5 Tips for effective social media channels

Branding is the cornerstone of any business creating online content, where everything is viewed side by side.

That’s why it’s essential to have a well-thought-out colour palette, consistent fonts, and a clear vision for the type of content you’ll create. A great way to keep everything cohesive is by creating a brand board – a handy reference that includes your logo, colour scheme, fonts, and style guidelines. With a brand board in hand, you can quickly check if new content aligns with your brand identity (we’ve mocked up a quick example of this below for reference if you aren’t familiar with brand boards).

Once you’ve nailed these elements, you can start building templates for your posts. This approach not only ensures consistency but also takes the pressure off constantly creating new content, helping you keep your audience engaged and your brand looking polished.

Knowing your target audience is vital for any brand, and the same applies online. Posting content that doesn’t connect with your audience might bring attention to your brand, but not necessarily your product or service.

A brilliant example of nailing audience appeal is Duolingo, the language-learning app. They understand their younger demographic and tap into pop culture and current trends (minus the doom-and-gloom news spin). Their content is packed with memes, relatable humour, and slang that resonates with their users.

Duolingo’s use of their owl mascot is nothing short of genius. By combining playful, comedic videos with subtle promotion, they’ve built an engaging presence without relying on heavy-handed sales messages like “we teach 40+ languages.” Instead, they keep it light with commentary like “Your top language this year was Yappanese!” – all while staying firmly in tune with their audience.

Ensuring your images are correctly sized for each social media platform is crucial for maintaining a professional and engaging online presence. Using the appropriate dimensions prevents issues like pixelation, distortion, or improper cropping, which can detract from your brand’s message.

Here are some key image size recommendations for 2025:

• Facebook:
  • Profile Picture: 170 x 170 pixels
  • Cover Photo: 851 x 315 pixels
  • Shared Image: 1200 x 630 pixels
• Instagram:
  • Profile Picture: 320 x 320 pixels
  • Square Image: 1080 x 1080 pixels
  • Portrait Image: 1080 x 1350 pixels
  • Landscape Image: 1080 x 566 pixels
  • Stories/Reels: 1080 x 1920 pixels
• X (formerly Twitter):
  • Profile Picture: 400 x 400 pixels
  • Header Photo: 1500 x 500 pixels
  • In-Stream Photo: 1600 x 900 pixels
• LinkedIn:
  • Profile Picture: 400 x 400 pixels
  • Personal Background Photo: 1584 x 396 pixels
  • Company Logo: 300 x 300 pixels
  • Shared Image: 1200 x 627 pixels
• TikTok:
  • Profile Picture: 200 x 200 pixels
  • Video Size: 1080 x 1920 pixels

For a comprehensive and up-to-date resource on social media image sizes, refer to Hootsuite’s guide: SMM Dashboard

Regularly consulting such resources ensures your visuals remain optimised, enhancing your brand’s consistency and appeal across various platforms.

One of the biggest challenges when using social media to build brand awareness is avoiding what’s commonly called ‘brand washing.’

Brand washing happens when your posts are overloaded with your branding – think logos on every post – or focus exclusively on your products and offers. While it’s tempting to keep pushing your message, this can quickly become off-putting for your audience.

It’s important to remember that people don’t hop onto social media to see adverts. They’re there to be entertained, informed, or inspired. Ads are already everywhere – scattered between posts and clogging up feeds – so if your content feels like just another sales pitch, it’ll likely be skipped over in an instant.

That’s where the 80/20 rule comes into play:

Your social media feed should aim for 80% engaging, entertaining, or valuable content and only 20% promotional material. This balance keeps your posts fresh and interesting, making your brand feel more like a relatable voice and less like a relentless sales machine. Stick to this ratio, and you’ll keep your audience scrolling instead of skipping.

Consistency is the secret sauce of successful social media channels!

Creating a content calendar is a game-changer when it comes to staying consistent and organised. It helps you plan what to post and when, giving you a head start on content creation and removing the stress of scrambling trying to create something on the day you need to post.

This calendar doesn’t need to be polished or perfect, but having it in place will make a big difference. Most content calendars will include:

• Type of content: images, videos, blog posts
• Publish date and time
• Platform the content will be posted on
• Post copy (including any relevant links, tags, and @-mentions)
• Significant events (seasonal eg. Christmas, or company specific like product launches/events)

Some services offer free templates, here’s one we found if you want to give this a go: Asana – Social media calendar template