The Secret of Cool Social Media Graphics (Quick, Easy, and Dirty Cheap)
Creating social media graphics from scratch can be tiresome, money-and-time-consuming, and requires some considerable skills.
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Social media platforms where marketing is happening now: a business that isn’t on social media is a business that pretty much doesn’t exist. Here is where you reach your target audience easier and where you convert followers into customers… but only if you know what you’re doing.
Visual content is the most engaging, liked, and shared on all platforms, to the point where posts without images are pretty much pointless. A great social media marketing strategy relies heavily on social media graphics.
But there is a secret to producing beautiful, engaging, and effective social media images easier, faster, and at a fraction of the cost: social media templates, and user-friendly editors. Let’s unveil it!
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It’s all About the Visual Game
Think of Instagram, TikTok, or Snapchat. Images (and videos) are at their core. Even Facebook posts or Twitter posts, which surged as text-oriented, are nothing without images today. The novel “stories”, a short-living, visual storytelling concept, are great to build brand awareness and boost interaction. And they are 99% visual-driven.
The “why” is simple:
Whether you manage a big brand or are starting a small business, you need to master the visual game in social networks.
Lots of Visuals, Lots of Channels, Lots of Work
Ask any marketer or social media guru about the best social media marketing practices, and you’ll immediately learn two things: one, you gonna need images; two, you gonna need A LOT of them.
According to experts, the proven posting frequency for a good social media strategy is between 1-and 3 times a week. But that’s just scratching the surface. You need to be channel-minded, and each platform has its own game rules:
- Instagram posts and Facebook posts do well with 1-2 daily entries
- Instagram Stories, though, have a minimum of 10 daily stories to see results
- LinkedIn’s ideal frequency for updates is once daily
Think of how many of these social media designs will need images. And now factor in the branded visuals you require for each social media account: Facebook cover, Instagram profile, LinkedIn header, etc. That’s an insane amount of visuals!
To create images for social media at these rates, making sure it’s high-quality and effective when you still have a business to run can be problematic, especially if you’re not a professional designer: to make your own images is time-consuming and creatively challenging, and also get expensive.
This is where vector templates and easy-to-use editors can save the day.
6 User-Friendly Tools to Make Social Media Graphics
If you’re not that keen on working with vector files –or you’re just not that tech-savvy for that–, there is a much better fitting solution for you in the form of user-friendly design tools that are thought for the non-designer.
These apps and web-based editors have straightforward functionality that includes wide selections of social media templates –and templates for every occasion, too– that you can pick and quickly personalize with a few clicks, drags, and drops. Simple as that!
Plus, many of them have features to produce other visuals that work great on social media, such as presentations.
These are our favorite graphic editors for social media graphics. They all have a free version as well as paid, premium services:
Canva – Endless Creative Options
Canva is THE image editor for the non-designer. With it, you can create the most beautiful and pro-looking graphics without having any design skills.
The service comes with a very rich and modern template collection, including social media visuals that are deadly simple and customizable using their editing suite. And you can even share your final designs to your social media accounts directly from within their site. Pretty cool.
Canva has a free version that albeit limited, is quite efficient. And if you want full access to its stock media libraries and premium features, you can sign up for Canva Pro, a paid membership with unlimited downloads and cool bonus services. Even better, you can also enjoy a 30-day free trial of Canva Pro!
Adobe Creative Cloud Express (Adobe Spark) – Sleek Functionality
Adobe Creative Cloud Express (Adobe Spark) is a tool that combines the power of Adobe’s most popular design tools with a more user-friendly approach, making it perfect for non-designers.
Its features include a large selection of social media templates –as well as integration with Adobe Stock’s library– and super simple drag-and-drop and click-edit functionality to make them your own.
Shutterstock Create – Practical and User-Friendly Tool
The leading stock photo agency Shutterstock now has a whole platform, named Shutterstock Creative Flow, dedicated to providing resources and solutions for creatives, all powered by the latest AI tech. This includes Shutterstock Create, a user-friendly image editor that lets you design beautiful visuals in a matter of minutes, and without having specific design skills. It comes with social media templates as well as preset canvas sizes for all main social media platforms.
Creative Flow+ (the full, premium version of this service) comes at $12.99/mo, but the best part is that it is included for free with any Shutterstock subscription –be it for images, for video, or a multimedia Flex plan–. Plus, you can get Creative Flow+ for free with the Shutterstock free trial, and enjoy both premium images and image editing features for a whole month, without paying a penny!
Visme – Simple, Beautiful Designs
Visme is a user-friendly editing tool perfect to make simple but beautiful visuals. They make your life easy with a large pool of editable social media graphic templates, covering everything from Instagram stories to Twitch banners. Turning these into on-brand visuals is quickly done with their intuitive editing tools!
