7 Design Tools to Create Shareable Social Media Visual Content

Just like written content, Visual content on Social Media is also essential. It gives people a reason to follow you, share your posts, and eventually buy from you.

On average:

• Facebook post with image gets 2.3 times more engagement
• Visual content in tweets generates three times more engagement.
• In addition, visuals have a more lasting impact. We're 65% more likely to remember material that features an image.

As a marketer or a business owner, you don't want to miss this opportunity to build a solid social media presence through visual content. But what if you're not a designer?

Creating shareable visuals can seem daunting, but it doesn't have to be. Even if you're not a designer, there are ways to improve your creative skills. There are plenty of graphic design tools out there that make it easy to create beautiful visuals.

Here are a few of the design tools for non-designers:

1. Easil.com

Easil can be used to quickly generate images and short videos – including various brand protection options like locking and approval workflow. Easil allows you to convert your fresh, unique designs into unique visual content in seconds. You can create beautiful posters, flyers, menus, social media images and infographics with just a few clicks.

Key Features:

• Simple and easy-to-use interface.
• Plenty of templates and tools for creating shareable visuals.
• Brand protection features.
• Add text with glow, drop shadow or a curved effect.
• Create animated GIFs to catch the attention of your audience.
• Make your templates the perfect size for any platform quickly and easily.
• Access to a wide range of free fonts.
• With a colour palette generator that makes consistent design easier.
• Access brand templates and assets straight to your team's inboxes.
• Ready to use social media image & video templates

Pricing: Easil offers a free account with a 30-Day Free Plus Trial. Paid options are Plus subscription starts at $7.50 monthly per user, Edge at $59 monthly per user, and for Enterprise (a flexible option), you can contact their sales team for a custom quote.

2. Img.ly

Img.ly is a simple and easy-to-use online graphic design tool that lets you add filters, crop images, and make basic adjustments to your photos. You can also create short video clips by adding text, overlays, and music. It offers an SDK, so users can integrate it into their apps and products to add creative editing and automation capabilities. Ideal creative automation software for agencies who built their internal tooling for content production using SDK and APIs.

Key Features:

• Image Set Generation – allows you to generate image variations from a data source automatically. For example, if you need a batch of images for team cards, simply select your team's data set and let the template do the rest.
• Creative SDK – is a fully programmable design editor, allowing you to quickly create complex workflows and automation with just a few lines of code.
• SDK for Web & Mobile – makes it easy to add beautiful photo editing capabilities to your applications.
• Video SDK for Android, iOS, and React Native – quickly add stunning video editing capabilities to your mobile apps.

Pricing: Img.ly offers flexible pricing; contact the sales team for a custom quote depending on your demands.

3. Kittl.com

With Kittl, you can let your imagination run wild with design challenges and the opportunity to earn prizes. You don't have to be a professional graphic designer to create unique visual content. With Kittl’s extensive library of ready-to-use designs for logos, posters, packaging labels, posters, cards, t-shirts, blog posts and Social Media Posts, anyone can instantly start designing like a pro. The platform is perfect for anyone needing inspiration, freshly learning or simply wanting to extend their design skills.

Key Features:

• Apply text effects and decorations – easily replace the text and apply your effects.
• Access to premium fonts – many of the fonts available in Kittl are exclusively made by their team and of super high quality, including Blackriver, Signmaster, Old Alfie, Brilon, HT Modern Hand, Grocer, Ornament and catch-word fonts, London News, Trainguard, Milkstore, Royal Signage, etc. They all come with many glyphs, many of which are variable fonts.
• High-quality illustrations – access an ever-growing library of in-house created illustrations and clip arts. 
• It has a huge template library with more complex designs than other design tools.
• Community-created designs – anyone can publish a design for others to use on Kittl.

Pricing: Kittl offers a free account. Paid options are the PRO plan, which starts at $10 monthly, EXPERT at $24 monthly, and BUSINESS at $79 monthly.

4. Mediamodifier.com

Mediamodifier.com started as a mockup generator, but it has now evolved into a graphic editor with various additional design tools and templates. With over 2000 templates to pick from, users will have no problem finding a suitable product mockup for their needs. They have design templates for Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and other platforms. You can use the mockup and design tools free with a standard account. The final download option is the only thing limited. 

Key Features:

• Create your banners, ads, social media posts, and more using a drag-and-drop online design editor.
• You can generate each mockup online, but users can also download the PSD source files.
• Upload PSD files and turn them into mockups to add colour, change fonts, resize the canvas or insert images.
• Offers full customisation – turns client's images into online mockups upon request.
• Use the Mockup API to automate design workflow.
• Provides full commercial license and model-release signed images.
• The Team plan comes with shared assets.

Pricing: Mediamodifier offers a Starter account for free. Paid options are a Professional plan at $15.83 / month (best for individuals) and a Team subscription at $37.50 / month (best for teams & agencies).

