Imagine scrolling through your Instagram feed or Facebook timeline. Where does your gaze get stuck and your thumb stops swiping? Exactly – with the beautiful pictures, graphics and videos. Visuals are very important in social media marketing, as well as using an SMM panel to get more followers.
If you’re wondering how you can manage to create such posts for your social media accounts (without training as a graphic designer), you’ve come to the right place.
In this post, I will show you a basic set of tools with which you can create real eye-catching posts for the social networks yourself. Let’s go!
Why are visuals so important?
You know it from your own experience and studies confirm: when scrolling through the social media feed, the eye always falls on the image first. In a matter of seconds, we sorted internally: WHAT the picture means and WHETHER it is interesting for us.
We process visual information faster and more directly than most texts.
A few amazing facts:
- It only takes our brain a fraction of a second to understand an image. To read 200-250 words, we need 60 seconds.
- Social media posts with a relevant image receive 94% more views than posts without an image.
- With images, the click-through rate of posts can be increased by 50%, with videos by 270%
- Facebook posts with images generate 3 times more interactions than posts without images.
- LinkedIn posts with images lead to 98% more comments
What is Visual Content Marketing?
Our attention span has dropped to about 8 seconds in recent years. This does NOT mean that we have all become dumber than a school of goldfish. It’s just that there are an immense amount of distractions and we quickly decide what is interesting for us – and what is not.
At this point, visual content marketing (this is how the targeted use of photos, (info)graphics and videos in social media marketing) provides valuable help. A suitable image attracts attention, stops scrolling through and thus opens the door to the following information, so to speak.
It doesn’t always have to be pictures. I like to use the term “visuals,” which includes photos, graphics, and videos. Especially videos have enormous potential on all digital marketing channels and we should all get used to it (and by that I mean shooting videos ourselves and showing ourselves, not just consuming!).
But now back to the initial question: I am not a graphic designer and have recognized the importance of visuals. So how do I create social media posts that delight my customers?
Fortunately, there are numerous good tools that are intuitive to use and do not cost the world (usually they are even free in the basic version).
ALSO READ: Why is a Well-designed Patio in a Theater Important?
Canva
No longer an insider tip: the Canva app has become the darling of all social marketers and influencers. It allows (even in the free version) to create posts in different formats, e.g. for Instagram Feed, Instagram Story, Facebook Feed, etc.
You have a choice between numerous ready-made templates, which you can customize with your images and brand colors. This works very well on the mobile phone and very well on the PC.
With Canva’s paid version, you can unlock a lot of photos and store your brand colors, logo, and fonts.
This way, you can create wonderful templates that you can use for all your future posts. This saves a lot of time and your followers recognize your posts at first glance (think of the goldfish!).
Price: Canva is available in the free version or in the Pro version for 11.99 EUR/ month.
You can try Canva for free for 30 days.
Adobe Spark
Honestly, I’m almost overwhelmed by the number of templates and the possibilities. The Adobe Spark app has thousands of royalty-free templates that you can use to design your posts on your smartphone. Let yourself be inspired!
What I miss with Adobe Spark is the ability to adapt to different formats such as feed or story.
Price: The Adobe Spark app is free, but you’ll have a watermark at the bottom right of the graphic. This disappears with the payment variant, which is 11.89 EUR / month. This also gives you access to premium templates, Adobe fonts and much more.
Mojo
The mojo app, which is also free in the basic version, helps you to create animated stories for your social media accounts. Without previous knowledge, it will be easy for you to pack your message chic into the story format with numerous ready-made templates.
Price: The paid variant Mojo Pro is offered at a price of 9.99 Euro/month or 39.99 Euro/year and includes all templates, more fonts and the possibility to install your own logos.
Youcut
My favorite tool for video editing on the smartphone! The app can do everything that is usually necessary for the fast editing of video clips: editing, filters, text overlays, stickers, music, the possibility to adjust the speed and the adaptation of a video to different social media formats (1:1, 4:5, 16:9, etc.)
Sometimes a bit “frisky”, because on the smartphone display, but that’s the only lack of operation that strikes me. Otherwise, the mobile phone tool of my choice for video editing.
If anyone knows a similar application for the PC, I would be grateful for the tip! (Movavi??)
Price: The tool is free of charge and is financed by the import of a pop-up advertisement before saving.
Affinity Designer
Last but not least, my favorite graphics tool I use every day: Affinity Designer. A tool for non-designers (like me) who want to create social media graphics on pc.
The software requires some training time, but this is rewarded with endless creative possibilities and reliable operation.
Since I use Photoshop, it was relatively easy for me to use with layers and tools. The structure is probably very similar to Adobe Illustrator.
If you value complete creative freedom and enjoy design, you’ll love Affinity Designer!
Price: For a one-time fee of 54.99 euros, there is the full version, without any subscription fees (as with the Adobe Suite)
Result
You can take the design of your post into your own hands! It costs you some time and a bit of patience in the training – but not huge sums of money.
You will be rewarded with extraordinary graphics and videos that will delight your customers and put your company in the right light. Spot on – try it out!