5 free online apps to create stunning visuals for social media

Visual content is indispensable for every digital marketer today. Not only is visual content more appealing to viewers, it’s also 40 times more likely to be shared on social media than any other type of content. Catchy graphics and images have the added advantage of propagating information in a quick and concise manner as compared to, say, blog posts which are time consuming to read.

Nowadays, marketers don't need to rely exclusively on designers to create such visuals. A plethora of online applications, replete with pre-existing design templates and graphics, are enabling design novices to create engaging visuals with minimum effort. Here are five such free online tools which you can use to create stunning visuals for social media sites:

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Canva

Canva is probably the most versatile free design tool a marketer can use. You can create visuals ranging from simple image posts and banners to detailed posters and blog graphics. It comes pre-loaded with a variety of pictures, vector images, and fonts, most of which are free to use. Canva also offers its users a multitude of templates which can be tweaked and personalised with ease, courtesy of a stellar UI. Once you're done creating what you need, you can download it in Instagram, Facebook or Twitter specific sizes with the click of a single button.

Pixlr

Using Adobe Photoshop requires a fair amount of practice from the user. Understanding the need for a simpler photo editing software, Autodesk launched a toned-down version of the Photoshop known as Pixlr. The online-only app, despite being completely free, does not miss out on Photoshop's most commonly used features which suffice for all but the most serious designers. In case you find using Pixlr to be a bit complicated, there's an even more scaled-down version called Pixlr Express for basic photo editing like adding filters, adjusting brightness, and creating collages, among others.

Recite

Sharing famous quotes has become quite the rage on social media, with posts bearing hashtags like #MondayMotivation and #WanderlustWednesday flooding Facebook and Twitter every week. Recite is a free online tool that caters only to those who want to create engaging quote-bearing visuals. Extremely simple to use, Recite uses a no-nonsense format that requires you to simply enter a quote and select a design template. You can't edit the visuals or upload your own background images, but, with the multitude of different templates Recite offers, you'll never need to.

Pablo

Sometimes, all you need to create an engaging piece of visual content is a captivating image with text overlaid on it. Pablo is a free online software that enables users to create such visuals with unbelievable ease. You can either upload your own photo or select one from its vast cache. After that, adding text, filters, and even your brand's logo, is an effortless task. You can also resize the images in an instant to suit your needs. And since Pablo is a tool by Buffer, a popular social media management app, you can post your creations directly to various social media sites directly.

Piktochart

Infographics, out of all the different types of image content, are the most useful for sharing a large amount of information in an easy-to-consume manner. They are also far more likely to be shared on social media than other content formats. Piktochart is a highly-rated online tool that lets you create captivating infographics with ease. The tool gives you freedom to create your own infographic from scratch in addition to ten varied templates that cover the most common infographic types. Piktochart can also be used to create visually engaging presentations and printables, like reports and posters.

These tools can be used by marketers to create social graphics and images for advertisements, announcements, blog headers, and a lot more. And not only do these online apps eliminate the need for a designer, they are extremely intuitive and simple to use as well.