Best Productive tools to create engaging visual content for social media marketing

If you compare engagement between post with banner image, video or GIFs and post without it, most of the times content with image,video or GIFs gets more engagements than plain text content.

There are many softwares which you can use to create visual content. It's up to you which software you are comfortable with. For e.g. many designers/marketers use adobe suite to create visual contents. But many of us don't know how to use adobe suite and it's expensive. So here are top 3 on-line applications which you can use to create visual content. All of these applications are designed for non-designer so anyone can create visually appealing content.

Let's dive into this.

1. CANVA
   • Free + Paid plans
   • You can export unlimited images in Free plan
   • 😲 1000+ Pre-designed Templates
   • 😲 1000+ Pre-designed Instagram templates
   • Recommended for designer/newbie🎨👨‍💼👩🏼‍💼
   • You should use it for personal/professional/commercial as it's almost free
   • Cost Around $9.95/month for individual plan

2. STENCIL
   • Free + Paid Plans
   • You can export only 10 images in Free plan
   • 😲 1000+ Pre-designed Templates
   • ☹️No pre-designed Instagram templates
   • Recommended for designer/newbie🎨👨‍💼👩🏼‍💼
   • You should use this for commercial only as it's free with limitation
   • Cost around $9/month for individual plan

3. ADOBE SPARK
   • 2 months Free, Paid only Plans
   • No limit on export in 2 month trial plan
   • 😲 Premium Pre-designed Templates
   • Recommended for designers🎨
   • You should use this only if you have profitable business as it has a monthly cost
   • Cost around $9.99/month for individual plan

In process of designing good visual content, we need stock images which can enrich your content. So here are some websites/applications which you can use to find free/paid stock images:

1. UNSPLASH.COM
   • Free with no attribution

2. PEXELS.COM
   • Free with no attribution

3. FREEPIK.COM
   • Free with attribution (You have to specify give attribution to autor)

4. 500PX.COM
   • Paid - $4.99/month

If you are freelancer designer or individual, you can create content for free as each of the mentioned services provide free services for individuals. But if you are a team of designers/marketers, It will cost you around minimum $15/month to use these services.

And cost depends on the type of content you need for your creatives. For example if you are designing content for design studio, it must be unique and vibrant. In such case you can use adobe spark as it provide premium templates and more customized editing functionality.

Yes, there will be significant improvement in your content engagement if you design attractive visual content. Because as a human we always tend to attract to beautiful things.