing.
But pixels do so much more than fill the necessary space. They hold the color profile information to maintain that the exact color is seen on every screen. As the designer, pixels give you the ability to show an unlimited amount of colors. Remember that web content should be designed with the RGB (red, green, blue) color profile. This is because screens project varying color values of RGB to create millions of color combinations.
Where you can design
There is design software available for designers of all skill levels. But we want to provide you with a couple of free software and websites that offer pre-design templates.
Most experienced graphic designers know and probably already use Adobe programs. Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign all come at an additional cost. Consider Adobe Creative Cloud Express for free templates to customize for your brand.
Canva has a lot more templates that expand past social media posts. You can create headers for your social media platforms, logos, presentations, videos, and print marketing products. Upgrading to Canva Pro for $12.99 per month unlocks a brand kit where you can add your company’s custom brand colors. You also have access to the Content Planner, which allows you to schedule and post to your social media from a single platform.
Recommendations
Businesses need to treat profile pictures the same way personal accounts treat theirs – as a representation of themselves. A profile picture should be a logo, symbol, or emblem that your audience will recognize. Sometimes full company names are hard to fit within a profile picture. Consider these different kinds of logos that your brand can use instead.
Most social media platforms, besides Instagram, will have a header at the top of your profile. The header or cover image is theHumanize your brand by creating a collage of your team in the header image. Or use it as another advertising opportunity and showcase products and services.
Take a look at Printivity’s Twitter account. We used our logo as our profile picture so our audience could recognize our account before even reading our handle. We’re also advertising our newest product, shipping boxes, in the header image.
Two other essential elements to notice are the branded header image and the color contrast between the profile picture and header image. Especially if you are using a branded symbol as your profile picture, it’s best practice to brand all images that you put out, print or digital. The color contrast between the white background of the profile picture and the blue background header makes it easy for viewers to distinguish between the two.
Print Marketing
Social media marketing might be the newest marketing venture, but print marketing is tried and true. Holding a piece of marketing material has powerful impacts that can skyrocket your business!
No matter what products you use for marketing your company, by following these basics, your products will come out exactly as you planned.
- Color Profile – When designing for print, you must design in CMYK and convert any existing content to RGB. If your order is color-critical, we recommend contacting your printer to see the same color profile they print in.
- Resolution – Print design requires a higher resolution than digital content. Before designing, verify that the file is set to 300 PPI.
- Full Bleed – For your print, you will need to extend each side by 0.125”. For example, if you are ordering an 8.5” x 11” flyer, you’ll design it as 8.75” x 11.25”. We print passed the final dimension and cut off the excess for a clean-cut look.
- Safety Margins – When cutting sheets down to the final dimension, they are cut in stacks. This will cause some sheets to shift slightly. Do not include any critical text or imagery within the 0.125” from the edge of the final dimension.
- Embed Fonts – Once your design is complete and ready to send to the printers, you need to embed your fonts. Whether you designed in Word, PDF, Illustrator, Indesign, or Photoshop, unembedded unique fonts will automatically change once sent to another computer.
Printivity is there for you at every step of your print marketing journey. Our team can walk you through every small step. Our designers can help improve your existing design or start from scratch to make your vision real. Order from Printivity.com to get your print marketing journey started today!
