Planning your Grid via Design 📐
Is designing your social media grid important? Does it matter?? 🤔🖼
Designing your grid could be good if scheduling is your style and you have planned content. If you have spontaneous content, it can feel almost impossible to keep up with a grid design. Each side has its pros/cons (see below for designed grid pro/cons) but the brand identity and goals really determine what’s best and where your brand’s social can and should go.
The design should be secondary to the marketing strategy you have for your brand. If part of your strategy is being able to batch content a month(s) in advance, then designing your grid could be a great tool to further engage your audience and become recognizable content in a glance. Benefits to designing your grid are:
helps generate visual content easier because everything is working together
batch content to build posting/scheduling around on your timetable
it looks really put together
can feel more salesy
It can be really convenient and time-efficient to design your grid, however sometimes it can take more time than its worth if the brand doesn’t fit the aesthetic its going for (i.e. sacrificing important content for aesthetic purposes). Cons to designing your grid are:
less flexibility for spontaneous or “new” posts without rearranging a lot of the grid
doesn’t feel as genuine
it can feel stiff in the wrong place
Designing your grid may slash the possibilities of flexibility, but there is still some wiggle room. Allowing for flexibility in a designed grid is possible, but it will take more time and attention to detail than if you were simply batching content. Allow for design to lead and flexibility to follow by:
create the designs in advance for the month
inserting pictures behind designs and adjusting as needed (similar to the templates tactic below, but is about the grid design as a whole rather than individual posts)
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There’s a happy medium between design and chaos, where you are able to show off your brand’s personality and identity, while maintaining the power of spontaneity. Find the middle ground between a designed and planned vs a spontaneous and chaotic by:
post templates (based on brand guidelines) that can be used starts for social posts
consider categories that way you worry less about the same “templates” ending up next to each other on the larger grid
use the templates as a starting point, creating some unique branding on each post with a few clicks.