What are the biggest visual design mistakes in content marketing?
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— The LinkedIn Team
Visual design is a crucial element of content marketing, as it can enhance your message, attract attention, and create a memorable impression. However, many content marketers make common visual design mistakes that can undermine their goals, confuse their audience, or damage their credibility. In this article, we will explore some of the biggest visual design mistakes in content marketing and how to avoid them.
One of the most important aspects of visual design is to maintain a consistent brand identity across your content marketing channels. This means using the same logo, colors, fonts, images, and tone of voice in your website, blog, social media, email, and other formats. Inconsistent branding can make your content look unprofessional, disjointed, and confusing, and can weaken your brand recognition and trust. To avoid this mistake, create a brand style guide that defines your visual identity and apply it to all your content.
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Justin Taylor
Marketing Executive for hire. Ex Nike, Twitter, Activision, and WWE
Make sure you have very clear brand guidelines, and EVERYONE knows them, not just the design or brand teams! Your brand will be used by more people across the company than you think, so make sure everyone is clear
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💫Bhavyadeep Sinh Rathod
Content Marketer l B2B l SaaS 🚀
Consistency is a key whether it's content or the branding elements revolving around it. Branding of your content that includes a lot of inconsistencies in font, logo, colors can become an eye sore, reducing the reading experience of the user. To avoid this, you must define a consistent branding. But, consistency shouldn't be the only criterion. You should also see if the branding complements the overall content and the layout of your blog section. If not, then having a consistent branding would be worthless if it can't help your content shine.
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Robin Zucker
Business Insider CMO to Watch | Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) | Fractional CMO | Board Member | Marketing Executive | Yahoo! + SVP Playboy Alumni | IAB Service Award | robinzucker.com
Consistency in visual design is critical to making your brand stand out and stay memorable. When someone pauses their scroll for your content, it's your chance to not just capture attention but to reinforce who you are as a brand. Remember, your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. Every piece of content is a thread in that story. Make it count. Having a toolkit for social media alongside a style guide is beneficial. It provides the team with a variety of methods to tell their stories while maintaining brand integrity. Beyond visuals, a consistent brand voice is key as well.
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Another common visual design mistake is to compromise the readability of your content by using inappropriate fonts, colors, sizes, or layouts. Poor readability can make your content hard to scan, understand, or remember, and can frustrate your audience and reduce their engagement. To avoid this mistake, use clear and legible fonts that match your brand personality, contrast colors that make your text stand out from the background, appropriate sizes that suit your device and platform, and simple and clean layouts that guide your audience through your content.
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Alyssa Freeman
The Cupid of Content: I capture the hearts of audiences through storytelling • From the river to the sea 🍉
The average attention span is currently a grand total of 8 seconds. That's about the amount of time you have to capture your audience's attention. They're not gonna stick around to read your content if the font is too small or the contrast is too low. Here are 5 tips on how to improve the readability of your content: 1️⃣ Use short sentences and simple language. 2️⃣ Use the active voice. 3️⃣ Use headings and subheadings. 4️⃣ Use bullet points and numbered lists. 5️⃣ Use images and videos. 6️⃣ Use a contrast checker on color combinations 7️⃣ Use fairly large font sizes By following these tips, you can improve the readability of your content and make it more likely that people will read it and share it.
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Colin Steele
Marketing director helping B2B startups build their brands through content and social media
The goal of design elements is to grab your audience's attention — NOT to tell them every little detail you want them to know. Long blocks of text, crowded logos and photos, and too much information can distract and turn off your audience. Focus on one interesting thing you want them to know, and use that to draw them into the rest of your content.
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Daniel R.
Head of Marketing at Healthcare Australia
Poor readability in visual design can significantly hinder content engagement. Using fonts, colours, or layouts that impede easy reading discourages audience interaction. Content should be effortless to scan, understand, and recall. To enhance readability: - Choose fonts that align with your brand’s personality while ensuring clarity and legibility. - Use contrasting colour schemes that ensure the text stands out against the background, making it easier to read. - Opt for appropriate text sizes for different devices and platforms, considering how your audience typically consumes your content. - Employ clean, straightforward layouts that logically guide the reader through the content.
