Over 4.9 billion people are using social media, which is over half of the world’s population. For businesses, an effective social media presence is a must. But what makes a social media presence effective?

Visual imagery is the foundation of any decent social media presence and has an important relationship with social media content and marketing strategy.

With that in mind, what are the specific benefits of using graphic design in your social media strategy?

­Attention Span

Recent studies show that most people’s attention span has gone down to around 8-seconds, with scientists recording that the human brain can process images in 13 milliseconds.

To take advantage of this, it’s advisable to use vibrant, eye-catching visuals wherever possible on social media. In-fact, the statistics support this, showing that posts with visuals achieve 180% more engagement.

Visual communication is an effective way to articulate your brand message, and audience’s will judge you very quickly by your ‘tone’, both in text and imagery. This is why using visuals wherever relevant is important.

Brand Recognition

Think of a popular brand you know well, for example, Nike, or McDonalds. What is the first thing you think of? It may be the product (such as trainers, or a burger), but for lots of people, the colours and logo will stick with you, and you will remember those visual details.

Your logo and brand colours may be the first impression a customer has of your brand, so importantly, they need to be memorable.

Professionalism

Sophisticated graphic design that accompanies text portrays your company as established in its sector. A consistent colour scheme (for memorability), professionally captured images (most iPhone cameras suffice), repeated font usage (font families for variation) are just some ways you can ensure your company comes across as professional. If your audience knows what to expect from your posts, you can build up a long-term relationship and returning business.

On the other hand, it’s worth ensuring your graphic design efforts aren’t harming your business – mismatched text that’s hard to read, displeasing colour palettes and spelling mistakes are easy ways to portray a negative message about your business, so you’ll want to avoid that.

Shareability and Engagement

Visual images increase shareability and engagement. There is a demand for interactive content – which is displayed in the increasing use of visual apps like TikTok and Instagram. Visual imagery, including video, is more likely to receive likes, comments, shares and even followers. Humorous content such as ‘memes’ and ‘reactions’ are commonly reshared, so consider this as part of your social strategy (of course, while remaining relevant).

Persuasion

Visuals may encourage your audience to read more on your pages and website. This is beneficial if you’re informing them about news in your sector, or how to use a product you offer.

Information doesn’t need to be boring; it can be vivid in text through visual graphics, articulating in a way most people can understand.

In Summary

Graphic design and social media posting goes hand-in-hand. Clearly, if you’re looking to improve your social media post performance, making it visual is the way to go.

To illustrate the point above, we made a graphic design version of all the information discussed in this article. Let us know what you think by commenting or getting in touch at info@paramountmedia.co.uk

Are you spending too much time, or not enough, on content for your business?

Unsure what’s right to post about?

Don’t know which platforms would be best for your business?

Small to medium businesses often think that it would save time and money to create their own content. Sometimes, this can work. But for most business owners, this extra responsibility can be more of a hindrance to the business than help.

Here are the 5 Signs You Need to Outsource Your Social Media Marketing:

1. Time isn’t your friend.

You’re busy doing your normal duties, and then on top of those, you remember you need to post about something important happening in your business. When this is a consistent problem, the stress of having to remember something additional on top of managing a business starts to drastically reduce the quality of your product or services. It’s likely that you simply won’t have enough time to really focus your marketing activities, which may impact how much engagement your posts get. It’s no surprise most businesses outsource their marketing: a specialised team can spend the ample amount of time instead, and you have important hours to focus on running your business.

2. You're struggling with one or more areas of social media management.

In the age of social media, it’s easy to presume that anybody can use social media for marketing purposes. This is true, but not everybody has the expertise and experience using social media for this specialised purpose. Social media is more than text on a screen, it can be written articles, photos, videos, and graphic design, with strategy to make sure content is intentional. Marketing companies have the tools required to create this on hand, as well as professionals who know what they are doing.

3. You don’t have a social media strategy or content plan.

When you don’t make any plan about what kind of content you’d like to post, when and how frequently, you can often establish an irregular schedule. This could look like, a sudden influx of posts one week, and then months without any. One goal of social media marketing efforts is to engage your audience, and irregularity could impact this. Random paid ads with no plan could similarly impact engagement and waste lots of money. Marketing companies can design a plan specific to your business and goals and schedule your content regularly, at the best times.

