Social Media Graphics and Quotes | Ep. 124

Today we’re going to dive into a pretty popular topic, which is how to take your memorable moments and create social media graphics and quotes. 

These are the things you see on social media all the time: the little quotes, the clip moments, the one-minute videos, the soundbites, and audiograms. Think of it as a highlight reel.

Moments are important because most of the time we don’t remember every piece of something we hear or learn or see. But in each post or discussion, we remember two or three ideas or concepts that stand out. They are “aha” moments or emotional moments. They are moments of insight or moments of appreciation or just moments where you related to something that was being said.

The key is that those moments are remembered. They made you feel something or learn something or understand something. A moment stands out because it was something you needed at that point in time.

CREATING MEMORABLE MOMENTS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA

Imagine your content is a feast: The meat and potatoes are essential, but not necessarily what your guests will remember most. What I’m trying to get you to create are snackable moments: little moments that are memorable, extra bites, little tidbits. 

A lot of the time you can capture these kinds of highlights organically, but you also need to build a few moments like this into your content from the beginning. Don’t just create content they can consume, create breadcrumbs. 

Social media graphics and quotes come from these moments and you can build these moments in three different ways:

1. Visual Stories
2. Quick Wins
3. Impact Statements

SOCIAL MEDIA GRAPHICS START WITH VISUAL STORIES

You can’t create a strong social media graphic without a strong visual story. Stories are very powerful in our culture. It’s easy to tell create a social media graphic — the hard part is leveraging stories to create impactful moments. Stories tend to run a long time. Let me tell you this story as an example: 

A few days ago, I was sitting, eating some breakfast in the morning. It was a bit of a slow start to my day. I had the blinds open to the backyard so I could have some light coming in, feel refreshed, wake up in a good mood…

With the sliding glass door open, I could hear a lot of birds chirping kind of in an unusual way. Birds were flying back and forth, back and forth in the backyard and landing in some erratic spots they don’t usually go, like to some old Christmas lights draped under the garage eaves.

I watched the birds landing on the Christmas lights and flying back to a lower part of the fence than usual, then into the tree and back to the roof. They were making a lot of noise, and I wondered whether they were playing games or fighting or claiming their territory. Whatever it was, it obviously caught my attention.

I started to paint this picture in my head, thinking about what I could learn from that. What if these are new birds that have never been in my backyard before, testing out all the different spots asking, where do I want to stand? They haven’t been here before and don’t know where it’s comfortable, so they’re jumping around and trying a lot of different things. 

These are real thoughts I had. My mind was wandering through all of these thoughts.

At that moment, I realized this is kind of how I am during my workday. I have a lot to do, including trying new things. I’ve got to try different technology, read different types of content, and invest in different kinds of people to see what actually resonates and works for me. 

Sometimes the only way to have a breakthrough is to stop overthinking it and just go be like the birds and go try out different spots.

There was an earlier episode of the podcast that had really confounded me. There were so many ideas in my head and I wanted to make sure it worked for both video and for podcasts.

I ended up recording that episode three times, in three different ways. I wanted to make sure it was understandable and flowed and the concepts were getting through. 

Which brings me back to breakfast. I was watching these birds and thinking, man, that episode took a lot of work, but I’m happy with the results. I have to remember to keep trying things and putting myself into new positions and places so I can actually figure out what’s a good fit for me. 

Now, that is a quick story that took a long time to deliver. That’s fine over coffee, but it doesn’t make for strong moments. 

HOW TO DESIGN STORIES TO SUPPORT SOCIAL MEDIA GRAPHICS AND QUOTES

Social media graphics and quotes come from great moments. You can make your stories more moment-friendly with a little design upfront. At the beginning of the story, come up with a quick summary that conveys a little bit of the story and a little bit of the lesson. This allows you to clip it and make it repurposable content.

For example, that same story can lead with, “You know, it’s funny what I learned from watching the birds the other day. They were jumping around and going place to place, and it really made me think, I need to be like the birds. I need to be better at trying new things. Now let me explain.” And from there, I can go into the story.