Whitespace, also known as negative space, is the empty space around your content elements that creates balance, hierarchy, and focus. Whitespace can help your content breathe, highlight your key points, and improve your readability and aesthetics. However, many content marketers either use too much or too little whitespace, which can create different problems. Too much whitespace can make your content look sparse, incomplete, or boring, and can waste valuable space that could be used for more information or calls to action. Too little whitespace can make your content look cluttered, overwhelming, or chaotic, and can distract your audience from your main message. To avoid this mistake, use whitespace strategically to create harmony, emphasis, and clarity in your content.
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💫Bhavyadeep Sinh Rathod
Content Marketer l B2B l SaaS 🚀
Whitespace helps you break the wall of text, giving the reader's eye some air. Here, the ideal practice would be to have as much variety as you can in your blog. While writing a blog, I never write a para more than 3 sentences. This ensures that there is an ample amount of whitespace breaking that big wall of texts. Secondly, I ensure I use at least 2-3 images/gifs/videos in a 500-600 word H2. Apart from this, I try to add more variations in the form of tables, infographics, CTAs, etc. These elements not only keep your content engaging but also break the text, allowing you to add more white space. But, the key is not to overdo it. You need to be smart and measured with your approach while adding white space into your content.
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Anastasiya Pogorelskaya
Crafting Content that Converts
Whitespace should reflect the pause that your reader needs in between reading. Divide your texts into paragraphs, include pictures, and infographics - this all will help create this whitespace and bring some breathing space for the eyes of your readers.
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Daniel R.
Head of Marketing at Healthcare Australia
Mismanagement of whitespace can detract from content effectiveness. - Excessive Whitespace: Overuse can render content sparse or unengaging, potentially underutilizing available space for conveying valuable information or calls to action. - Insufficient Whitespace: On the flip side, too little whitespace leads to a cluttered and overwhelming visual, which can distract from the key message and reduce readability. The key is striking a balance—employing just enough whitespace to create a visually pleasing layout that emphasizes the most essential content without leaving too much-unused space. This strategic use of whitespace enhances content clarity and visual appeal, guiding the audience’s focus to where it matters most.
Images are powerful tools to capture your audience's attention, convey your emotions, and illustrate your ideas. However, many content marketers use unoriginal or low-quality images that can hurt their content effectiveness, reputation, or credibility. Unoriginal images are those that are overused, clichéd, or irrelevant to your content, and can make your content look generic, boring, or misleading. Low-quality images are those that are blurry, pixelated, distorted, or poorly edited, and can make your content look amateurish, untrustworthy, or unappealing. To avoid this mistake, use original or high-quality images that are relevant, authentic, and engaging for your content.
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Rob Wade
Content Marketing, Brand, & Communications Leader | Storyteller & Copywriter | Fulltime, Freelance, or Fractional
Quality also means relevance. Images should be integral to your story — not window dressing. And these days, it's easier than ever to pair copy with the right visuals. First, decide which kinds of graphics will help engage readers and keep them scrolling. If you quote someone, pair their photo with a callout. Got a good data point? Feature it in a callout. Reporting on an industry? Snap smartphone photos at a local business (with their permission!). Maybe you're not a designer. Me neither. Hire a pro when you can. But thankfully, there are now tons of tools that can help you create good enough graphics — like Canva (so many templates!), Adobe Express, DALL*E, and Midjourney — and good enough is better than the best stock photo.
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Alyssa Freeman
The Cupid of Content: I capture the hearts of audiences through storytelling • From the river to the sea 🍉
I know high-quality images take up a lot of space but low-quality images are an engagement killer. Why? Because low-quality images make your content look unprofessional and untrustworthy. And they can also make it difficult for people to understand your message. So splurge on those extra MBs and get those HQ pics. Because it would really suck to have spent hours crafting a well-written, informative post and have it not do well because of blurry pictures.
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Daniel R.
