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Let's get started: design images!You can say whatever you want to but social media is all about the visual aspect of your content. It's all about the design, the video, and the bells and whistles. And that's probably a lot of people are hesitant to explore it and embrace it in their business.So regardless of whether you are a social media amateur or a pro, this post is going to help you bring your design skills to the next level.Let's start with the basics.The greatest hurdle for social media managers is that they are missing some serious design chops.
Use a Design Images Platform
Don't overcomplicate things for yourself!One of the greatest things that ever happened to online marketing everywhere is called Canva. The legendary design images platform allows you to easily create banners and posts by using templates and images. This is perfect for marketers and business owners that don't have the design know-how. Canva is super easy to use and has templates for any industry. The importance of images for social media cannot be overstated!The best part is that you can actually use Canva within eClincher. We have a special Canva button that opens the system and as soon as you click on publish the image appears on your eClincher interface and you can publish it right there and then. No more awkward downloading and uploading. Click, Click, schedule and you're done! A fresh bunch design images out of the oven!
Automate Social Media Images
Another great tool I discovered this month is a new company called Postmastr. All they require is for you to put in your logo, brand colors, and the audience that you are targeting and they create beautiful images for your social media profiles - for $1 each.The minimum is 30 images and you get to choose the ones that you like.I signed up for their beta and got some incredible results.I used ShareSomeFriends as an example and here is all the information that I had to put in:
And here is my favorite image that they designed. Notice that the brand colors match the colors that I requested, the tagline is perfect, and they even put the logo on the guy's shirt. How easy it is to design images!
Now, for another cool trick:
Animated Instagram Photos
What?Yep, you can now make your social media posts animated. And you don't have to go through the hassle of creating your own video, or making a gif file, or hiring a designer.You can buy animated Instagram templates from a neat place called CreativeMarket. They have some incredible bundles where you get 10 posts for only $11-36. The styles are incredible, the selection is huge, and the world is your oyster.
Now let's talk about the images themselves
Where to find beautiful stock photos to get started and design images
A few years ago, stock photos were super expensive. Nowadays you can actually get a lot of what you need for free. Let me show you where to look.A beautiful online community started around the idea that photos should be shared and distributed for free, and it's called Unsplash. It's grown so large that you can literally find anything you need to design images.
Another great free site is Pexels where you can find more targeted and less artistic photos. I use Pexels for the blog all the time, whenever I need a catchy blog featured image.
If you are looking to pay and get something specific you can always use Shutterstock or Depositphotos as well.If you are using your smartphone to design images for social media, then you need a whole suite of apps and cool tools. There are a ton of apps out there but here is a short list:
Animate your text using Legend
Legend is an app that was created by a team of expert designers and typographers. The app lets you add text to your images, animate it, and export it into video or GIF. It's the free version of the animated Instagram templates that we showed you above It's definitely more basic but gives you the creativity you need to created animated social media posts on the fly. Did you know about this awesome app that lets you design images?
Create Stunning photos
There are hosts of apps that help you create stunning photos. One such app is called Halide, and it focuses on enhancing the experience of taking photos. You can take a photo and edit it with one hand, with a couple of simple movement of your finger. So it makes the whole process of design images super simple.
Another incredible photo app is Manual 2.0. This app allows you to design images, customizing the experience like nothing else out there - except for a real camera of course. You can change things like shutter speed, ISO, and exposure to create the effect that you want.
Another great app is called Hyperlapse and it was created by Instagram to design images on another level! It allows you to create time-lapse videos and change the speed of your videos. It's really easy to use and you can easily share on your social media right from the app.
You need to get in the habit of creating images, finding images and using them to create social media posts. The more you focus on that the easier your content creation will go, and content is everything.
Recap
Creating design images for social media is easier than ever.You can get your images for free from sites like Pexels and Unsplash, or design your own with some incredible smartphone apps like Hyperlapse, Manual 2.0, and Halide.Once you got your image, plug it into Canva or Snappa to design images, add some text and make a blog banner or social media post.If you want something more advanced to design images, you can always buy a template from an online marketplace like CreativeMarket.And lastly, if you don't want to deal with all of that, just pay someone like Postmastr to create all design images for you.Sweet, life is good.Cheers =)
