SOCIAL – How to – Requesting Custom Images
Purpose of this How To Guide: To inform Social and Paid Media Executives of how to request the creation of Custom Images for clients’ social advertising campaigns or posts.
Applicable to: Social and Paid
Customers: All with social media
Timescale: To be completed by the task due date and within the task time limit.
Introduction
To support our posts on social media, we will sometimes require custom images to be created. These are images not pulled directly from the links we share, but images we create in-house to catch the eye and/or provide information relating to our social media post. While we can create images ourselves, high paying clients will have particular branding needs and so we request images to be made by the design team.
Note: Make sure you give the D&D team plenty of time to create the image, as they have to schedule your request around other projects.
Requesting from D&D
All Custom Image Tasks that were originally planned within a Planning Meeting follow the process below. (Any others require an Ad-Hoc Work Request Ticket).
If the Custom Image Tasks was originally planned within a Planning Meeting then check the Interval to see if a Custom Images task has been assigned to the Social Executive. If not, a new task will need to be created.
In the task description, specify what platforms the image will be for and provide dimensions (https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-image-sizes-guide/) and any text overlay (check the social media schedule for specific wording). Ensure all instructions are clear and easy to understand “I.e. Twitter Image for X Customer, X by X dimensions, Text overlay of: XXX”
You will need to provide the images – whether they are stock (using iStock) or ones that the client provides, so attach these to the ask and create a note to the D&D Project Manager.
Assign the task to the D&D Project Manager (who will reassign it as necessary) with the task due date a few days before the image is due to be published on social media. Generally, the length of the task will depend on the number of images being created (Half an hour is generally accepted for 2 or 3 custom images).
The designer will then reassign the task to the social media executive to post or include in a schedule.
Receiving the Image from D&D
Once you receive the final copy from D&D, check spelling, dimensions and quality of the images.
Add the custom image into the social schedule or send it to the client for approval if required.
Closing the Task
Once the image has been added to a schedule or approved by the client, write an Executive Summary as your final note on the task itself and complete the task in Accelo.
Your Executive Summary will be used as a report write-up if necessary, so make sure you make it client friendly, disclosing what you did and what was the outcome in a brief paragraph.