55% of Visitors Read Your Articles For 15 Seconds or Less: Why We Should Focus on Attention Not Clicks

Millions of blog posts are published every day.

A small percentage gain traction and attract readers.

And among those readers, 55% will read the blog post for 15 seconds or less.

(If you're still reading, thanks for sticking with this one!)

The internet is a daily battle for attention. Everywhere you turn, people are trying to share the latest marketing hacks with many of the same points echoed repeatedly.

I'm guilty of it myself, and I completely understand why many of us write articles that are a little similar and repetitive. It's because they work. You could argue that content is becoming less art and more science. There are formulas to it - if you find the best keywords and write the correct content, you can build a high-traffic blog (that's almost a guarantee).

But is traffic the goal of content? Or can there be some new and unusual ways of measuring content success? I have some ideas I'd love to share.

Do the surface metrics really matter?

Why pageviews and sessions might be the wrong numbers to chase

Often (and, I'm guilty of this too) you'll hear someone talk about the success of their content by saying something like: “10,000 people read my post” or “60,000 people saw my video on Facebook.”

But I've started to wonder if this is really an accurate measure of successful content?

Even if someone clicks on your article, the likelihood of them taking it all in is very slim. The internet has changed many of our habits. But one thing that hasn't changed in nearly 20 years is the way we consume content online. Most of us still skim and rarely read a full post.

Many publishers have now started to focus on “attention metrics” alongside more traditional measurements like pageviews. Medium's Ev Williams explains their stance on which numbers are meaningful:

We pay more attention to time spent reading than number of visitors at Medium because, in a world of infinite content - where there are a million shiny attention-grabbing objects a touch away and notifications coming in constantly - it's meaningful when someone is actually spending time.

Maybe we need to stop focusing on how we can hack and grow the number of views our content gets. And instead, focus on how we can make each reader care about what we're saying.

I'd argue that you don't build a successful blog by accumulating a huge number of page views. Rather, you build a successful blog by creating something of value.

The only way content will drive results for any business is if it provides value to someone else. It's not necessarily about how many people you reach; it's how many you connect with. Because when people connect with us, they remember us, come back for more, trust what we have to say, and may eventually buy from us.

When you're creating great content, you don't need to live or die by your analytics. Maybe we should let go of our desire to write for everyone in order to skyrocket our pageviews, and instead hone in on sharing what's unusual, valuable, and unique?

How to measure the value of your content

3 under-used metrics to tell you just how valuable your content is

Value is quite subjective and can be hard to measure. In this section, I'd love to share a few ways we're starting to measure the value of our content here at Buffer.

1. Run an NPS survey

A Net Promoter Score (NPS) is commonly used to measure loyalty between a brand and a consumer. It can also be a great way to measure the value that your blog is delivering to readers.

You calculate NPS by asking a simple question: How likely is it that you would recommend our blog to a friend or colleague? (Using a 0-10 scale to answer.)

Respondents to the question are then grouped as follows:

• Promoters (score 9-10) are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and refer others, fueling growth


• Passives (score 7-8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who are vulnerable to competitive offerings.


• Detractors (score 0-6) are unhappy customers who can damage your brand and impede growth through negative word-of-mouth.

Subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters yields the Net Promoter Score, which can range from a low of -100 (if every customer is a Detractor) to a high of 100 (if every customer is a Promoter).

This handy graphic from the Net Promoter Network highlights the formula:

By running an NPS survey on your blog you can begin to understand how many of your readers truly value the content you're creating and whether they would be happy to share it with their networks.

How to run an NPS Survey

There are plenty of great tools out there to help you run an NPS Survey on your blog and I'd love to share a few below:

• Promotor.io


• SurveyMonkey


• Delighted


• Qualaroo (we use Qualaroo at Buffer)

You can also create your own survey using a tool like Typeform and distribute it to your readers. One thing that feels important to be mindful of is ensuring you reach all kinds of readers with your survey. For example, sending it only to your email subscribers could slightly skew results as they're likely to already be your most engaged readers.

2. Pay attention to the comments

There has been a lot of debate about the state of blog comments. With the rise of social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, readers have a multitude of ways to engage with your content:

• They can share a link to your post on Twitter, Facebook (or any network of their choice)


• They can interact with a post where you've shared a link back to the blog (favoriting a tweet, sending a reply, liking on Facebook)


• They can retweet your tweet sharing the post or share your Facebook post


• And much, much more…

With all these options and ways to interact with content, you could argue that a blog comment is losing its relevancy - or on the contrary, you could see it that the value of a blog comment is rising.

Knowing that people can share and comment on your post anywhere, the fact they're taking the time to respond directly within the post itself could be perceived as the highest form of engagement.