4. You’re spreading yourself too thin.

Using every single platform might not be the best strategy. Depending on your audience, goals, business, and content, it might be more useful for you to focus your marketing on LinkedIn and Facebook, than other platforms. Different content works on different platforms, and a slightly different strategy may be required on each.

5. You can’t keep up with updates and changes.

New tools are added all the time to various digital platforms, and algorithms are changed. If you’re not spending some time tracking these changes, and what they mean for your marketing strategy, you will likely fall behind. This is natural when your focus lies elsewhere, and not all new tools will be useful. A good marketing company will keep an eye on these for you, ensuring that your accounts keep up, and your content is on-trend and relevant.

You might have some really great ideas about what your social media content should look like.

Share this with us, and let us take the responsibility of creating and managing your digital marketing off your hands.

We can run your social media for you.

For the full range of our social media packages, https://paramountmedia.co.uk/business-marketing-services/ or email us on info@paramountmedia.co.uk

Where do you go to search for products or services? Most likely, your answer is an online search engine like Google.

Setting up a Google Business page is essential if you want your business to be discovered and remembered by customers. It allows customers to find you on Google Maps, run targeted advertisements and provides another platform to share important news and information about your business.

First, you need a Google account. You can set this up using your email (we recommend using an email address associated with your business)

After this is completed, create a profile – the page should look like this:

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2. Here, you enter the name of your business, and search for your business category.

3. The next step is to choose a location that customers can visit. This especially is useful if your business has a shopfront. It will prompt you to enter your business address or position a pin on a map for the location of your business. If you don’t have a shop front staffed during business hours (9-5), select No.

4. Then you will be prompted to enter the service area to your business, up to 20 are allowed. This can encompass the main locations that you serve. Google recommends keeping your service area a maximum of 2 hours from your business location if possible.

5. Enter a phone number and website URL. Then click next.

6. Finish.

7. Google will then need information to verify your business, providing you the option of a code sent via email or phone. This final step is important as your business won’t be listed on Google until it's verified.

As part of your overall marketing strategy, having a Google business page is incredibly useful. If you’re too busy with running your business to set up pages or keep them up to date with regular content, get in touch so we can take this responsibility off your hands. We have several packages available, including a one-off Google business page set up.

To read our How to Set up a Facebook Business Page, click here: https://paramountmedia.co.uk/news/marketing/how-to-set-up-a-facebook-business-page/

As a company already offering a four-day week to its employees, we were incredibly curious about the National Four-Day Week trial taking place last June-December (2022).

In our last two articles exploring the topic, we identified the overall benefits to both companies and employees in addition to the history involved in making a change to the traditional workweek.

Now the trial has finished, the official findings are out. A staggering 92% of companies are continuing with the four-day week (figure one). The reasons for this are clear, 71% of employees reported a decrease in ‘burnout’, meaning exhaustion or frustration (figure two), and secondly, 40% of employees reported a decrease in sleep difficulties (figure three).

These aren’t the only benefits, a four-day week increases everyone’s work life-balance, which can improve mental health, rest, and overall motivation.

The benefits for employees may seem more obvious, but what about businesses? Companies in the trial saw that their revenue stayed virtually the same, rising 1.4% on average (figure four). This shows that reducing the traditional workweek down to four days can in fact make a positive difference to revenue, rather than impacting it negatively.

The reasons for the four-day week are clear. This is the first trial of its kind in the UK, and workplaces still have a long way to go to optimise employee’s health and wellbeing while maintaining the growth of the business. However, this trial and its conclusions are a positive start to new ways of working. We expect to see this trial’s influence unfold in many other companies as time goes on.

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Images taken from https://twitter.com/4Day_Week and information taken from https://autonomy.work/portfolio/uk4dwpilotresults/

Facebook isn’t just a platform to post photographs of your dinner, or your latest meet up with friends… increasingly, Facebook is used by businesses to meet marketing goals. If you are realising you need to start investing in marketing your business online, but you’re unsure how to start, this article will walk you through setting up a Facebook Business Page.

You need a personal Facebook page to do this, as you will be admin of the account (although these settings can be changed if you have a designated social media manager).

