What is the fastest way to get your content creation out there? I’ve analyzed different software options that will assist you with your content creation efforts. Ranking these content creation tools can be tricky because they all offer something unique. You should also think about what you want to create in order to find out which is the best software for your needs.
Placeit
One more video tool in this list is PlaceIt.
This image and video tool allows brands to showcase their products and digital designs in realistic web/ video environments. It can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars on externally sourced product videos and images. A one-time purchase on the platform costs a few dollars, or you can choose to pay $14.95 per month, or $89.69 yearly, depending on your brand’s needs.
How to Create Video mock-ups with Placeit:
- Search for your desired environment. Tip: include your preferred device (e.g. iPhone or Mac) and background (e.g. office or cafe).
- Upload your image or enter a URL to grab a screenshot. Placeit will automatically place your image in your selected environment.
Stencil
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Price: Free, $9 per month, or $18 per monthBROUGHT TO YOU BY
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Description: Stencil is built specifically to help you create social media graphics faster. Apart from its web app, it also has browser extensions, which you can use to create images from any website that you’re on.
Great for creating: Images, quotes, and stories
How to create graphics quickly with Stencil:
With Stencil’s browser extension, you can easily grab an image or text and convert it into a beautiful graphic to share on social media.
Here’s a quick example of creating a quote post in just a few seconds:
With such great power comes great responsibility.
Be sure to grab only images that are free-to-use (for personal or commercial use) and give appropriate credit on your graphics. A good way of using this extension is to share quotes from your blog posts.
Typorama
There are many free graphics tools that allow users to easily create beautiful images for social media, but most of them aren’t available (or aren’t very intuitive) on your smartphone. Typorama is an iPhone app thatmakes it easy to create amazing-looking graphics directly from your smartphone. You can create graphics of various sizes such as for Instagram story, Facebook cover photo, images with quotes, and more. ( For Android users, WordSwag is a great alternative.) Typograma is free for general use, with an upgrade fee of $4.99 to remove the company’s watermark, or $5.99 to unlock everything.
How to Create a Graphic with Typorama in Four Steps:
- Choose a background or upload an image from your phone’s camera roll.
- Select your graphic size.
- Add and edit the text.
- Save your graphic, or share it on social media!
Animoto
Animoto is another great video platform that allows users who aren’t experts to create captivating multimedia. Animoto allows you to turn existing video clips and images into video slideshows with little effort. It’s one of the few video tools that also offers square videos for certain social media platforms and design tastes. Animoto does offer a free version, if you don’t mind having their branding on your videos. Other plans are at €28 or €69 per month based on your business’s needs. Annual subscriptions offer significant discounts.
How to Create Quick Videos with Animoto:
- Use one of the many storyboards provided by Animoto to speed up your video creation process. Each comes with a song, a style, and a particular structure.
- Replace the existing template content with your own text, video clips, and photos.
After you create your video, you can download it in various formats and levels of quality and upload it directly to Facebook or Twitter.
Google Sheets
Create graphs and charts with your data
Price: Free
Description: I personally like using Googe Sheets to create simple graphs and charts quickly. I find it most suitable when I just want a simple graph or chart.
Great for creating: Graphs and charts
How to create charts quickly with Google Sheets:
Select the data in your Google Sheet and then click “Insert” > “Chart…”.
The chart editor will appear on the right-hand side. In there, you can change the chart type to the one that’s most appropriate for your data.
Canva
A social media tools list wouldn’t be complete without Canva. One of the most popular tools for creating social media graphics, Canva allows users to create high-quality images quickly using layouts, templates and design elements. The free version of the tool is extremely comprehensive, but those who want more can invest €11.99 per month (up to 5 people) or go with enterprise pricing if it’s the best fit for their business. It is free for educational and non-profits.
How to Create Beautiful Graphics with Canva:
- Search Canva’s amazing library of templates and choose to use them as-is or to customize them for your needs. There is a section specifically dedicated to social media graphics.
- Choose your unique elements to make the graphic your own.
- Share your new visual on any social media platform!
Crello
Similar to Canva, Crello is a graphic design tool that makes it easy for brands to create stunning graphics without a lot of design knowledge. Crello’s advantage over Canva is that it offers more than 10,000 free design templates, 65 million stock images, and more than 11,000 design elements. Like Canva, a variety of different image types are offered, including templates specifically for social media. Crello is free for users, with limited usage, and plans start at $7.99.
How to Build Graphics Quickly with Crello:
- Use Crello’s “Create” tab to find a free design template or templates that works for your brand.
- Simply click on a design template you love, and customize it using the Crello editor.
- Save your finished product, and/or share it across your social media sites.
