Seth certainly knows a lot about the attention shortage, doesn’t he? That is why he has written so much about being remarkable. Do you want to create more interesting visual content? Are you looking for new ways to present your message to gain more attention? Then these graphic design tools should be of interest to you.
We don’t have an information shortage, we have an attention shortage.
Seth Godin
Today’s marketers are using visual content to capture their readers’ interest and attention. We all know that visual content is a big deal on the web today.
It is clearly expressed on social media platforms, plastered on blogs and online articles, and dappled throughout websites. From images, videos, and animation to presentations, infographics, and charts, visual content has become a huge component of online marketing.
Why Stand-Out Visual Content?
What makes visual content such a powerful marketing tool? Part of it has to do with what goes on inside our noggins when we process visual information.
When we take a look at an image, our brains decipher all of its visual elements simultaneously and store them directly into our long-term memory.
How amazing is that? We can instantly interpret and remember what we see. Compare that to how we process text and it becomes clear why imagery has the upper hand in delivering a quick and effective message.
Related: How to Frame Marketing Messages for Optimum Engagement
As we read the text, we process it in a sequential manner and then store the information in our short-term memory. According to Dr. Lynell Burmark, author of Visual Literacy: Learn to See, See to Learn, this process is 60,000 times slower than processing visual information.
In today’s fast-paced, on-the-go world, taking the time to read everything is just not cutting it. The demand for quick and easy information is mounting and visual content is stepping in to satisfy it.
I often get asked about the tools I use to shape up my blog so I’ve decided to list them all here. I’ve been building different kinds of websites for years now and obviously, I’ve tried a ton of tools along the way. Some of them are fantastic, and some of them just plain suck.
To ramp up your social media marketing, you need to be a little more aggressive with your marketing. BUT you can’t do that alone. We all know that it takes a lot of hard work, time and effort to do it well.
So you need to find the right tools to help you get more work done faster while providing quality content for your audience. In this article, I’ll show you 12 of the best free tools you can use to create strong visual content for social media.
Visual content could mean anything from an image, a photo, a meme to a video, or a presentation.
There’s got to be a grain of truth in it to support all the most rapidly growing image platforms like Pinterest and Instagram, to name the most popular. And just after Facebook introduced its timeline design change, Facebook saw a 65% increase in engagement.
And if you have interactive content such as videos on your web page, congratulations, your visitors will now spend 100% more time on your website than before.
With smartphones and tablets becoming more common, this trend is only to continue.
But, I hear you cry – how in the world are you going to accomplish awesome graphic design? Hiring a graphic designer is out of the question for most small to medium businesses. So for those of us that aren’t artistically inclined, this can be a significant challenge.
But not to fret. You simply need to find the right tools to help you get more work done faster while providing quality content for your audience. In this article, I’ll show you x of the best free tools you can use to create strong visual content for social media.
Graphic design tools … Canva
No Adobe Photoshop? A non-graphic designer? Canva’s here to save you! Canva is for creating imagery with few if any design skills required.
Use this tool to make creative graphics for your posts and even cover photos for your social profiles – in minutes!
This is our favorite graphic design tool, hands down. Why may you ask? There are three important reasons in our minds. First and foremost the tool has fantastic capabilities to handle most of your graphic design needs.
Second, it is incredibly easy to use. And finally, they have built 20 or so instruction sets that teach you about graphic design while using the tool. We have found no other tool with these advantages.
Canva lets you upload your own images. It saves your work as you go, so you don’t have to worry about losing your content.
Here is an additional idea to save further time. Create design templates for images and re-use the template.
Quozio
This tool is for creating inspirational messages and quotes. Although it’s not as versatile as Canva, it serves a purpose and does it quite nicely.
It’s a quick app where you can cut and paste a quote of your choice. It also offers a handful of cool backgrounds you can use. It is perfect for social media graphics.
IconFinder
My #1 go-to resource for free quality icons. You always need something as simple as a useful icon visual.
Jing
My favorite tool for taking screenshots and screen videos. It is available for Mac and Windows.
GoAnimate
Video can sometimes be difficult to put together but it’s so worth it. One of my favorite tools for video is GoAnimate which is for video animation. You can easily create video animation videos for a very low cost.
Piktochart
Infographics are in high demand because they’re an easy way to present data or help you persuade customers with more detailed messages.
The best infographics share a lot of data in a digestible format, but creating one can be daunting. Piktochart simplifies the process by offering free and premium templates and graphics and icons you can drag and drop into your infographic.
Creating this kind of visual content is less painful when you can adjust text size, font, and color to create a professional, visually appealing infographic. Lots of cool themes to choose from! In fact, I use them when I need inspiration for my designs.
Visme
This tool, formerly Presenter, brings your visual ideas to life. It’s your one-stop-shop for all-things-visual such as infographics, banner ads, call-to-action banners, presentations, mobile and web animations, carousels, etc.
You don’t have to download any software to start – just create an account, log in and start creating awesome designs.
There are millions of free images (Visme is integrated with Flickr) to use along with beautiful Google fonts. You can also upload your own images and experiment with them.
The best part? Visme is based on HTML5, so all your visuals work on mobile platforms.
This tool is ideal for Eye-catching presentations and both infographics and data visualization.
ThingLink
ThingLink ‘s fun, dynamic, visual format draws attention to your updates.
You can add text or multimedia overlays to any of your photos or images, but what makes this tool more interesting than others is that the results are interactive. Viewers hover over icons to watch a video, listen to an audio file, link externally, complete a poll, and more.
A great brand use example is Home Depot. They use ThingLink images to share a room and home décor DIY suggestions and tutorials.
For example, they overlaid a photo of a DIY Sawhorse Table with the prices of all the pieces you’d need to make it and links to a blog detailing the process. The links become visible when you hover over the image.
PicMonkey
PicMonkey is great for both beginner & advanced image editing. A lot of social media marketers swear by this one and some even call it a free substitute of Photoshop.
This tool lets you add overlays, effects, and text to your images. It is ideal for touching up photos and creating visuals for social media.
Vine
You certainly cannot leave videos out of the equation when talking visual, can you? Twitter’s Vine app released in January 2013 boasts of 13 million users already. With Vine, you can create 6-second looping videos and put your message across.
The fact that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world says much about video marketing. Every day, 100 million users watch an online video.
Creating videos with Vine is easy and simple – just sign in with your Twitter account and get started. It is an ideal tool for simple how-to’s and brand awareness using looping videos
Tagxedo
Use Tagxedo to create a word cloud from your web, social, blog or other content. Word clouds aren’t just a great way to present content in a new way; they offer new insights into that content with a quick visual analysis.
The low-hanging fruit here is blog posts, speech transcriptions, important news articles, etc. Just enter the URL, play with the font, color, and shape, and you’re all set.
You can use word clouds to showcase both personal and business content. Depending on the relevance of the content to your audience, this 5-minute process makes a pretty strong statement.
The bottom line
Social media moves quickly and your content design has to keep up. The demands of a market that’s evolving by the minute heighten expectations for fresh, quality content on a nearly impossible scale.
Take advantage of these free tools to satisfy your audience’s appetite when you share content on social media.
What do you think? Have you used any of these tools?
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of collaborative innovation. And put it to good use in adapting to changes in your business environment.
It’s up to you to keep improving your learning and experience with innovation and creativity efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find him on Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on customers from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
7 Ways to Create a Customer Service Evangelist Business
The Business Intelligence Process Part 3 Competitive Analysis
10 Entrepreneur Lessons You Need to Know
These Graphic Design Tools Pay the Best Dividends for Visual Design