Social media has long been a great way for businesses to communicate with their customers. But now you need creativity and a unique approach to stand out from the crowd and catch your audience’s attention.
Here are some great tools that you can use to give your posts the edge. Many of them have free starter versions, so try a few out and see how your new creations affect your engagement rates.
Layout is an app created by Instagram that allows you to put your image together in a collage. It gives a good range of different arrangement options and is very easy to use.
Just choose your images and your layout template, manoeuvre your photos into the desired position and save. You can have some real fun with the orientation and mirroring of your pictures to create some really eye-catching results.
The integration with Instagram allows for quick, straightforward uploads to your social media accounts too.
Ripl is a quick and easy-to-use app that allows you to add text to your pictures and then customise your graphic with a wide range of layouts, fonts and colours. Upgrade to the pro version and you can even add a custom watermark (instead of Ripl’s default one) with your own business logo or profile picture.
You can choose to have your post as an animation with added music, or simply as a still. Once you’re satisfied, you can easily share your work on the network of your choice.
I’ve found Ripl to be a great app to create quick promotions for your brand, without having to use graphic design, software or designer skills.
Snapseed is another useful photo-editing tool that makes graphic design easy for novices. It offers lots of options to edit your images, for example straightening, cropping and adjusting the colour or exposure of your images.
There’s even a tool to alter the ‘ambience’ of the photo. Along with the shadow function, this means you can add an artistic edge to your images.
Snapseed doesn’t have the other additions of the likes of Ripl, but there are far more photo editing options available and so it is still a very useful app to have in your collection.
Quik is a video editing tool by GoPro, which was previously known as Replay. It’s a great tool for those who want to upload professional-looking videos with ease. The app allows you to use footage taken from your phone, edit it and add a soundtrack to it.
One of the big advantages of Quik is that it automatically edits the video to fit with the beat of the music. It’ll also search for the best moments in the video, where different effects and filters can be added.
Once you are happy with what’s been created, you can upload it to Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp. If you have limited video editing skills, but know how important this type of content is, then this is definitely the app for you.