A Top 5 List of My Favourite Visual Tools for Social Media
Sourcing images and designing posts can be an incredibly time consuming process.
The good is that you don’t have to be a graphic designer to create stand out images and graphics.
Fortunately there are some fabulous tools out there to make life a little easier.
Here are my TOP 5.
1. Canva.com
My all time favourite go-to. Simple and easy to use with templates to help those of us with minimal graphic design skills. Easily design Quotes, Facebook Covers, Blog Posts, Infographics, Photo Collages, Resumes, Instagram Posts…the list goes on.
You can upload your own images or use the ones supplied. Canva has both a free and a paid service. The free service offers a number of images at a download cost of US$1. The paid service gives you access to 300,000 free images.
There are tutorials available to get you going.
2. Adobe Spark
This is a nifty little video and graphics program with free and paid options. It’s available on your desktop, iPhone and iPad.
It’s easy and fun to create videos. You simply upload your own images to create the slides, then simply choose a theme and add text and music available from the stock library. You can easily edit, add to and reposition the slides.
Unfortunately the free option means that you have to put up with a small Adobe logo in the bottom right-hand corner of your video creations. But having said that it’s a small price to pay.
Making image posts is easy with a variety of image and design filters available that you simply click on to use. When you’ve finished you simply download or share your creations on your desktop or fave social media platform.
The paid option gives you the ability to add your own logo, choose your brand fonts and colours and use personalised templates and themes. It’s A$14.29 per month with no commitment.
3. PicMonkey
A relatively high end image creation tool that has some incredible features and is easy to use. How about getting into the Halloween Theme and Zombifying yourself with the dark Halloween Themes and adding special effects with the Zombulate button.
Or if a witch is more your thing….
4. GIPHY
Create your own GIFs (aka short animation files).
Now this is a fun tool. Simply upload an image, photo or video.
You can even use snippets from YouTube videos!
You can add animated text and animated stickers to your image or video. Then simply download it to your desktop or post it on social media.
Voila! Tres amusement!
5. Pixabay
The ultimate free image library. If you haven’t already discovered Pixabay – be prepared for an easier life. Pixabay sources images from numerous online image sites in an easy downloadable format. Just choose the image size you need, download it then save it to your desktop. It’s free, it’s that easy.
Have fun with these tools and let your inner designer shine through. Then showcase your creations by posting them on your social media platforms. After all, images and videos do create the most engagement.
Do you use other tools to create your visuals? If so please share them in the comments below. I’d love to hear about them.