How to Create Beautiful Free Visual Content for Social Media 

Written by Libby Aldred

Social media content is one of the most effective marketing strategies for small businesses. With the average person now spending 142 minutes on social media platforms per day, it has transformed the way people socialize, communicate, and shop. 

If you want to grow your small business, there are lots of opportunities on social media. And, images and pictures are great for boosting engagement and getting noticed. 

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and this is definitely the case online. But, what do you do when your images are competing with millions of other images? 

If you want to create beautiful images for social media that drive engagement and traffic to your website or blog, here are some tips: 

1. Choose good design tools 

First and foremost, you will need to choose awesome design tools - it will be hard to create impressive, professional images for your page without doing this. 

Luckily, there are lots of free tools available to help you do this. When choosing the best tools, remember to consider the features available, as well as the price and how easy they are to use. Social media posts have a short life cycle, so you should avoid tools that are too complicated. 

Some of the best options are those that include free templates that can be easily adjusted to your business needs. For example, graphic design tools like Adobe Spark and free logo builders like LogoCreator are awesome choices for smaller businesses trying to save time and money. 

2. Use a variety of content types 

When it comes to social media content, and especially visual content, it’s important to vary the types to keep your audience engaged. Many marketing professionals prefer video content, like the ones you can effortlessly create using an online video editor, as it has a high ROI on social media, while others opt for images or infographics. Mixing up these content types ensures a dynamic and captivating presence for your brand on social platforms.

To maximize your success, you should try and combine different types of visuals on your pages, including business photos, images, graphics, quotes, videos, infographics, and others. Doing this is better for social media algorithms and it keeps your followers interested in your page. 

3. Optimize visual content for SEO purposes 

Using search engine optimization (SEO) means your posts can reach more people, as it makes it easier to search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo to pick up your content. 

You can apply SEO strategies to your visual content using techniques like tagging and adding keywords to your pictures. If you tag an image, use phrases that are similar to your title and relevant to your business. To get ideas for keywords, you can use a free tool like UberSuggest. 

4. Consider using paid ads 

If you’re on a tight budget, there are plenty of ways to get organic reach and promote your business for free. However, if you have a bit more to spend or want to boost your numbers, social media paid ads are good value for money and can help you reach your goals. 

Visual content tends to do well in paid ads - better than text only. So, if you want to increase sales or brand awareness, this is an effective tactic. Also, Facebook and other platforms offer services that will tailor your ad campaigns for you and get the best results for your money. 

5. Use content on all your accounts 

Last but not least, if you’re using multiple social media platforms to promote your business, you should aim to use it on as many of them as possible, and ideally on all of them. Because you’ve spent time and money on creating great content, it’s better to make the most of it! 

Different types of content perform better on some platforms than others. For instance, infographics work better on Facebook and LinkedIn, whilst video works best on YouTube and Instagram. But, there’s no reason you can’t use your visual creations across all of them.