Firstly, navigate to Create New Page found in the left-hand side of your Facebook timeline under Pages, or find it in the menu, which is a circle symbol next to your profile picture (Desktop, on mobile the menu bar looks like three rectangles).

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Then you will have some sections to fill. The first is your Page Name, the name of your business will do here. Then the Category, which indicates to your audience the field your business is in, for example engineering, construction, retail, etc.

Your bio is optional, but we would advise filling it in with a summary of the service your company provides. This can be edited later, so it doesn’t need to be perfect.

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Following this, you have the option to add contact details, location and opening hours and add a profile and cover photo, which we would recommend doing as soon as you set the page up. This will allow your customers to get in touch, find you, and allows you to establish a brand identity with your logos and images of your workplace, or products or services you provide.

Once your page is set up, you can start sharing your latest news, updates to your opening hours, reply to customer inquiries and importantly, paid advertisements. These are especially useful if you have offers or discounts on current products or services you provide, or they can be advertisements to simply boost your brand awareness.

Additionally, recent updates to Facebook My Business gives businesses more control, allowing you to engage with posts as your business account without having to manually switch. Joining groups can be very helpful for your business, as you can engage with people who are looking for services such as yours.

Having active social media pages is essential for your business. If you’re too busy with running your business to set up pages or keep them up to date with regular content, get in touch so we can take this responsibility off your hands.

World Mental Health Day is an international day, recognised on October 10th every year. The day was created to raise awareness of mental health issues and to promote better education about mental illness; it also serves as a reminder that good employee wellbeing is an essential element in any workplace environment.

To recognise this day, we explore the ways in which you can look after your mental health at work.

A Deloitte survey revealed that 91% of respondents referred to stress as negatively impacting the quality of their work. There is clearly importance in prioritising self-care and mental health while at work.

How to look after your mental health:

World Mental Health Day is a reminder for people to prioritise your mental health at work. Taking care of yourself is essential to give your best to others. It is easy to become suddenly overwhelmed, so implementing self-care will prevent burn out, giving you more energy to give to yourself, life, and important responsibilities!


Digital Marketing is critical for business expansion, it can literally and figuratively place your business ‘on the map’. 54% of individuals survey social media to research products they wish to purchase, which means there are a lot of people using social media platforms to make decisions.

How many times have you looked up a clothing company on Instagram to see if the quality of the clothing is the same as what is on their website? As social media has grown in popularity, it’s now much more common for people to use it as they would a search engine.

With more people online than ever before, why is digital marketing an important investment? In addition to connecting with potential consumers on a mass scale, digital marketing provides business owners with numerous additional benefits.

The Benefits:

  1. Connection. Considering that 63.1% of the world’s population is online, it is no surprise that the online world is becoming more prominent in ‘offline’ spaces every single day. Customers are online and searching for your business. Connecting them to your accounts and promoting your services puts you in the best position to develop your client base and establish trust.
  2. Interaction. Connection is directly related to interaction. An online presence allows you to learn about your customer base, their preferences, dislikes, and how much they engage with your content and services. These factors can be measured by engagement, or lack thereof, and allow you to cultivate plans on how to improve connection and interaction.
  3. Global and Local Reach. There is an international audience available to you across social media that you are unable to reach through traditional marketing techniques. Importantly, local visibility is also improved by an online presence. We mentioned in one of our prior articles how ‘near me’ is a common search term that people often search on Google. It is crucial to ensure your business shows up if you have a physical shopfront.
  4. Targeting. There are many ways you can target your desired audience. This may be through pay-per-click (PPC) ads, search engine optimisation (SEO), targeted content, or through carefully monitoring engagement on your website and social media accounts.
  5. Awareness. Digital spaces provide many opportunities to establish and promote your business. Maintaining consistent posting of relevant content is one way to do this. Once created, brand awareness is a way to ensure loyal customers keep coming back.
  6. Testimonials. Customers look to sites like Google or Facebook for instant reviews on whether your products or services are worthwhile. It is important to provide instant proof to customers in this way and investing in digital marketing allows you to do this.
  7. Savings. Rather than relying on costly traditional marketing approaches such as print distribution (handing out leaflets, for example), you can sign up for free on social media websites and Google if you have an internet connection, a mobile or PC, and an email. The accessibility of social media is particularly beneficial for you, especially if you are starting out with limited funds.

