What are some of the best tools and apps to create content for social media? These powerful tools are guaranteed to help you with your content creation efforts. While the tools listed here will help you create the actual content, this post on how to get free images for your blog is a helpful resource for locating free images for your posts.
Social media is a great way to grow your business. It can also be used as a powerful marketing tool when used appropriately. Content creation is one of the major keys to successfully getting your message out through social media. But how can you know what content creation tools are best for the social media environment? There are several top free content creator apps you can use to create attractive, compelling messages that make people want to not only visit your online website, but call and talk with you about your business or product.
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 pro or enterprise pricing if it’s the best fit for the business. It is free for education 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 for your needs. There is a section dedicated to social media graphics for an array of content formats across platforms.
- 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 certified social media marketers to create stunning graphics without a lot of design knowledge.
Crello’s advantage over Canva is that it offers more than 30,000 free design templates, 180 million photos, 32,000 videos and 15,000 illustrations. You can also design as a team by inviting members (up to 10), animate your designs and choose from a music library. 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 pro plan starts at $9.99 a month.
How to Build Graphics Quickly with Crello:
- Use Crello’s ‘Create’ tab to find a free design template or templates that work 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.
Evernote
Chances are you’ve heard of Evernote, which has gained a reputation as the premiere note-taking app and productivity tool. B2B marketers looking to streamline their social campaigns will find it especially useful.
Evernote lets you store ideas, research, and take quick notes in a user-friendly format. When you add items—which can take virtually any form, such as text, audio, pictures, or screenshots—you can tag them, saving you time in locating them later. Add-ons like the Web Clipper allow you to add pieces of content to your Evernote notebook as you browse the web and conduct your regular research.
If you keep up with blogs, video content, and other resources in your industry, Evernote is a great way to organize bits and pieces of useful information as inspiration for your social campaigns. Whether you are collecting ideas that you’ll add to your social content calendar, jotting down ideas for social posts, or gathering information across the web that will help you put together a data-driven whitepaper or special report for your leads, Evernote can help.
Skitch
From the great people behind Evernote comes Skitch, a very useful image annotation app. Skitch is simple: add visual elements, such as arrows and text-boxes, to your content. This can help to call out certain parts of your text, such as an important step in a series of instructions, or to clarify an on-screen process for software.
A B2B company that walks its customers through a complex process or makes it more intuitive is one that will be talked about—and a tool like Skitch can help achieve that brand recognition for you.
Animoto.com
Video is the most shared, and most engaging content type, on average, across all social media platforms. These days, most platforms incorporate autoplay video, which can help to grab attention as people scroll through their feeds, while it’s much easier, in general, for consumers to take in a short video summary, as opposed to a written blog post.
As such, you need to be considering if and how you can utilize video in your approach – but creating marketing videos can seem daunting at first.
With Animoto, however, you can start creating professional videos for your social media campaigns, even if you don’t have a big budget or design skills.
First of all, Animoto provides templates for different needs. Some of the templates available on Animoto include:
- Behind the scenes videos
- Explainer videos
- Product and service promotion
- Testimonials
- Tutorials
After finding the template you want to customize, Animoto has a simple editor that even a first-time user won’t have problems using. It’s incredibly easy to upload videos, images, and music to create unique videos.
And even if you don’t have video clips and imagery to use, Animoto has a library of over a million videos, images and licensed music that you can use to create a unique video.
When you’re done creating your video, Animoto enables you to share directly to your social media pages. And with options to share on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and 10 other channels, you won’t even have to leave Animoto to share your video.
Alternatively, if you’re creating a video for a future campaign, you can download your video content in 360p, 480p, 720p, and 1080p resolutions.
SlideBoom
SlideBoom can convert your PowerPoint presentations to Flash so you can share them with colleagues, prospects, and customers. As private or public, SlideBoom lets you share your presentations with just the right audience.
Cost: Free and paid versions
Prezi
Prezi is available for your desktop or as an online editor. It makes creating an effective presentation a snap. Browse the knowledge base or upload your own presentations. You can add animations and share your content on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
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.
Conclusion:
We all want to create quality content for social media, and I can’t blame you. Content is at the very heart of every social media marketing campaign and without it, you are just a pretty face without a personality. But it’s not always easy coming up with new content day after day, week after week — even if you have a million dollar budget.