Piktochart
Create easy infographics, reports, presentations
Price: Free, $15 per month, or $29 per month (Annual subscriptions are 17 percent cheaper.)
Description: Piktochart is one of the most popular design tools for creating infographics. With the free plan, you can create an unlimited number of graphics and choose from over 4,000 icons and images.
Great for creating: Infographics, charts, graphs, and presentations
How to create infographics quickly with Piktochart:
If you often create infographics, charts, or graphs to share, a handy trick to know is that you can easily re-use your designs by copying a group of elements from one infographic and pasting them in another. Then you can change the data, color, or font to make the design look new.
Here’s a GIF showing how it looks like:
Here are 18 more Piktochart hacks to help you save time and create nicer infographics.
Hashtagify.me
Hashtagify.me is a free tool (with paid add-on features) that allows you to search for hashtags. Once you’ve searched for a hashtag, you can determine its popularity and how it’s used. The tool is simple to use: in the search box, type in a hashtag you are curious about, and search to find out its performance and related hashtags on Twitter and Instagram. You’ll also see the top influencers for that hashtag, as well as recent tweets using that hashtag and other demographics. Paid users can sign up for alerts on particular hashtags, track influencers and usage patterns, and more.
SlideShare & Flipsnack
If your business utilizes LinkedIn to share updates, SlideShare is a must. Once a separate site, SlideShare is now owned by LinkedIn. This allows the eye-catching images and presentations added to SlideShare to be automatically synced to the platform. By integrating these two platforms, you can have the best of both worlds: informative text articles and updates from LinkedIn and the captivating images of SlideShare. Sharing presentations, eBooks, infographics and more is always a great idea, and the platform allows you to simply press a button to distribute them to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
You can also embed your SlideShare presentation on your website using IFrame or WordPress shortcodes (depending on which platform you use).
Finally, you can take things to the next level with Flipsnack (previously known as SlideSnack). This tool allows you to add your voice overlay to your content.
The tool also allows you to upload past presentations and add voice to them, then share them.
Grammarly
Grammarly is an all-in-one spellcheck and grammar tool that works all of the places Microsoft Word can’t. It helps users write mistake-free copy on Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and almost anywhere else on the web. Grammarly scans your text for common and complex grammatical mistakes, including everything from subject-verb agreement to article use to modifier placement. It also goes beyond regular checking to provide users for explanations and help them improve their skills. The Grammarly plugin is free for individual users, with paid features also available.
PowToon
Video is the most popular medium on social media networks. The problem is, many companies rely on expensive external agencies to create these videos. The finished product can look too contrived, miss the message mark, and really drain the budget. Tools like PowToon mean you don’t have to be a video master to create engaging videos, especially for presentation purposes. The PowToon platform allows users to choose from several templates and customize them according to their business. You can simply plug and play your content and share across your social media networks. Free and paid versions are available from $19 to $99 per month.
Animaker
Make an awesome explainer video in minutes
Price: Free, $12 per month, $25 per month, or $49 per month (Annual subscriptions are slightly cheaper.)
Description: Animaker makes it possible (and easy) to create animated videos with impressive effects without needing any technical skills in creating animations.
Great for creating: Animated videos and stories
How to create videos quickly with Animaker:
Animaker has over 40 templates you can use to create your animated video.
Each of these templates is essentially a ready-made video with the proper effects, transitions, and music. To create your video or story quickly, you can just change the content and keep the rest as it is.
Anchor
Anchor is one of the most popular platforms for creating, distributing and monetizing your podcast. For free. It integrates with all key podcasting outlets free social media platform for audio. With the Anchor app, users can easily create videos and audio recordings that are perfect for sharing on social media
Adobe Spark
Make images, videos and web stories for free in minutes
Price: Free (with branding that can be removed for a limited time)
Description: Adobe Spark is a design tool we’re starting to love a lot more, and it complements Canva nicely. It offers several unique features such as resizing, color palettes, and style suggestions.
Great for creating: Images, quotes, videos, and stories
How to create graphics quickly with Adobe Spark:
Apart from templates that you can remix, Adobe Spark has a feature that suggests design styles to you.
Instead of spending time thinking how you should design your graphics, all you have to do is turn a dial.
If you create Instagram stories often, we recently teamed up with Adobe Spark to create 10 free pre-made Instagram Stories templates.
Conclusion
There we are. these essential softwares have been put togther to help you make your content infast and productive way.
Whether you’re a complete beginner, business owner or marketing professional looking to upskill, this social media marketing course is perfect for you. Or our CPD-eligible short course on Graphic Design fundamentals.
the sooner you start using them, the quicker you start realising its benefit.