#1: Use Easy Desktop Tools
It’s important to be able to create and share visual content without having to wait for a third party to design it, especially when you need to think quickly and react in real time.
Never before have we had such an amazing range of DIY design tools at our disposal. In fact, just two years ago, we were restricted to two choices: learning sophisticated programs like Photoshop or Illustrator or hiring a designer.
I’m not advocating doing away with your designer. There’s no question a designer is integral to establishing great branding. I’m saying there’s a lot you can do yourself when you have the right tools.
Canva adds new useful templates all the time.
For the sake of keeping things simple, I recommend you begin with the following two tools on your desktop: Canva and PicMonkey.
Canva is a DIY design tool that’s so easy to use anyone can jump in and create engaging images in minutes. Canva provides a smorgasbord of pre-designed templates. (Although you can design amazing custom images too, it’s the templates I want to highlight.)
You can choose from templates that work with Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, blogs and more. Canva is always producing more templates and designs. In fact, just as I was writing this post, a new Twitter post template appeared overnight.
In addition to myriad templates, Canva offers features like filters, fonts, texts, styles and the ability to upload your own images. You’ll be creating custom images in no time.
The other desktop option I suggest is PicMonkey. It’s a photo-editing tool, but it can be so much more than that. PicMonkey features a number of icons, graphics, filters and designs perfect for creating social media images.
PicMonkey lets you use your own fonts so you can stay consistent with branding.
One of the handiest features is that you can use any font installed on your computer within the program—your fonts show up in the font selector with all of the PicMonkey fonts. Now that is cool.
PicMonkey has a fun side to it too, providing many quirky and fun holiday templates, complete with holiday-themed icons, images and fonts. This makes it easy for any marketer to plan celebrations and events and quickly create related visual content.
Summer, Christmas, Zombies or Valentines—PicMonkey has you covered.
Both Canva and PicMonkey provide super-helpful tutorials and great blogs to get you started. Both platforms are growing their functionality all the time, so the winner is the marketer needing to create original visual content on a daily basis—that’s you!
#2: Design Branded Templates
A useful tactic for creating visual content easily and efficiently is to create a series of branded templates you can use for just about any purpose at any time (e.g., promoting an event, celebration or product launch).
Ask your designer to quickly create a template, leaving space for content.
This is where you may need your designer—ask him or her to create a simple background template your team can use to overlay text, like the one above fromY Travel Blog.
Make sure the designer includes important elements like your logo, company colors and URL.
By simply adding text, one template can become dozens of images.
When the background template is designed, all you need to do is add your customized content (see above) and you have an attractive image you can share far and wide.
#3: Batch Campaign Images
If you want to be really productive with visual content creation, you need to batch your images, just as you might batch your blog articles, video production or podcast recordings.
Batching images for different types of content means you can create visual content quickly.
Think in terms of creating a series of images for single themes (e.g., one template for tips and another template for quotes). You can even batch templates for campaigns like promoting a product launch or an upcoming event.
Canva’s dashboard is ideal for batching images because it allows you to easily copy the format from a previous image to create the new one, swapping out images or text as you go.
Batch your images to save time when designing.
Where possible, embed your new visual content on your website or blog, and then share it out to social sites from there. The images above were embedded in a blog post so they could be shared to Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter.
#4: Build an Image Library
This is such a simple tip, but so many brands overlook it when working with designers.
Any time you have an image designed or a photograph taken, ask your designer or photographer to give you two files: one as regular .jpg file and the second as a .png file with a transparent background. A .png file allows you to overlay an icon or image on any background.
Here is just a small sample of some of the images I’ve had designed that represent my core messages around visual social media and visual content.
Fill your image library with .png and .jpg files.
Once you have a small library of images, you can start to get really creative with your visual content using the tools mentioned in this article.
#5: Install Mobile Apps
I use many smartphone apps to enhance my mobile images. The apps are so easy to use that you can produce a quote or tip image in just a minute while waiting for your latte.
The four must-have mobile apps I recommend are Word Swag, Videohance, Over and Little Moments. Unfortunately, not all of these apps are available for every operating system.
Word Swag is like having a graphic designer in your pocket. With their exclusive Typomatic Engine technology, you can quickly generate custom text layouts with the tap of a finger.
Follow Word Swag on Instagram for typography inspiration.
You can follow Word Swag on Instagram for inspiring ideas. This app is currently only available on iPhone.
Videohance is the delicious new offering from the team at Word Swag. Videohance does to video what Word Swag does to text—it makes it beautiful. All you need is the phone in your pocket. I’ll let the video do the talking. Here is how it works: Continue...
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