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Lillian De Jesus

How to use Color Psychology in Social Media Marketing

By Lillian De Jesus on December 22, 2016 12 Comments

Colors in Stencil

Color plays an emotional connection in everything we do in our lives, from deep childhood rooted memories to everyday occurrences. In the business world, color psychology plays an importance in social media marketing and branding. Color association can stir up negative or positive emotions with each individual. How do you know your colors are affecting your clients in a positive manner? Today we’ll discuss how to use color psychology in social media marketing to help you create a positive impression.

visual perceptions

Living in Color

Colors around us have an impact on how we feel on a daily basis. The Pantone Color Institute, studies how color influences human thought processes, emotions and physical reactions, furthering its commitment to providing professionals with a greater understanding of color and to help them utilize color more effectively. Each year, Pantone comes out with the Fashion Color Report with Pantone’s Top Ten Colors. From the fashion industry to graphic design to manufacturing companies, they all await the color trends and make decisions on clothing lines, print and digital designs, and packaging for products. Colors do affect customers with their purchases, and Pantone has created a place to learn about colors and how to use them. If you’re curious as to which colors are trending, visit Pantone (Greenery is the 2017 color of the year).

Greenery color formula from Pantone

It’s such a wonderful resource that it provides the color formula in different formats. For Stencil, you can use the HTML value for the text color. Pop that code in the text color area (as shown below) to get the color you’re looking for.

Type in html code for text color

As colors trend throughout multiple industries all over the world. It’s good to keep an eye on popular color trends that are happening and how they affect people.

greenery is the 2017 color of the year

Using Color for Branding Your Business

You may notice that certain brands are commonly known for their logos specifically with their color. McDonalds, FedEx, Facebook, Coca Cola, Twitter, and Yahoo are just a handful of brands that most people can say they know what colors are associated with their companies. Each color has a specific brand color to which people can relate and have an emotional connection. McDonalds has become a popular restaurant for families, especially for young children, so popular that just seeing the yellow arches brings a smile to a child’s face and have them screaming for french fries.

Color Emotion

From Visually.

Here’s the Color Emotion Guide, which brings logos to clear view on how people see and feel with color. It’s quite impressive on how emotions play a role in logos and branding.

How to Use Color in Social Media Marketing

It’s obvious that color can make an impact. How can you use color in social media marketing?

Profile Headers/Covers

Taco Bell and Twitter are a couple of examples of how they use their branding colors on their Twitter covers.

Taco Bell Twitter Cover

Twitter Profile Cover

Let potential customers know they are in the right place and let there be no confusion.

Social Media Posts

Not every post on social media is going to have your product or service on the image. You need to grab your audience’s attention and color is the key. Going through social media feeds can get boring with the same old images and if the image is dark it will most likely get skipped. Take advantage of trending colors of the season and use images that are relatable to your business.

guinea pigs with pineapple
Have a pet shop to market? Use colorful images along with pets.

Using Stencil’s Background photo search makes it easy to find fun and colorful photos.

Create ads or sales posts with a pop of color!

paint sale ad
Paint sale ad – Ads and social media posts can be colorful!

Even when creating an ad image for a service that doesn’t tend to be colorful, you can just use a small pop of color to make a difference.

rope and twine

Here we used a simple green rectangle to show off a 50% off sale on rope. Keep in mind, yellow and brown shades tend to be the least favorite for most people.

Quote posts can help bring attention to the feed and become shareable. Choose photos with vivid colors or keep the background simple and use colorful shapes.

Here are a couple of examples:

hope is a waking dream.

Here’s an image with a background photo with a quote.

Now here’s the same quote with a color background.

hope is a waking dream with purple background

How will you use color for business

Stencil makes using colors easy with HTML or HEX codes to get the precise colors you want for your designs. Let’s recap how you can use colors in social media marketing.

  1. Check on colors that are trending.
  2. Review the Color Emotion Guide to see what color evoke which emotions.
  3. Create Twitter and Facebook Covers with your business signature colors.
  4. Find colorful photos as background images in Stencil.
  5. Create sale posts or ads with a pop of color.
  6. Use quote posts in different ways with background colors or photos.Are you currently using specific colors for your business? Let us know in the comments.
Create holiday images in Stencil.

Creativity, Social Media color psychology, colors, emotions, Pantone, social media marketing

Lillian De Jesus

About Lillian De Jesus

Lillian De Jesus loves visual marketing! Any tool that helps a business increase exposure and can help build a community, she's all over it. You can find Lillian baking sweet treats and drinking coffee in the Indiana countryside. Or find her on Twitter.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Leela says

    December 22, 2016 at 9:06 pm

    Wonderful blog and lots of great information! Thanks–you’re doing great!!
    http://www.clearskinminerals/seo-services

    Reply
    • Lillian De Jesus says

      December 23, 2016 at 12:28 am

      Glad you like the blog, @disqus_qxRymklRkN:disqus. Thank for stopping by!

      Reply
  2. CharleneB says

    December 22, 2016 at 11:34 pm

    Always great to be reminded of not only how wonderful using color can be, but how powerful it can be too! Thanks Lillian!

    Reply
    • Lillian De Jesus says

      December 23, 2016 at 12:20 am

      Absolutely love the power of color! My pleasure, @creativenaturalista:disqus. 🙂

      Reply
  3. Meryland Cuevas says

    December 24, 2016 at 1:16 am

    Great post, this is very useful information.

    Reply
    • Lillian De Jesus says

      December 24, 2016 at 8:36 am

      Wonderful! Glad to hear this post was useful, @Otros20Pesos:disqus.

      Reply
  4. BG Jenkins says

    June 10, 2017 at 3:29 am

    Wow… very interesting. I have looked at a color psychology before…it’s always interesting. It’s a great thing to keep in mind all the time. Well done.

    Reply
    • Lillian De Jesus says

      March 5, 2018 at 5:59 pm

      Glad it was helpful to you BG!

      Reply

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