For us, comments are an increasingly important metric and one we're focused on measuring. In Q2 2016, we've had a focus on increasing the average comments on each blog post by 100% from Q1 and here's how we're getting on:

Comments feel like a great measure of the value your content creates. If someone takes the time to spark a discussion on reply to us through a comment then we feel the post must have been useful to them in some way or sparked some curiosity.  A great example is our recent social media study post. This one generated over 70 comments with readers sharing their thoughts on the study and also how our findings compare to their own.

3. Monitor mentions and shares

Whenever I publish a post on the Buffer blog, I'll get a few mentions on Twitter or LinkedIn when people share it. As a result of this, I've started to build a slight intuition around how much value each post is generating based on shares and mentions.

When a post really delivers value and goes above and beyond reader expectations, I'll notice a distinct spike in the number of shares it receives and the number of mentions we receive both via the @buffer accounts and my own personal social media accounts.

It's super easy to keep tabs on how many times your content has been shared. Sharing plugins like SumoMe and Social Warfare can provide share counts on your posts and PostReach (full disclosure: this is a tool a few friends and I have built) and Buzzsumo can pull in data about who is sharing each of your posts on Twitter. I also like to pay extra close attention to my mentions on Twitter after a new post goes live so I can gauge how it's doing and see what people are saying.

A quick tip: Promise value in your headline

Headlines are amazingly important to the success of a piece of content. Before we publish a post, we spend a bit of time focusing on how we can craft a headline that gives the content the best chance of being seen. Amazing content behind a weak headline probably won't get seen.

Sometimes we'll create between 20-30 headlines for each post and choose the one that feels best and other times we'll have a quick chat and riff on how we can make the headline stand out. Here are some extracts from a recent conversation between Leo and I:

The original headline we had was:

53 Graphic Design Terms and Definitions for Non-Designers

And the title we decided on when we hit publish is:

Why Every Marketer in 2016 Needs to Be a (Part-Time) Designer: 53 Design Terms and Tips to Level-Up

This post has generated plenty of shares so far and 18 comments (at the time of writing). By focusing on the headline, we were able to promise value: 53 Design Terms and Tips to Level-Up. And also spark a discussion about the role of a marketer: Why Every Marketer in 2016 Needs to Be a (Part-Time) Designer. Without the time spent tweaking this headline, I'm not sure we would have had such success with this post.

What makes an idea worth writing about?

Every blog post begins as an idea, but what makes an idea stand out and how do you know which ideas to act on and publish?

Before choosing a post to write, I tend to ask myself three questions:

1. Is this actionable?


2. Who will amplify this?


3. What makes it unique?

And I'd love to go into detail on each of the three questions below:

1. Is it actionable?

On the Buffer blog, we strive to deliver content that helps readers solve a problem or challenge they face in their every-day work environment. This means we like them to be able to read a post and directly action something they've learned from it.

We focus on making content actionable because we believe that if someone learns something from one of our posts they're likely to remember us and even share the post with their network as a New York Times study found that content that is practically useful gets shared more than any other content:

2. Who will amplify it? 

When creating content, it's important to hone in on your audience and think about who you're writing for. One way I like to frame this is to ask myself “who will amplify this post?” If I can't answer this question then I won't write the post. Normally, this question forces me to focus on a specific area of marketing or a specific role.

(h/t to Rand Fishkin for this one)

3. What makes it unique?

We're surrounded by content nowadays and if you want to stand out, you need to craft content that's unique.

What makes a piece of content unique can vary from post to post. Sometimes it can be timing that makes a post unique, for example, when we published our post on Twitter Polls it was launched shorty after Polls were publicly announced and was one of the first guides on how to use the feature.

Other ways to make your content unique include:

• Sharing your unique perspective: One of the best ways to make a piece of content unique is to create something that only you can by adding in your own perspective and point of view. As Jory McKay explains on the Crew blog: “Everything has been said before, but it's never been said by you.” 


• Going deeper on a topic that anyone else: There might be a ton of posts out there about Facebook Ads, for example, but you can create a unique post on this subject by going more in-depth than anyone else has.

Over to you

I believe we can create more value if we pay closer attention to depth than breadth. It's not so much how many people click on our content, it's how many people pay attention to our content. It's how many people we can make an impression on and connect with that really matters.

Measuring the success of blog content is an interesting topic and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Do you feel we put too much focus on the metrics like page views and sessions? How do you measure the quality and value provided by a blog post? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. 

When will responsive websites respond to user context?

Terms like “mobile first” and “responsive web design” sound dynamic and user-centric, but the reality is most mobile-first responsive websites are simply reformatting ubiquitous content to suit different devices.

• Goal of web (or app) advertising: right message, right person, right place, right time.


