What captures your attention while scrolling on Twitter or Facebook? Is it a bold image or a long wall of text? The chances are high that it’s an image.
Research shows that images receive more engagement on social media than posts with only plain text. On Facebook, posts with images receive 2.3x more engagement, while Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets.
Incorporating stunning images into posts is vital for social media managers to drive engagement and attract followers and potential clients.
You can search for images on stock photo websites. However, to ensure a unique brand image, the best route is to use a dedicated design tool to create exceptional graphics.
Considering your competitors are also trying to use the best images and catchy phrases to get users’ attention, you need to ensure that you’re on top of your game as a social media manager.
The good news is that you don’t need to hire a professional design firm or spend hundreds of dollars on software. Most of the social graphic design tools available today are free or cheap to license, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use them to amplify your social media presence.
Here are the three best tools you can use for social media graphic design:
- Canva
- Adobe Spark
- Pablo
Read on to find out why.
Canva
(Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Web)
Popular among social media graphic designers, Canva has over 10 million users.
Canva is a template-based graphics design application that is simple to use. There are hundreds of thousands of photos, graphics, and templates to choose from in the free plan and millions under the premium plan.
The templates cover a wide range of posts, from Instagram tailored posts to Tweets and Facebook ads. The site has a lot to offer, and the inbuilt search tool makes it easy to navigate.
The search bar is on the top right, where you can look for keywords, e.g., “seasonal Instagram stories”, to find detailed templates covering any niche.
Once you get a template to work with, use the drag-and-drop editor to add your resources. The drag-and-drop feature makes work easy for beginners.
Another unique feature of Canva is that the templates come in preset sizes for various social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. You can also adjust custom sizes for blog posts and other options.
Free: 250,000+ templates and 5GB of storage
Paid: Canva Pro from $12.95/month. Unlimited storage and millions of templates and visuals to choose from.
Adobe Spark
(Android, iOS, Web)
Adobe is well known for Photoshop and Illustrator, but few people know about Adobe Spark. Spark is specifically designed to customize social media graphics. The social media tool has 34,000+ templates to choose from.
Some of the templates are premium and are only available to subscribers, but there are still thousands of templates that are available for free.
You can select the type of post you want to generate and search from the Templates located on the sidebar on the home screen. You can also use the Design Assets, Icons, and Backgrounds tabs located on the sidebar to create your unique design.
The tool also makes it easy to reformat and resize posts for different social media platforms.
Spark also gives you the option to integrate with Adobe Creative Suite. This comes in handy if you’re planning to scale your business.
The only downside to the free plan is that it adds an Adobe logo at the bottom of your post.
However, you can always click on the logo and remove it before publishing the post. To avoid pop-ups or the hassle of removing the logo, you can always upgrade to premium.
Free: Basic features
Premium: From $9.99/month.
Pablo
(Web)
Pablo is a simple tool that allows you to add text on top of images. To use Pablo, you only need to open the website. You don’t need to register an account.
There are six default templates that you can choose from. You can search images through Unsplash or upload your own image. You can also select a canvas, including the size and shape, insert your logo, add filters, or position text.
The tool allows you to edit and format text too.
Pablo is minimalist and is a simple tool to use. It’s highly recommended for beginners.
Price: Free
So there you have it: three of the best social media graphic design tools. While each tool offers the ability for you to personalise your social media messages, you still need to have the skill and time to be able to implement this.
Meet the team at Crowdify who create all kinds of social media graphics for our clients. Get in touch to see how we can help you.