1. Understand and Implement Principles of Design
Contrast, Balance, Emphasis, Proportion, Hierarchy, Repetition, Rhythm, Pattern, Whitespace, Movement, Variety, Unity – how many do you use at once? Which of these principles work well together? THERE IS NO LIMIT!
Great designs tend to display half of these elements together, sometimes even more.
However, understanding each of them in depth and implementing them in designs is the key to developing visually appealing and purposeful designs. The interactions between designing principles are not the only solution to a ‘Viral Design’ but holds great importance in terms of connecting to the audience; appeal to them in a glance and you’ve got them!
2. Evoke emotion among your audiences
Whether it is love, anger, laughter, empathy, disgust, fear, horror, nostalgia…MAKE IT EXIST!
Be strategic about the use of colors, shapes and vocabulary.
Once you are able to generate the right feel to your design, people start sharing it and tagging it endlessly.
The main purpose of social media designs and pages is to connect and engage with the appropriate audience and get them to make your content viral by sharing it.
Emotion leads to Connection, Connection leads to Sharing, Sharing is the very engagement that makes your designs GO VIRAL!
3. Choose the Right Social Media Platform
Social media is an amalgamation of different platforms; absence on any one of them, and you lose an audience that might be using that platform.
On the contrary, not every brand needs to exist on every platform because they all are different in nature; select a platform that compliments the voice of your brand, and targets the demographic that would use your brand.
Any good content eventually floats across various platforms but picking the right platform to promote your brand story is crucial for it to GO VIRAL.
A campaign promoting products and services for home bakers or influencers, or shopaholics aged between 20-35 yrs, job openings or internships in creative fields are going to show more engagement hence more leads through Instagram – a social media platform driven by visuals over content.
4. Display authenticity…differently!
Remember how we said, to GO VIRAL, your designs need to bring out some kind of emotion, for people to engage with your content and share it? This very element needs to be authentic!
One can never force an emotion; your design has to provoke authentic reactions among audiences without you asking them to respond a certain way.
Explore the trends across all social media platforms, decide your audience and understand their likes, dislikes and interests. With an actionable objective in mind, start working on strategies to compel your audience to take the action that you want them to take – sharing, reposting with hashtags, giveaways, participating in contests, posting their own picture that could be re-shared by your brand, are some of the routes taken by most brands.
Also, authenticity doesn’t mean going by what’s been done and tested before. Exercising creative freedom at the same time abiding by the rules of social media platforms is the key to originality.
Originality brings uniqueness – that engages people like nothing else, making your designs GO VIRAL!
5. Less is more, it’s not a cliché it’s a fact!
Short and crisp copy, easily comprehensible yet compelling visuals, direct call to action – and there you are!
Clarity is the key to convince your audience about the products and services offered by your brand; it can help your brand gain trust.
Playing around with new words doesn’t make a ‘Good Copy’. A copywriter needs to come up with more than one direct way to convey the same message.
Remember to use White Space as the prime principle while designing the visuals and positioning the copy.
What is even more important to get your designs right, is a smooth understanding between the copywriter and the designer – where both should be able to negotiate their creativity only to aid to a great design – VIRAL DESIGN!