3 Tools that will speed up your social media graphics and give your designers a break.
Social media posting and blogging are a full-time job but to make them as successful as can possibly be you need amazing graphics. However not everyone is a professional designer so wouldn’t it be nice if there was software that gave you some serious creative ability while not having to bother a designer for some creatives. Thankfully there are some excellent online tools that I would recommend giving a go next time you want to jazz up your socials or blogs.
PicMonkey
Picmonkey has a free version and a paid version that it calls Royale. As a standard, it allows you to quickly drop your images into the right dimensions perfect for socials while keeping the perfect resolution, but the real jewel in the PicMonkey crown is its editing ability. I have often been sat at the computer thinking I wish this image was a little more vibrant, how can I improve this picture without instantly baffling myself by opening up photoshop. Now with Picmonkey, I can edit the exposure of a photo, the colours, sharpen the image and even place effects on the image. A personal favourite feature is a touch-up feature that can turn any old night out photo into an airbrushed bonanza.
Canva
This is probably the most useful tool to have in a social media marketers arsenal. This tool is the quickest and easiest way to make creative images for both your social media and your blogs. This tool allows you to create a wide array of different designs and gives you, even more, capability for your designs. List of the different things that you can create include:
Social media (Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest etc etc.)
Presentations
Posters
Facebook covers
Facebook posts
Blog graphics
Documents (A4, Magazine, Letterhead, Resume)
Blogging and Ebooks
Marketing materials (Menus, business cards, flyers, gift certificates)
Canva’s different elements give you access to lots of logos and pictures to use in your designs and many of them are free. This allows you to create unique images steering clear of the dreaded stock imagery we have all grown to hate.
https://www.canva.com
Ezgif
Next we step into a different realm of imagery that is becoming more and more popular and that’s…….GIFS! These moving pictures may have us feeling like we are roaming the halls at Hogwarts but with this powerful little online tool we can create gifs for our everyday posts and blogs! Ezgif, like the clever little play on words, is true to its name, it is easy. All you have to do is upload certain images and watch the tool combine them into frames and from there you can share it or download it…boom ready made customisable GIFS!
There are loads and loads of powerful editing and creative tools available online, the trick is finding the ones out there that have the most features before having to pay a premium or the ones that are the most user-friendly. We have gone a trialled a few for you and the top three seen above were our favourites. The other tools while all very good in their own right were pipped to the top three spots because of their amazing results, the huge array of features, and unbelievable straightforwardness! But hey, this is just my opinion so why don’t you go and try them all out for yourself? 🙂
Go forth and be creative
The other tools we trialled but didn’t quite make the cut: