How visual is your social media?

If you are wondering what I mean by visual, there’s a good chance your social channels are desperately in need of visual content and you happen to be reading the perfect post for you (your ROI will thank me later).

And to those of you who are confidently answering my question with “I tend to remember to post new photos” or “the quality is not great, but it’s pretty visual”, I say you are on the right path towards a successful social media presence, but you may need just a little extra push. This is exactly what this post can give you, so keep on reading…

Social media is a curious creature; it can either go well and turn into a powerful wizard, or it can go bad and turn into a disaster. It’s not about luck, the factors that determine one result or the other are varied but well known, like a defined strategy, well-crafted posts and heavy usage of visual content.

We’ve focused multiples times on the importance of sending out the right message and employing the most adequate language to your audience; yes, words are important and we ought to make the most of them, but, using the oldest cliché ever (please excuse me), an image is worth a thousand words and social media has fully embraced it as its motto.

Images, illustrations, giffs, graphs, charts, infographics, videos… all these translate into more likes, more shares, more comments and more engagement in general. Users, from Facebook to Periscope and all the way to LinkedIn (yes, even the corporate LinkedIn!) have shown to react more positively to visual content than a post with words only.

If I’ve managed to convince you to re-evaluate your own visual content, now it’s time for the good news (it goes like this, bad news first, good news afterwards): there are brilliant tools out there that will help you create amazing visual content!

I’m not a designer myself so I know how frustrating it can be to put together a nice piece of visual material, something decent enough that a 3-year-old wouldn’t be able to reproduce. Because I feel your pain, I’ve put together a list of user-friendly tools that will make your visual content stand out. Looking at your creations, you’ll feel (almost) like a pro!

Canva – very popular and much loved online design platform, this is the go-to tool for anyone looking for a reliable and easy-to-use alternative to the more professional software like Illustrator. It operates on a freemium model with a basic free tool and additional paid designs and images.

Adobe Spark (Post, Page, Video) Launched back in February this year, the latest suite of apps by Adobe is a great solution for bringing your online stories to life. Creating a powerful post for social sharing can take as little as a minute and it’s completely free (including the Adobe image stock). Nevertheless, Spark does come with limitations on what you can do.

Snappa – free, user-friendly design tool, some say it’s better than Canva. Snappa runs its own resource of royalty free images (StockSnap) which is directly accessible in the Snappa web app. It works almost just like Canva.

Pablo (Buffer) – If you want to produce a beautiful image post, this easy tool by Buffer is the perfect way to get the job done in seconds. Browse their library of 50,000+ royalty-free photos or upload your own, then add your text and customise it with the font you prefer.

Placeit– showcase your app easily with this free mockup generator which doesn’t require any professional graphic design tool.

Easel.ly – want to join the infographic mania? Try Easel.ly and you’ll fill your followers’ news feed with amazing infographics. With a drag and drop system, infographic creation is easel.ly done.

Infogr.am – data doesn’t need to be boring; with this subscription-based tool, you can create and publish beautiful visualisation of your data. Simply pick the template and build the perfect graph or chart that will get likes.

All you have to do now is let your creativity inspire you!