Good content is the key to successful social media marketing. But what is good content?
In my opinion, good content is interesting, authentic and helpful, and is preferably presented in a visually attractive manner which makes it easy to view, read and understand.
As a small business owner, hiring designers to prepare the graphic framework for your content is most likely outside your budget limits. And frankly you do not need to hire professionals for a job that you can easily do on your own, using various free tools available online.
So today I want to help you find the right tool to help you take your content to the next level and have an unmistakable presence on the social media. All these tools are free to use and require no special skills in terms of graphic design or coding.
1. Canva
Canva is the right tool to create visually attractive and compelling offers, landing page graphics and photo ads. It allows you either to create your own unique image or to select from many predefined templates and customize them with your own photos and texts.
I love Canva because it offers crisp, clear images, without any watermark embedded on them – all for free. I used Canva to create the meme that accompanies this article.
Premium templates and stock images, each of which costs $1, are also available at your fingertips. You will probably find that their free library of templates is rich enough to satisfy your needs. But if not…
2. Animoto
If you want to add videos to your content marketing mix, Animoto is the free tool which does all the work and allows you to create professional looking video presentations without any kind of technical skill. It has a simple and easy to understand user interface and is also available as a mobile app, so you can work on your videos even when you are away from your office desk.
3. Infogr.am
Infographics are taking over the internet, and for good reason. They are the most visually appealing and easiest way for businesses to present statistics, break down numbers and share interesting facts with followers. However good design doesn’t come cheap. Hiring a designer to create an infographic from scratch can cost up to hundreds of pounds. But don’t get disheartened just yet, you can still wow your followers with an attractive presentation of data by using Infogr.am.
This is a free tool which allows you to pick a template, add your data, text and images, and create a great looking infographic. What’s more, each Infogr.am infographic is created on the principle of responsive web design, so it will look great on any screen – laptop, tablet, or smartphone.
4. Google Fonts
Are you unhappy with the available standard fonts for your website, landing pages, and other web-based texts? The people at Google have already solved this problem with a large library of fonts (600, no less) which will certainly cater to your tastes, no matter how extravagant or exotic. Just remember to avoid becoming overly creative with fonts – they need to be easy to read even on a smartphone screen.
5. Haiku Deck
Right next to infographics, slide presentations are a great way to present your content. You can structure your presentations, add graphs and charts to your text and even include clickable links for your call to action.
Haiku Deck helps you create beautiful and functional slide presentations. You have hundreds of templates to choose from, and the interface is very simple and easy to use, even for beginners.
These five tools will certainly help you spice up your social media content, create your own style and brand image, and win more followers and clients in the process.