Head of Marketing at Healthcare Australia
The influence of graphics in content marketing can't be understated, yet employing unoriginal or low-quality visuals may drastically detract from your material's efficacy and perceived worth. If you choose overused stock photographs or have no bearing on your topic, you risk boring and alienating your readers. A lack of professionalism and trustworthiness may also be conveyed using low-resolution or badly edited photographs. Investing in creative, high-quality photos that fit the content's theme and tone can help you avoid these mistakes. Using such photos correctly may boost your content's credibility and general attractiveness. Remember that a well-chosen image may do wonders for your message and brand recognition.
Accessibility is the practice of designing your content to be usable and inclusive for people with different abilities, preferences, or devices. Accessibility is not only a moral and legal obligation, but also a strategic advantage, as it can expand your reach, improve your user experience, and boost your SEO. However, many content marketers ignore accessibility and make visual design choices that can exclude, alienate, or offend some of their audience. For example, using small fonts, low contrast colors, or complex graphics can make your content difficult or impossible to read for people with visual impairments. To avoid this mistake, follow the web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) and use tools like contrast checkers, alt text, and captions to make your content accessible for everyone.
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Rob Wade
Content Marketing, Brand, & Communications Leader | Storyteller & Copywriter | Fulltime, Freelance, or Fractional
Making your content more usable and inclusive is the right thing to do. But it's also great for business. Accessibility improves readability for 🚨EVERYONE! 🚨 Even robots. 🤖 Follow web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG), and more search engines will find your content. More callouts will connect. And more calls to action (CTAs) will convert.
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Emily Frenkel
Founder of Ms.Frenkel | Head of Strategic Partnerships for Ukrainian Jersey City | LinkedIn Top Voice | Digital Marketer | Avid Explorer | Cyclist | Writer | Content Creator
One of my favorite capabilities we can play around with on LinkedIn and X is the opportunity to add text to images to describe to readers who have a hard time viewing them, what is on their screens. Google Reviews also has the same feature! Also adding captions is a no-brainer and we can do so with ease on TikTok and YouTube!
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Daniel R.
Head of Marketing at Healthcare Australia
Accessibility in content design is ethical legal and improves SEO and audience reach. However, content marketing often needs to pay more attention to it, resulting in exclusion. For instance, tiny letters, low-contrast colour schemes, and elaborate images might challenge visually impaired people. Make your material inclusive: - To accommodate varied requirements, follow WCAG. - Make text stand out against backgrounds using contrast checkers. - Screen readers and hearing-impaired people may better understand pictures and movies with alternate text and subtitles. Accessibility creates a more inclusive experience, encouraging more people to use your material.
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Jason Patterson
Founder of Jewel Content Marketing Agency / LinkedIn Top Voice 2X
There are three big visual mistakes I see being made in content marketing. 1. Info overload/visual overcrowding. 2. Ugly or inept color schemes. 3. Overly stocky visuals or poor quality photos (often taken at events). All of these mistakes make your content assets unpleasant to look at. And if your assets are unpleasant to look at, people will look elsewhere.
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Mahmoud Abdelnaby
Multimedia Specialist | Website Development | E-commerce Optimization | Content Creation | Graphic Design | Video Editing | Motion Graphics | Generative AI
One big mistake is a cluttered design. It's like putting every topping on your pizza it might sound good, but it's a mess. Keep it clean and simple! Well, I couldn't help but disagree with those neon text on neon background choices. It's like trying to read a glow in the dark novel with sunglasses on. Keep it legible, folks! Let me tell you about an example I've seen, and trust me, it's a real head scratcher. This one company used Comic Sans for their financial report. Comic Sans? It's like showing up to a black tie event in flip flops. Choose fonts wisely! 😂🖌️📊
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Marta Gaspar
Fractional Marketing Director | Ghostwriting for Business Owners of online startups and early-growth companies | Content Strategy Expert
Boring banner design is one of the top mistakes I see happening in content marketing. As challenging as it might be to illustrate B2B concepts in a blog banner, we should avoid falling into the trap of following whatever design trend is happening or following what our competitors or partners are doing. Instead, we should strive to find and create our visual language.