How to Create a Social Media Brand Kit

Scroll through any successful small business account and you will notice something: you could recognise their posts without seeing the name. The same colours, the same fonts, the same style of photography. That consistency is not luck. It comes from a social media brand kit.

A brand kit is a small set of rules and ready-made assets that anyone in your business can use to create posts that look right. Here is how to build one in an afternoon.

What goes in a social media brand kit

• Profile assets: profile picture, covers and highlight icons
• Logo files in the formats social platforms need
• Colour palette with HEX codes
• Fonts and text styles
• Post and Story templates
• Photography and graphics style
• Voice and caption rules
• Hashtags and handles

Step 1: Prepare your profile assets

Profile pictures are displayed tiny and usually cropped into a circle, so use your icon or monogram rather than a full logo with words. Centre it with plenty of padding.

Asset	Practical size
Profile picture (all platforms)	At least 800 × 800 px, designed for a circle crop
Facebook cover	1640 × 624 px, key content kept central
LinkedIn company cover	1128 × 191 px
YouTube banner	2560 × 1440 px, with text inside the central safe area
Instagram highlight covers	1080 × 1920 px, icon centred

Step 2: Lock in colours

Choose the colours you will use on social media from your wider brand palette: usually one or two backgrounds, one text colour and one accent. Record the HEX codes. Fewer colours make a feed look more deliberate. If you have not chosen a palette yet, try one of our luxury brand colour combinations.

Step 3: Define text styles

Set three text styles and stick to them:

• Headline: your heading font, large and bold
• Subheading: your body font in a heavier weight
• Body: your body font at a readable size on a phone

Keep text on graphics short. Social posts are viewed on small screens, often for a second or two. Not sure which fonts to use? See our best fonts for professional brands.

Step 4: Build your templates

Create a template for each type of post you publish regularly. For most small businesses that means:

1. Tip or quote
2. Product or service spotlight
3. Carousel cover and inner slide
4. Testimonial
5. Announcement or offer
6. Story frames for polls, questions and links

Our guide to the best Instagram templates for small businesses explains each type, with sizes and a weekly posting plan.

Step 5: Set a photography style

Write three or four rules for your images, for example:

• Natural daylight, no harsh flash
• Warm tones, slightly muted
• Plenty of empty space around products
• Real people and real work, not staged stock photos

Save five example photos alongside the rules. If you edit photos, create one preset or filter and use it on every image.

Step 6: Write your voice rules

Your captions are part of your brand too. Write down:

• Three adjectives for your tone, for example warm, expert and direct
• Words or phrases you always use, and ones you never use
• Your emoji policy
• How you sign off or call people to action
• Two or three example captions

Step 7: Store it where everyone can find it

Both Canva and Adobe Express have brand kit features that store logos, colours and fonts so they appear in every design, with the fullest features on paid plans. See how they compare in Canva vs Adobe Express.

Also keep a shared folder with:

• Logo files (PNG with transparent background, SVG)
• Profile and cover images
• A one-page PDF summarising all the rules above
• Links to every template

Keeping it consistent

A brand kit only works if people use it. Review your last nine posts once a month, side by side. Anything that looks out of place is a sign that a template or rule needs updating. Every six months, check your profile assets and update covers for seasonal campaigns.

Your social media brand kit is one part of a bigger picture. Make sure everything else matches with our free business branding checklist, or save time with our ready-made social media template packs.