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Pixlr – Basic to Advanced Editing
Pixlr is an online graphic design tool that unfolds into two editors: Pixlr X for quick and user-friendly editing, and Pixlr E for advanced editing. Whatever version you go for, you can benefit from their large collection of ready-to-use templates that include multiple social media graphics like Facebook group covers, LinkedIn personal images, YouTube thumbnails, and much more!
They have a free version with limited access, and premium memberships start at $7.99/month. But now you can get premium access for free for 30 days –including the whole templates' library!– with this special Pixlr free trial!
Snappa – Easy Image Editing
Snappa is a multi-purpose image editor that makes it breezy to keep up with your social media presence, by offering social graphic templates and a tool to personalize them with just a few clicks and tweaks.
They have everything from Instagram templates to Pinterest posts templates and beyond.
Fotor – Templates for All Platforms
Fotor is an image editing service aimed at regular, non graphic designer users. Among its many features, there is a full library of customizable templates for every need, including of course social media graphics. From Twitter posts to LinkedIn backgrounds, they have designs for all your channels, and they are easy to edit in their built-in editor.
Venggage – User-Friendly Templates
Venggage is a graphic design tool to help you with all visual needs for your business, including your social media content. Their extensive offer of templates has multiple formats for each main social network, from Facebook to Pinterest to Snapchat, that you can select and edit right away to use in your accounts.
6 Stock Photo Sites with Cool Social Media Templates
Stock photo agencies usually include templates for social media graphics in their offer, that you can download and use in your channels.
They come in vector format, so you will need vector editing software such as Illustrator, Photoshop, or similar –which involves a variable degree of skills to use– to customize them to your likes. If you don't know Illustrator and such programs, however, the world is not lost yet: many stock agencies offer not only social media templates but also free, easy-to-use editors.
Shutterstock Professional Templates + Cool Editor
Shutterstock offers an immense selection of millions of high-quality social media templates, all fully editable vector files. You’ll find various designs for a Facebook cover –even a Facebook mobile cover–, Twitter banners, YouTube channel art, and much more.
Not only that, but they also have a user-friendly image editor that is fully integrated with their library, in Shutterstock Creative Flow. You can access the Shutterstock Create editor with one click and customize your visual right away. There is a completely free-of-charge version, albeit with limited functionality, and you can also unlock a free trial for Creative Flow+, the premium service.
Stockphotos.com – Budget Social Media Templates
Stockphotos.com is rich in templates for social media visuals, ready to download and use under a royalty-free license at dirty cheap prices.
They’re all in vector format, and when you download them, you also get a JPG version of the design at no added cost.
iStock – Beautiful Social Media Visuals + Simple Editor
iStock hosts a nice mix of budget templates and high-end designs for social media posts, social media banners, and more, all royalty-free and customizable.
They include a web-based image editing suite where you can transform your template into a finished visual in no time.
Adobe Stock – Trendy Social Media Graphics + Creative Cloud Integration
Adobe Stock has a library packed with trendy, creative social media templates for every need, all professionally made. You can download templates for Facebook ads, Instagram posts, or anything you need.
The best is that the service is fully integrated into Creative Cloud, making it super easy to edit your templates in Adobe Illustrator, for example.
123RF – Social Media Templates for All Budgets
123RF is where you can find social media templates for the most popular channels and uses, with beautiful designs, and flexible pricing to fit most pockets.
Dreamstime – Pro Social Media Graphics on the Cheap
Dreamstime is a great source of social media templates that are both suitable for professional use and very affordable.
Social Media Templates for Every Channel and Industry
You can license, customize (with your brand colors, copy, stock images, and own photos too), and then use the final visual from the design template in your channels. You can find them for all main networks and themed around a multitude of industries and professions, from gastronomy to medicine to banking to artistic craftsmanship.
Here’s why they are such a great asset for businesses:
- Created by professional artists: you get high-quality designs despite not being even a designer, without having to commission one
- Predesigned for specific social media channels: you don’t have to worry about image resize or composition because everything all post templates are already cropped, sized, and arranged with a specific social media channel image dimension in mind
- Fully customizable: you get a unique-looking visual tailored to your brand for a fraction of what it would cost to have it made from scratch
- Quickly done: you can have new visuals ready to go live very quickly and keep a good publishing rate effortlessly
Stock Templates are a Social Media Graphics Win-Win
And that’s the secret to creating the perfect social media images, at the desired rate to make your campaign successful, without breaking the bank, or your own patience.
Using professional social media templates, be them in vector format or pulled up from a newbie-friendly image editor catalog, you save yourself time, money, and headaches while securing beautiful visual content for your channels.
A real win-win!