• Goal of website (or app) content: whoever, wherever, whatever, whenever… eh… same content.

Is that unfair? A gross generalization?

OK, a lot of web advertising is still woefully untargeted or inaccurately targeted, but sometimes it can be freakily accurate.

Ad targeting relies on the processing of real-time information from a variety of data sources – let's call these “signals” or “cues” – about the mobile user and their behavior, in order to determine:

• Who they are.


• Where they are.


• What they are doing.


• What they like.


• What they want.

What makes this more stunning, is the amazing speeds at which adtech (advertising technology) works.

Between the user clicking/tapping the link and the page rendering with the ad, the system has to analyze the signals and show the most appropriate ad, without causing a noticeable delay to the speed that the page loads.

With programmatic advertising, in the same timeframe of nanoseconds (or at least microseconds), the advertising space is actually bought and sold in an online auction.

Meanwhile on the website where these targeted ads are being served, the content remains largely the same, regardless of the user, their context and their intention. Similarly the content on the website where these dynamic ads are sending people, if they tap/click on them, remain largely the same, regardless of the user, their context and their intention.

This is senseless.

If targeted ads deliver better conversions than untargeted ads, then surely being shown more personalized, contextually relevant content, offers and services on the websites people elect to visit must also deliver better user experience (UX) and more conversions?

As Mike Phillips, commercial director, McLaren Applied Technologies recently said (in an entirely different context) at London Technology Week:

It's not about big data, it is about using small data within the context of the person.

Mobile first or mobile only?

Announcing the retailer's new website on June 2, 2016, Jason Goldberger, Target's chief digital officer, said (in a corporate statement):

People rely more than ever on their phones for everything in life, from interactions with friends to scheduling to shopping.

We've talked for years about being a mobile-first retailer. This move takes us from mobile first to mobile only.

What does this actually mean for Target.com, according to the before and after picture (Geographic redirects, prevent overseas people viewing the site, see below), the result is Target's desktop and mobile site are now much the same, give or take some reformatting for different screen sizes.

The web design style is more mobile-friendly more images, less words, and far less clutter. And it means visitors can more easily shift between screens, even mid-shop.

But is this sort of homogeneity a good thing? Yes… and no. Yes people want a seamless cross-platform experience, but do they want a generic experience across all platforms?

Being mobile first or mobile only isn't just about screen size, page load times, tap zones, click-to-call and so on (though that is all very important) it should also be about context.

Cross platform homogeneity forgets two massive thing:

• The requirements of the desktop and mobile user are often different


• The requirements of the same mobile user (more importantly) vary depending on whether they are at home, at work, commuting, on route to the location, on site, in a rival's location and so on.

And that's just the start of it. Now consider:

• How context varies by time of day, day of week, time of year.


• What about the trigger that causes the visit to the site e.g. something on TV, snapping QR code in a print ad, tapping through from an email, social media etc.?

This isn't just about retail, it applies to numerous sectors: restaurants, events (music, sports etc.), airlines/airports, films/cinema, transport, financial services and so on. Use cases vary when you are at home, nearby or onsite and when the “thing” is: in the future, soon, now or past.

Contextual relevance: the untapped opportunity

Ronan Cremin, CTO, DeviceAtlas (a device detection tool, from Afilias Technologies):

In my experience very few sites do anything meaningful with mobile contextual information. There are a couple of exceptions e.g. Yelp and Google, but for the most part sites do almost nothing with it.

Apart from the really obvious one (location) there are other possibilities like detecting if user is literally on the move or not (accelerometer), is the battery low etc. etc.

One important point about all of these contextual cues is to use them as hints rather hard deciding factors because the cost of getting things wrong based on an incorrect assumption is high.

It's really dangerous to make assumptions about what a user wants so I think that the best thing to do is make prioritization decisions over ordering of features rather than adding/removing features entirely.

Mobile signals

Mobile users give off a considerable amount of signals/cues – data from the device use, digital behavior – which, when visible to the web destination, collectively allows you to make an educated guess about who they are; where they are and what they are doing; and what they want. I.e. identity, context and intention.

These signals include:

• Profile data – information that has been volunteered e.g. delivery address.


• Profile data – data that has been collected through behavior on previous visits e.g. pages viewed, shared.


• Device used.


• Geolocation – if shared.


• Mobile network.


• WIFI network – e.g. home, office, on-site.


• Motion and direction – walking, commuting.


• Time of day – e.g. lunch time, following a TV ad.


• Search terms used if arriving from a web search.


• Referral site (or app) – where did they arrive from today (and previous visits).


• QR codes scanned (particularly if unique to a product or place).


• Interaction with web ads (what, where, when).


• Click though from email newsletter.


• Click though from social media post.