These are just some of the reasons digital marketing is important for your business. Being focused and creating a strategy is also important so that you can measure your goals effectively, ensuring your time is well spent.

Don’t have the time to manage your own social media or need any other digital marketing assistance?

Paramount Media can design a bespoke package for you to help your marketing efforts. Contact us here for more information.

In June, we wrote about the four-day work week trial currently taking place this year (June - November) across 70 companies. As it is now coming to the end of September, we wanted to explore how the trial is going, and whether it has been successful.

According to Bloomberg UK, the results are, so far, largely positive. Increasing productivity was a reason we identified a four-day workweek as beneficial to the workplace, and the results show that 49% of the companies involved have stated that productivity has improved, whereas 46% said it has remained stable. These numbers are encouraging after the initial three months, and they demonstrate that, in a number of scenarios, reducing working hours may increase employee productivity.

Another pilot of the four-day work week that happened across 2015-2019 in Iceland saw a dramatic increase in employee well-being. This must be prioritised by companies, especially considering the economic difficulties for many people in the UK currently. Increased productivity goes naturally alongside employee wellbeing, and you can’t have one without the other.

Work-life balance is another compelling reason to consider the four-day week, and this is something those taking part in the trial have regarded as important. As recorded by the Guardian, a worker stated that ‘an extra day off on Friday is a dream come true’. Work-life balance has an undeniable relationship to employee wellbeing, another benefit of this approach.

There have been some drawbacks, such as schedules needing to be planned more effectively and precisely, and some small companies have struggled with the change than bigger organisations.

Despite this, 88% of the leaders in participating organisations reported that the trial is going well. Changes have been able to be implemented with little issue, which suggests that so far, it is mostly a success.

This trial may just see many companies shifting to the four-day week from November onwards, which could persuade others who did not take part in the trial to follow suit.

In November, we will follow with more updates on the success of this six-month trial.

Follow our social media accounts to stay informed:

It seems like every day, there’s new things to learn on social media. Staying on top of the latest social media updates will ensure your business is in the best position to respond accordingly and make use of any new tools at your disposal!

Read on for the latest updates by platform.

Twitter

Testing the Edit Button.

Twitter confirmed, they’re testing the edit button.

Users on Twitter Blue are already able to edit their tweets – but soon this feature will be rolled out to everyone.

Having an edit button on Twitter has been a controversial issue for a while now. But for businesses, this tool is incredibly useful – no more deleting the whole tweet just for one small typo.

Instagram

Repost tool.

Instagram are trialling the repost tool. This is a tool that will allow users to show their followers content they saw, liked and subsequently reshared. This is very similar to the tool on TikTok which allows users to do the same thing.

This tool has been debated also, due to the concern that it could see timelines filled with ‘retweeted’ content, rather than prioritising independent user’s content, but if it is implemented, it means businesses are easily able to repost their own content and share others, maintaining an engaged community.  

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is adding a ‘carousel’ option to posts.

No more uploading PDFs to achieve a carousel post. That is, when the update comes to your account.

Carousels are an important feature if you want to produce visual content, especially as this feature can really increase engagement on your posts.

TikTok

Testing the Nearby Function

TikTok are testing a ‘Nearby’ section, which would come next to the ‘For You’ and ‘Friends’ tabs in your timeline.

This would show users videos of those nearby them, from creators that have used a location tag in their video. Like other updates mentioned, this has been inspired by another application, namely Snapchat’s Snap Maps. This certainly may be useful for B2C businesses such as cafes and restaurants, to show potential customers in your local area what you have to offer, and where you are located.

Being on top of the latest social media updates and news is essential when new updates are being added all the time. The more resources available, the more tools to promote your business in the best way possible.

Brand awareness is a vague term. It essentially describes how ‘aware’ or familiar audiences, (or potential consumers), are of a brand and its products.

It’s important to create for three reasons:

It builds trust.

It creates associations.

It generates value.

So, how can you develop brand awareness?

Develop a social media presence.

Choose a way to share information and events happening in your business.

This list is not exhaustive, but we hope it has enlightened you on brand awareness a little bit more.

For more information on social media, check out our article on how to use TikTok for Business. Do not hesitate to get in touch regarding any brand awareness queries here.