By setting the story up in a short frame like that, I am able in less than 60 seconds to give you a sneak peek and let you know why you should listen. 

Now I have a highlight to share on social media, an email, or whatever it is, that might entice someone to go listen for more in my episode. A little design work upfront can be very effective at creating a shareable moment.

QUOTES CAN LEAD TO QUICK WINS

Memorable quotes have the power to inspire, motivate, and change perspective. Having a million downloads isn’t the only metric of great content. You also need quick wins. These are the instant takeaways: content quotes or calls to action that you can get straight to your audience for immediate use.

Like moments, quick wins lead your audience to say, even if I don’t remember anything else from that episode, that little action that I took, that little wind that I got was worth it and makes me want to listen to more.

You can create quick wins through the design of your content. Before you ever push record, plan and design your content to be repurposable. You want content that is easy to cut, clip and shorten. This helps create lots of little highlights out of one larger piece. 

To that end, I designed a cheat sheet, my amplification checklist, which is in a red box on the homepage of my website. You can click it, and you’ll see 10 to 15 things that you can do before you press record that will help your content be more repurposable.

That’s a quick win I give my audience. 

Think about your quick win, content your audience can use right away. It doesn’t always have to be something downloadable. You can give a tip or cause a shift in the way they think. 

It could be a call to action, like saying, “Just take a moment and pay attention for just 10 seconds. What I really want you to do is think about this or answer this question for yourself.” They might actually take that moment to think and get a quick win from what you’re asking them to do. Through your content, you can inspire them to take an action they normally wouldn’t have. 

Quick wins are also repurposable and shareable. Maybe it’s a clip, or maybe it’s a testimonial from a listener saying, “You know what? That little thing you taught me was hugely impactful.” That’s something you can reshare in your content, helping create a moment for your business. 

WRITING IMPACT STATEMENTS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA GRAPHICS AND QUOTES

Remember that content feast we talked about earlier? Stories and quick wins are two great ways to offer snack-sized portions. Impact statements are a third way to leave breadcrumbs guiding the audience to the feast.

An impact statement is a short clip that stands alone and helps convey your message. It’s something you can put in writing as a social media quote. It’s the line you would highlight in a book. It’s a sound bite you could use. It’s an audio clip made into an audiogram, which is just an image with the waveform on it.

You now have content to use over and over and over again. And you can design these things. You can come up with these ahead of time just by thinking, what’s my topic today? What’s one simple thing I want people to remember? Before you push record, you should come up with an impact statement for every piece of content. 

For example, there are several things I could quote today to summarize my message, but some of them might run for two, three minutes. They won’t all concisely deliver an impact statement as quickly as a one-off lesson could. 

For me in this lesson, a perfect quotable is, “Don’t just consume content, look for the breadcrumbs.” 

That’s it. It’s vague enough to drive curiosity. It’s interesting and different enough that people might say, “Oh, I wonder what that was about.” And then they might read the content, just from that graphic or that audio clip on your social posts.

By pre-designing your content, you guarantee yourself an impact statement for each important topic. Without that planning, you’re stuck trying with quotes full of extra fluff or words that just don’t really stand out.

You might also be able to use social media to elaborate on the quote. You can tell them where to listen to the episode where you dive deeper. These are all moments within your content that you can design that drive engagement and interest. And when you can build that in from the beginning, you’re creating a more well-rounded piece of content.

CONTENT HIGHLIGHT REVIEW

Your entire show shouldn’t be impact statements or quick wins or stories. It should all work together in a full format. But if you design these highlights ahead of time, it should be easy for you to pepper them in. Now you can stop trying to grab things that aren’t quite perfect. 

Once you’ve created all of those highlights, you’re in a good position to repurpose and easily distribute them in different formats to places that generate new eyeballs and new discovery.

So design this ahead of time. It will pay off.

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