Contextual relevance today: basics

Where relevant, a website, should deliver an experience based on the user:

1. Device – i.e. fits the screen, appropriate page size, appropriate features e.g. use of camera, click-to-call. But always with the option to revert to a different version (e.g. desktop).


2. Country – e.g. appropriate currency, language, terminology (e.g. postcode v zip code), local phone numbers, office addresses, maps, observance of local rules and regulations. But with the option to revert. There is no excuse for forms that require scrolling through every country until the user reaches UK or USA.


3. Intention – i.e. if a user clicks/taps on an ad, link, QR (quick response) code or performs a web search for a particular item or type of content, then ensure the content on the landing page is appropriate.


4. Basic preferences – specified or inferred. Where one has been selected on a previous visit, default to the same local restaurant, store, station etc. – with option for “other”. Similarly log negative behavior – if a visitor has ignored or closed your download-our-app or subscribe to email message three times, move on, they're not interested.


5. Opt-in preferences – if a visitor has elected to share location, subscribed (or refused to subscribe) to email, accepted cookies; remember the next time they visit.

However geographical redirects don't always deliver the optimum results. Accessing Target.com from the UK redirects to intl.target.com, which is not mobile friendly. From overseas PaneraBread.com delivers an “access denied” page (which is hardly a good message to potential business partners from overseas).

Contextual relevance today: more advanced

1. Location awareness

If users are prepared to share location, websites can make search results more relevant to where they are.

The search engines and the directories, such of Yelp in the US and Yell in the UK, are very acute to mobile users desire for local results – typified by the rapid growth (according to Google)  in popularity of “near me” searches (e.g. Pizza, plumber near me).

This local contextual search results is just as significant on the website of the retail, restaurant, cinema etc. chain. Customers don't just the need to find the nearest location, but the nearest store where the desired product is available in the correct size and color; the nearest cinema with seats to see the film tonight; the nearest restaurant with a table for six at 8pm.

2. Recall of behavior (or preferences)

When a returning visitor is recognized, websites should personalize based on previous behavior.

If only male clothing (or e.g. sports items) were viewed on previous visits, retailers, such as ASOS, will default to the men's (or sports) store.

Leading retailers will also allow customers to pick up where they left off with “save for later” or recall products left unpurchased in the shopping basket.

In the same way, restaurants should recall favorite meals or indications of vegetarianism; auto mechanics the make and model of the client's car; sports and betting sites favorite teams and so on.

3. Time relevance

Time context manifests itself in several ways online. For example, Google local search results tell you when the store opens (not just the opening times).

Retailers will give you a countdown to place orders for next-day delivery. Events will count down until the tickets go on sale, announcements are made or the event commences.

Contextual relevance tomorrow

The epiphany of a personalized experience is a website that adapts fully to the user context, based on the signals outlined above. Let's just focus on three contexts:

• At home


• Nearby


• Onsite

For the same user, on the same device, the goals in these contexts can be quite different and this happens across many types of businesses.

• Retail – at home: research/m-commerce at home; Nearby: find store/opening times/check product availability/reserve; in store: find products/check details/compare prices/pay/find product elsewhere.


• Airline travel – at home: research/purchase ticket at home; on route: find airport/parking; at airport: check-in/navigate airport/ find shops/restaurant when.


• Music festival – at home: research/purchase ticket/check info at home; on route: find way/traffic details/park/gain entry with ticket/ID on route; onsite: check schedule/navigate site/research bands/share.

And so on… restaurant, sports event, museum, hotel.

The imperative is to balance personalization with the danger of misunderstanding the context and the preference of the user.

While it is difficult to find any good examples of anything like this on the web, it is not so farfetched. Some companies have already started to experiment with contextually aware native apps.

According to a 2015 report by digital agency DMI a handful of US retailers – Walgreens, Home Depot, Nordstrom, Walmart and Target – now have apps that will switch to “Store mode” when on site, triggered by geo-technologies.

Store mode include functions that are irrelevant outside the store, for example in-store mapping and navigation.

Similarly, the BA App recognizes you're in some airports and provides a tailored experience (thanks to Daniel Rosen, Global Director of Advertising at Telefónica for recommending this).

The app also sends alerts if you've not left enough time to make it to the gate.

Notes:

• Please notify Andy Favell with any examples of websites that use contextual relevancy in innovative ways.


• The origin of the mobile marketing mantra “Right message, right person, right place, right time” is uncertain, but I first heard it used by Paul Berney, mCordis.


• Disclaimer: Andy Favell has undertaken contractual work for both Afilias and mCordis, in the past.

Facebook announces four new mobile ad formats

Facebook the most mobile engagement of any platform, seeing more than 1 billion daily mobile users.

