5 ways to level up social media visuals for everyone

You don’t have to be a graphic designer to make your social media pop.

Here are five often overlooked ideas for creating more captivating feeds, no matter who’s following:

1. Reimagine images—embrace accessibility. Thirty percent of Facebook users identify as disabled, and 285 million Facebook users worldwide are visually impaired.

That means you can’t just post a flashy image if you want to be inclusive. You should also write vivid alt text, image descriptions and captions for screen readers.

CamelCase hashtags also help, says Carmen Collins, senior social media and talent brand manager at Cisco.

“That’s when you capitalize the first letter of each word in a hashtag,” she says. “A screen reader will read it with pauses between words instead of making it one word.”

A great (and infamous) case of not using CamelCase was #susanalbumparty.

“#SusanAlbumParty would’ve cleared up any, ahem, confusion,” she says.

2. Use emojis—within limits. “We’ve found that a single emoji can double our engagement for a LinkedIn post,” says Collins, “but everything in moderation.”

She warns against emoji misuse, especially when it comes to accessibility.