Rachel makes the case that social media professionals can benefit significantly from having basic graphic design skills. You don’t necessarily need to be a full-fledged designer, but understanding layout, spacing, visual hierarchy, and what works in a social feed can make you more effective, especially when working with a design team. With tools like Canva making design more accessible, having the ability to create or customize on-brand visuals can be a valuable addition to a social media marketer’s toolkit.
Chapter 1: Monday Kickoff
[00:00:00] Yo, it is Monday you marketers out there. Ready for a new week. I’m Rachel Moore, your host of Marketers Barely Managing. And we are we’re going to be ready. This week we will manage somehow. I want to dive in. This week, I think, is a bit of a hot take in this day and age.
Chapter 2: Old School Social Media
[00:00:21] Remember, I need to preface something. I come from a time when social media was not ever a full-time profession yet. Like it fell into the other duties as assigned bullet on job descriptions usually for someone who is administrative like an executive assistant or receptionist or something or even an intern. And it was kind of just like, oh yeah I guess we should be doing this obviously these days it’s way bigger than that you’ve got vice presidents of social and you know chief social officers and you know whole teams that do social media and whatnot. You also have teams that do graphic design. Graphic design was, I believe, more of an official team slash, you know, professional title, full-time job before and as social was coming into the fore. I, before I got started with social had dabbled; I’d done some graphic design, so I had a career in office management, executive assistant stuff like that.
Chapter 3: Learning Design Basics
[00:01:15] I remember one of my first administrative roles was at a church where we did a whole hell of a lot of like shows and we had bulletins and things like that and I was taught I believe the program was called Freehand on back. Woo, that’s aging. And David Bruin taught me how to do that and taught me how to have a graphic designer’s eye, you know, white space and spacing and caring about the minutia, you know, the placement of stuff, detail. And I learned that was where I started learning it. And over the years, I learned how to do a lot of graphic design. That came in super handy in office management because, you know, you tend to do like, oh we need a flyer whipped up on whatever version of Word we were using at the time.
[00:01:57] You know, I think we you did have PowerPoint back then you could do things on there and it just helped with that too. I even, oh my gosh I forgot about this. I even got a certification in PowerPoint, and because at our church we would make these they were almost video-esque, like we would make these animations on PowerPoint to a song. We were making music videos to songs. I forgot I had done that. But, so I had some graphic design shops. I did a stint in video editing.
Chapter 4: Early Video Editing Detour
[00:02:21] Learned Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, Final Cut video editing on Mac and stuff. So video editing there too. Again, this is all pre- me getting into marketing. I eventually went back into it. I did try to start as a wedding video editor because I hate myself. I’ll tell you why. But in another maybe another thing. Maybe in another video. But I went into back into office management. It was my last job before I segued into marketing, and I encountered social media.
Chapter 5: Design Skills In Marketing
[00:02:53] Now, that graphic design know-how and ability was instrumental to my first foray into social media as a larger part of my job and then eventually becoming my first full-time marketing job. I was able to overcome, you know, and surpass so many other applicants because I had graphic design know-how.
Chapter 6: Should Social Know Design
[00:03:16] Now, does a social media person, should they know graphic design, should they be able to be a graphic designer? I think yes. And listen, I didn’t have Canva, okay? I didn’t. I had Microsoft Office tools, so clip art.
Chapter 7: From Clip Art To Adobe
[00:03:37] I learned how to find the clip art that let you ungroup it and go recolor stuff. That’s how old I am, y’all. And so I would manipulate that kind of stuff into visuals that might work, right? But I literally was using Office tools, not design tools because they were expensive and companies didn’t want to put that, you know, pony up the money for that. They’re like, “Nope, you just got to figure it out, make something look good.” So, I was using that kind of stuff, but again using that eye for graphic design when I would was able to get stuff like Adobe Photoshop and InDesign and Illustrator, oh my gosh, set me loose, right? I was like, “Woohoo! I’ve got so much power.” And I loved that. But the ability to create graphics was a huge advantage to me as I was finding jobs in marketing.
Chapter 8: Working With Design Teams
[00:04:24] I just think it and listen, let’s say you do have a design team, but if you’ve got a social person who has an eye for design, that’s great because now you can work together. The social person is familiar with what goes out on feeds and what looks best and they can help guide you know the design team and who might not be a lot of designers might not be super proficient at social feeds and stuff but that might be more of like the UI/UX apps, you know online websites, etcetera, maybe print and things like that, and maybe not as into the digital marketing aspect and that’s where a social person you know with that graphic design I and some knowhow can really help.
[00:5:06] But I also think there’s so much advantage too when you’ve got a graphic design team who says, “Hey, we’ll design it, but we’re also going to make give you a template and empower you so that you’ve got some guidelines you can work within, but as long as it’s on brand, we’ll give you the means to edit these templates, you know, and or customize them based on the kinds of posts you’re putting out.” That’s winner winner chicken dinner. I think that’s great. But again, I just maybe this makes me old school. I would love to hear your all’s thoughts if you’re like, “No, girl. This is not the way we do it.” Social media people do not have to be graphic designers. Fair.
Chapter 9: Canva Templates Done Right
[00:05:39] I just think having some experience in it, especially saying, “Hey, I know I want to create a visual for this post and I have the means to do it, especially when there is free Canva out there with templates.” Just don’t just, you know, wash, rinse, and repeat a template. You can go like customize it a bit and move things around. But, I don’t know. I always found it to be an advantage. Again, maybe that makes me super antiquated. I have 18 years in marketing, y’all. It’s been a minute. My marketing career is old enough to vote.
Chapter 10: Wrap Up And Callbacks
[00:06:06] Let’s say that. So, anyway, that’s all for the episode this week. I do feel like I might get some interesting thoughts on this, especially from people who are freaking fabulous social media people and don’t know a lick of graphic design. I want to hear from you. Tell me about your experience and say, “Rach, it doesn’t have to be that way. I can be taught.” All right, y’all. I hope that you have a great week. You will manage all these things. I believe in you.
Chapter 11: Weekly Encouragement
[00:06:31] You are awesome at what you do. Not everybody can be a marketer, yet you are. And you should be very proud of that profession. And just know that there’s at least one other marketer out there who sees what you do, acknowledges it, and values you for doing it. So, have a great rest of your week, y’all. I will talk to you soon. Bye.
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Rachel argues that they don’t necessarily need to be graphic designers, but having basic design knowledge can be a major advantage. It can help social media professionals create better content, communicate more effectively with designers, and understand what works visually on social platforms.
An understanding of fundamentals such as white space, spacing, visual hierarchy, detail, and how content appears in a social feed can go a long way. The goal isn’t necessarily to master professional design software, but to develop a good visual eye.
Absolutely. Rachel suggests that social media professionals with design knowledge can give designers better context around social content and platform requirements. She also sees value in design teams providing editable, on-brand templates so social teams can customize content without starting from scratch.