With that in mind, Facebook made four announcements at Cannes this week:

1. Creative Hub

With a simple interface and a guide to Facebook and Instagram ad formats, Creative Hub is designed to make it easy for users to sample different tools and features, and work together and experiment.

For instance, there's a collaborative area for marketers to preview, evaluate and showcase their creative. There are also options to create and preview mocks on mobile, as well as create preview URLs to share with stakeholders.

Built with the guidance of several agencies such as Ogilvy & Mather, McCann and Droga5, Creative Hub is currently testing and should be available to Facebook advertisers in the next few months.

2. Upgrading Canvas

We're sensing a pattern with Facebook, which initially announced its Canvas ads, immersive mobile experiences that load 10 times faster than typical mobile sites, in Cannes last year.

The product was launched globally in February and since then, people in more than 180 countries have spent about 52.5 million minutes – otherwise known as a century – viewing Canvas.

New updates will make it easier for marketers to design, create, share and learn from these ads. Canvas will have a new feed unit designed to increase engagement, while marketers will have more detailed metrics, such as clicks-per-component and dwell time (the average is about 31 seconds).

The option to create Canvases for organic page posts has already rolled out.

3. Adding Audience Insights API

Audience Insights API will give advertisers better insights into the audience they're serving, using aggregated and anonymous demographics, psychographics, topic data and reports from Facebook IQ. Currently in beta, the feature is testing with brands like Mondelez and Anheuser-Busch InBev, and will be widely available early next year.

Mondelez used Audience Insights for Cadbury's “Taste Like Joy Feels” campaign, analyzing people's feelings toward chocolate at various times throughout the day. Brand recall was improved by 40 percent, according to Cadbury.

 4. Improving slideshow ads

Another popular Facebook ad format is the slideshow, which allows businesses to create videos from static images. However, they load significantly faster than traditional videos, on account of using five times less data.

New features include the ability to create slideshow ads from mobile devices, audio and text overlay, and integration with Facebook's Pages and Shutterstock photo libraries.

That focus on video isn't to say photos aren't doing well on Facebook. Instagram announced yesterday that its user base has doubled over the past two years.

The platform now has more than 500 million monthly active users around the world, 300 million of whom use the app on a daily basis.

This is an abbreviated post, as originally featured on our sister site ClickZ.

Why are we so bad at social media customer service?

While social media marketing campaigns have always grabbed the lion's share of the headlines, customer service is the area where the real battles for market dominance are being waged.

Providing good customer service is not just about differentiation, it is business-critical.

So… why is everyone so awful at it?

There are a lot of reasons customer service isn't up to scratch. It's a new discipline. In many cases it's grown organically. A majority of businesses still file social under the marketing banner, rather than as a service department, which means that there are conflicting interests vying for channel space.

This means that the market is under-serviced in many cases. According to 2015 data, the majority of businesses using social media are only able to respond to two-thirds (66%) of the social media interactions they receive.

This issue is actually compounded in businesses where social customer service is part of the wider customer service function.

Channel expertise is at a premium, meaning there is often a lack of structure between the people running the Twitter account and the people on the phone. What should be a beautiful, frictionless experience for a customer becomes a hell of multiple calls, and explaining issues over and over again.

It's worth remembering that by the time someone is complaining about your business online, it is probably because your other channels have already failed them. You are starting with a customer who is mad as hell and isn't going to take it anymore.

No amount of brand-building is going to counteract that. And just so we're clear on the impact, 40% of US consumers have taken their business to a competitor brand based purely on superior customer service.

How do we start providing good service through social?

It would be remiss of me not to mention that I've recently finished writing an enormous social media customer service best practice guide on just this subject, which you can access through ClickZ Intelligence, but just like customer service, it would also be bad of me not to at least try to solve the issue in this post.

The most forward thinking organisations have begun to address these issues by creating posts that are designed to completely own customer experience. Rather than separating touchpoints by channel, a Chief Experience Officer or Chief Customer Officer is primarily charged with making sure that the customer has a good time, all of the time.

On the face of it this seems straightforward (It's not), and there is definitely a school of thought that says it is as much about mindset and culture as it is systems and processes. The realisation that every department is on the same P&L is, perhaps surprisingly, not a common one in business.

Different channels, different metrics

I mentioned channel expertise earlier. The ability to understand how interactions occur on different platforms is key to successful implantation, because it will fundamentally affect how you measure success.

In the case of email or telephone, it was historically common practice to base reporting on 'number of closed cases'. This obviously does not always motivate the service representative to supply customers with the best answer to an issue. Merely the quickest.

Retailer response times on Facebook

This is again compounded by social, where it is not a linear conversation. A phone call may take ten minutes to complete. A contact through Twitter may be answered immediately, but the customer may not respond for several hours. Time-to-resolution is not a fair or useful metric here.