5. Accomplice.ai

Accomplice.ai is an online design platform with Artificial Intelligence-powered image tools to create, edit and modify royalty-free graphics. Just type in your keyword, and the AI-powered software will generate unique images and complete the designs for you in just a few minutes. In addition, users can invite every team member to help create and organise content. With Accomplice, creators may also share their designs worldwide via public profiles. Explore their community to engage with other creators and follow or get followed by others.

Key Features:

• The world's first no-code, AI image model training platform.
• Create stunning images starting from nothing but a text description or keyword with a text-to-image AI generator.
• Generate 100% royalty-free AI-powered images for mockups, social media and branding.
• Image models are the “AI programs” that Artificial Intelligence uses to know how to create images. Accomplice has the most image models available – from a model trained only on Pixel Art to one trained only on creating Portraits of people and almost 50 others! – which means the best choice for what kind of image you want to create.
• Can upscale your favourite images to 1028 px and larger. Perfect for backgrounds, headers, blog content images, and more.
• Can organise your images in folders and collections, making it easy to create images for different campaigns and projects.

Pricing: Accomplice offers a Free account with 10 Free Credits. Paid options start at Pay as you go for $19 (100 credits/month), Pro for $49 (200 credits/month), Team for $99 (400 credits/month) and Business for $249+ (2,000+ credits/month).

6. Removal.AI

Removal.AI is an AI-powered background removal tool that can automatically separate foreground and background pixels in an image. Users can quickly and easily remove backgrounds from images, create transparent or white backgrounds, or customise them in just a few seconds. The platform offers dedicated customer care and assistance with work and editing tasks depending on the user's requirements.

Key Features:

• Bulk background remover – automatically remove unwanted background from multiple images in a single click.
• Plugins are available so that users can use the tool directly with Photoshop, Figma and other software.
• It offers a reliable API integration optimised for platforms or web apps.
• Text Tool – lets you add and modify text on images in different styles and font types.
• Essential Enhancement Tools – helps improve photos by adding a shadow and adjusting contrast/brightness.
• Transform tool – allows you to crop, resize, rotate and flip images.
• Download images as PNG and JPEG.

Pricing: Removal.AI offers a free account with one high-resolution download and 50 free previews via API and app. Paid option starts from $0.90 per image to only $0.13 per image.

7.  Simplified.com

With Simplified.com, you can create and customise digital documents, such as card invitations, ads, banners, social media postings, videos, and more. Manage everything you need in one place, from creating design assets to animating videos, writing content, and planning social media campaigns. Collaborate with your team to quickly create and distribute digital files on the web in one click. Everything you'll need is already simplified.

Key Features:

• Thousands of design templates are available to create content, brand assets, social media posts and more in minutes.
• Easily connect your social media accounts, import or create designs, and schedule posts to publish using the Content Calendar.
• Edit your design to fit various platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
• Crop images quickly with specific ratios and sizes.
• Animate elements by adding intro and outro animations.
• Remove any image background in a snap.
• You and your team can collaborate on projects by editing, commenting, and tagging.
• Streamlines your tasks so you can get more done in a shorter time.

Pricing: Simplified offers a Free account for personal use. Paid monthly options are the Starter plan at $9 (best for professional creators and designers.), Small Team at $18 (best for small teams starting with digital marketing), Business at $30 (best for growing teams scaling creatives, social, blogs) and Growth at $75 (best for high growth businesses).

Your turn… 

When searching for graphic design tools, you'll discover everything from free, open-source, web-based options to full-fledged image editing applications that require no design skills or knowledge. This tool allows you to create unique social media posts and schedule and visually plan your social media campaigns. 

5 Ways to Make Your Social Media Posts Visually Appealing

Here are a few more of my tips and principles for improving your social media posts.

1. Keep it Short and Sweet. When it comes to creating visual content, less is more. You want to capture your audience’s attention quickly and efficiently, so make sure your visuals are short, sweet, and to the point.

2. Be Relevant Images. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s important to remember that people are visual creatures. We are more likely to engage with and remember content that is easy on the eyes, appealing to look at, and relatable and familiar.

3. Use Visuals to Tell a Story. A great way to make your visuals more engaging is to use them to tell a story. This could be as simple as creating a before-and-after image to showcase your product or service results or something more complex like creating an infographic to illustrate a process.

4. Be Creative. When it comes to visual content, there are no bounds to your creativity. Get creative with your visuals and think outside the box to capture your audience’s attention.

5. Use High-Quality Images. Ensure the images you use in your visual content are high quality and clear. This will help to ensure that your visuals are engaging and professional-looking.

Visual content is a great way to engage your audience on social media. By following these tips and with the help of the design tools above, you can create creative, practical, shareable visuals.

The post 7 Design Tools to Create Shareable Social Media Visual Content is by Stuart and appeared first on Inkbot Design.