Also, while it is strategically possible to remove customer satisfaction from channels, it is not as easy to separate it from departments. If your marketing team is providing customer service, then you can bet they'll want that value reflected in their monthly reports.

The fact that at least a third of social media questions go unanswered is also an issue bought on by a failure to apply considered metrics to social customer service. Marketing has often been guilty in the past of 'everything, everywhere' approaches to social. We have to be on Snapchat and Pinterest and Twitter and YouTube and…

Hold your horses.

Success in any form of social media is dictated by the quality of service you can provide. Whether that's an interesting Facebook page or a raft of multimedia omnichannel responses. If you cannot resource for these channels, then the most valuable thing a business can do is work out which channel is most used by their customer base, and concentrate on responding on that channel.

As businesses become more complex, so too does customer service. Monitoring tools are extremely advanced, but if they do not have a native language speaker setting up initial Boolean search terms, then they will miss a huge number of interactions (If you'd like to see this in action, try typing 'SEO' into search.twitter.com and see how many returns you get from Korea that have nothing to do with Search Marketing).

Although these systems are still developing, many use tracking and logging processes designed for traditional CRM. Where 'traditional' CRM provides a customer persona based on their interactions with a business by phone, email, through a website or in person. Social CRM data includes every interaction that customer makes with any business, so can be far more valuable if collected and utilised properly, but it requires a more comprehensive tracking and response process.

There is no simple way to provide great customer service through social, but it is achievable, and perhaps more importantly, it has clear commercial value. Forrester found that 45% of users will abandon an online purchase if they can't quickly find answers to their questions.

The trick is to find out where that customer is online and be ready to provide that information.

Why Every Marketer in 2016 Needs to Be a (Part-Time) Designer: 53 Design Terms and Tips to Level-Up

When I first started out in marketing, I didn't quite predict that I'd be a part-time designer, too.

Now, in 2016, visual content is more than 40X more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content and it's become obvious and even necessary for all of us marketers to have some at least basic design knowledge.

Thankfully, we live in a wonderful world where anyone can make the jump from novice to intermediate and create well-designed images for social media. There are tools like Pablo and Canva that make this design work achievable (and beautiful).

However, tools aside, if you want to take your marketing skills to the next level, improving your understanding of design is essential.

Have you ever wondered what might be possible with just a little extra design knowledge in your back pocket?

Turns out, to take your social media images from good to great, is a reasonable leap. And it all starts with a good foundation and understanding of some key design terms and principles.

If you're looking to take your social media images to the next level and become a better marketer, check out this design dictionary for a crash course on how to better understand design.

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53 design terms explained for marketers

1. Golden ratio

The golden ratio occurs with two objects which, once you divide the larger by the smaller, result in the number 1.6180 (or thereabouts). The most famous golden ratio is the golden rectangle, which can be split into a perfect square and a rectangle the same aspect ratio as the original rectangle. You might see this in image composition or website design and grid layout.

(via)

By using the golden ratio you can ensure your images are eye-catching and beautifully formatted. Here's an example of the golden ratio being used to divide space between the body of a website and the sidebar:

Below is another example where the key elements of the design all fit within a different section of the Golden Ratio:

2. Rule of thirds

You can apply the rule of thirds by imagining a 3×3 grid lying on top of your image and then aligning the subject of the image with the guide lines and their intersection points (e.g. placing the horizon on the top or bottom line) or allowing the elements of the picture to easily flow from section to section.

(via)

Once you have your grid in place, the spots where the lines intersect each other indicate the prime focal areas within your design:

Typography, text, and font terms

3. Typography

“Ty­pog­ra­phy is the vi­sual com­po­nent of the writ­ten word,” Practical Typography beautifully explains. All visually displayed text, whether on paper, screen or billboard, involves typography.

4. Serif

A serif is the little extra stroke or curves, at the ends of letters.

5. Sans-serif

“Sans” literally means “without”, and a sans serif font does not include any extra stroke at the ends of the letters.

Though there are no set rules for when to use a serif or sans serif font, it's suggested that sans serif fonts should be used for online body text and serif fonts for headlines and print.

6. Script

Script typefaces are fonts or type based upon historical or modern handwriting styles and are more fluid than traditional typefaces.

A couple of example script fonts include:

Alex Brush;

And, Grand Hotel:

7. Slab serif

Slab serif fonts feature geometric feel than traditional serif fonts and feature serifs that square and larger, bolder.

An excellent example of a slab serif font is Museo Slab:

8. Monospace

A monospaced font, (also known as a fixed-pitch, fixed-width, or non-proportional font) is a font whose letters and characters each occupies the same amount of horizontal space.

9. Hierarchy

Typographic hierarchy is an essential part of any design or layout and even if you're not familiar with the term, you'll be sure to have seen hierarchy in action on any website, newspaper or magazine.

tuts+ explain:

Typographic hierarchy is a system for organizing type that establishes an order of importance within the data, allowing the reader to easily find what they are looking for and navigate the content. It helps guide the reader's eye to where a section begins and ends, whilst enabling the user to isolate certain information based on the consistent use of style throughout a body of text.

Here's an example to illustrate the importance of hierarchy:

10. Kerning

Kerning refers to the space between two specific letters (or other characters: numbers, punctuation, etc.) and the process of adjusting that space improves legibility.

11. Leading

Leading determines how text is spaced vertically in lines. Leading is used when content that has multiple lines of readable text and ensures the distance from the bottom of the words above to the top of the words below has appropriate spacing to make them legible.

12. Tracking

Tracking is similar to kerning in that it refers to the spacing between letters or characters. However, instead of focusing on the spacing between individual letters (kerning), tracking measures space between groups of letters.

13. X-height

The x-height refers to the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lower-case letters in a typeface.

14. Ascender / Descender

The ascender is the portion of a lowercase letter that extends above the mean line of a font (the x-height). On the other hand, the descender is the portion of a letter that extends below the baseline of a font.

15. Orphans / Widows

Widows and Orphans are lines of text that appear at the beginning or end of a paragraph, which are left alone at the top or bottom of a line. There is some debate about the exact definitions of these terms but as a rule of thumb:

• Orphan: A is a single word or very short line, that appears at the end of a paragraph or the beginning of a column or a page, separated from the rest of the text.


• Widow: A paragraph-ending line that falls at the beginning of the following page or column, thus separated from the rest of the text. Or the beginning of a new paragraph that starts at the bottom of a column or page.

16. Lorum Ipsum

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text used by the design industry. It's used as placeholder text and has a more-or-less average distribution of letters, making it look like readable English, as opposed to using 'Add content here, add content here' within designs when the copy isn't quite ready.

Colors

17. RGB

RGB color is a model in which red, green, and blue light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. RGB tends to be used for on-screen purposes.

18. Hex

A hex is a six-digit number used in HTML, CSS, and design software applications to represent colors.

19. Palette

A color palette comprises of colors that can be utilized for any illustration or design work that represents your brand. The chosen colors should be designed to work harmoniously with each other.

20. Monochrome

Monochrome is used to describe design or photographs in one color or different shades of the single color.

21. Analogous

Analogous color schemes use colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. They usually match well and create serene and comfortable designs.

22. Complementary

Colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel are considered to be complementary colors (example: red and green).

23. Triadic

A triadic color scheme uses colors that are evenly spaced around the color wheel.

24. CMYK

CMYK is a color model that is used for print purposes. CMYK colors begin as white and then get darker as more colors are combined.

(via)

25. Pantone

The Pantone Matching System (PMS) is a standardized color reproduction system. Every hue is given a number, making it easy for people to reference and reproduce the same colors.

26. Warm colors

Warm colors are made with red, orange yellow and various combinations of these colors. They give a friendly, happy, cozy vibe.

27. Cool colors

Cool colors such as blue, green and light purple have the ability to calm and soothe.

28. Color theory

Color theories create a logical structure for color. There are three basic categories of color theory: The color wheel, color harmony, and the context of how colors are used. Understanding how to use different colors to convey meaning is an important part of both design and marketing. Here's a quick guide on how colors affect our brain:

Do you want to learn more about color theory? Check out: Why Facebook Is Blue? The Science of Colors in Marketing.

29. Gradient

A gradient is a gradual change of colors (such as green turning gradually into blue) or a color fading into transparency. There are two common types of gradients: radial and linear.

30. Opacity

Opacity enables us to make an element of a design transparent. The lower the opacity, the more transparent an element is. For example, 100% opacity means an object is solid.

31. Hue

Essentially, a hue is a way to describe a color. And a hue can be any color on the color wheel. For example, red, blue and yellow are all hues.

32. Tint

A tint is a variety of a color. Craftsy explains that Tints are created when you add white to any hue on the color wheel. This lightens and desaturates the hue, making it less intense.

Branding and logos

33. Logotype

A logotype is the name of a company that is designed in a visually unique way for use by that company. Most of the time when people refer to a logo, they're referring to the brand's logotype.

34. Logomark / Brandmark

A logo mark generally does not contain the name of the company and instead more abstractly represents that company using a symbol or mark.

35. Icon

Icons are images used to represent an action or an object. For example, a pen icon could represent someone writing (action) or simply a pen (object). When using, icons think carefully about what you want to signify and how clear it is to your audience.

36. Style guide

A style guide is a set of standards for the design of anything related to your brand, whether it's a website landing page, business card or printed document. The reason to have a style guide is to ensure complete uniformity in style and formatting wherever the brand is used to ensure no dilution of that brand.

As an example, you can check out our Buffer style guide here.

37. Grid

A grid is constructed from evenly divided columns and rows. The point of a grid is to help designers arrange elements in a consistent way. Here's an example of the grid we use at Buffer:

Using the Buffer design grid, a page can be divided into fifths, fourths, thirds and halves – and any combination of these. Each grid row must contain parts that add up to one whole. For example, one-fourth + one-half + one-fourth.

Design Terms and Techniques

38. Scale

In design, scale refers to the size of an object in relationship to another object. Two elements of the same size can be seen as being equal. Whereas elements with a clear variation in size tend to be seen as different.

When putting together a design, think about how you can utilize scale to help you illustrate the meaning behind your image. Take the below example; the larger circle appears to be more influential and important that the smaller one. You could even say the smaller circle may be a little timid or shy.

39. Aspect ratio

An aspect ratio is the proportional relationship between the width and height of a rectangle (a rectangle is used because the vast majority of screens are wider than they are tall). An aspect ratio is defined via a mathematical ratio, with two numbers separated by a colon.

• width:height


• This means that 4 inches wide by 3 inches high would be a ratio of 4:3

40. Texture

A texture is defined as the surface characteristics of your image. In design, you can utilize textures such as cloth and brickwork to mirror the visual appearance of the actual texture.

41. Knolling

Knolling is the act of arranging different objects so that they are at 90-degreeee angles from each other, then photographing them from above. This technique creates a very symmetrical look that feels pleasing to the eye. Images that feature knolling tend to be set against a contrasting solid background.

(via)

42. White space

Whitespace, often known as negative space, refers to the area of a design left blank. It's the space between graphic elements, images, copy, and anything else on the page. Even though it's known as white space, it can be any color.

An excellent example of white space is the Google homepage. It's almost filled with whitespace to encourage users to focus on the search bar:

43. Resolution

The resolution of an image determines the quality. As a rule of thumb, the higher the resolution, the higher the quality. A high-resolution image will be clear and crisp whereas a low-resolution image will feel a little pixelated and blurry.

44. Contrast

Contrast occurs when two elements on a page are different. For example, it could be different colors between the text and the background color or dark vs. light colors.

One of the main reasons to use contrast in your designs is to grab attention. For example, the infamous iPod silhouette adverts were so memorable because there is a huge contrast between the white iPod and earphones and the bright background and silhouette.

45. Saturation

Saturation refers to the intensity or purity of a color. The more saturated a color is, the more vivid or brighter it appears. Whereas desaturated colors, appear a little duller.

Highly saturated images tend to stand out and draw attention, therefore giving the appearance of carrying more weight than less saturated images. If you're adding a text layer over a picture and would like it to stand out, using a less saturated background can be a great way to do so.

46. Blur

Blur makes images more unclear or less distinct. Using a blur can be a great way to make text stand out when overlaid onto an image. When you put text over an image, the two elements can form a somewhat competitive relationship (example on the left below), a little blur can make the text stand out more and appear much more readable (on the right below).

47. Crop

When you crop an image, you're cutting away and discarding the unnecessary portions of the image. Cropping allows you to change the emphasis or direction of an image.

48. Pixel

A pixel is a minuscule area of a screen (the word comes from “picture element”). Pixels are the smallest basic unit of programmable color on a computer and images are made up of many individual pixels.

49. Skeumorphism

Skeuomorphism is when a digital element is designed to look like a replica of the physical work. For example, think iPhone's calculator or Apple's newsstand where the bookshelf and magazines look and feel like they do in real life.

50. Flat

Flat design is a minimalistic approach that focuses on simplicity and usability (almost the opposite of Skeuomorphism). It tends to feature plenty of open space, crisp edges, bright colors and two-dimensional illustrations.

(via)

52. Raster

Raster images are made up of a set grid of pixels. This means when you change the size of stretch a raster image it can get a little blurry and lose some clarity.

53. Vector

Vector images a made up of points, lines, and curves. All of the shapes within a vector are calculated using a mathematical equation which means the image can scale in size without losing any quality. Unlike rasters, vectors won't get blurry when scaled.

Over to you

I hope you found this dive into design terms and definitions helpful. It's amazing how fast marketers can pick up tools like Canva and Pablo to create beautiful looking images.

I'm curious to hear if there are any other design terms you hear regularly and would like some clarification on? Feel free to share any questions or thoughts in the comments below.

Further reading:

• 50 Design Terms Explained Simply for Non-Designers from the Canva blog


• 10 Digital Design Terms You Need to Know from Design Shack