At Many Rivers we are always searching for resources to help you along your business journey. This week we have found an article by Zapier, sharing some great design tools to help you create images that capture attention and drive engagement.

“A picture is worth a thousand words”—but what to do when your image is one of a thousand other images?

We hope you find this useful.

The popularity of using images in social media has not decreased their effectiveness: Facebook posts with images see 2.3X more engagement than those without images. And it’s not just Facebook—Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than tweets without images.

So how can you create images that stand out from all the other images in your audience’s Facebook, Twitter and other social feeds?

More importantly, how can you create images that drive engagement with your brand and traffic to your website or blog?

To start, you’re going to need a good design tool. The good news is, there are a lot of tools out there to create engaging images that stand out on social media, and many of the best are free.

What makes a great social media image app?

You want to make an image that will catch your followers’ eyes—something that will make them click and share and keep watching for the next great thing you post. You also don’t want to spend a lot of time or money creating these images.

The secret to creating these kinds of images is having a lot of great templates and design resources (images, icons, shapes, text styles) all readily available, so all you have to do is mix, match, and message.

Following are five free apps for creating your own vibrant and professional social media images.

1. Canva (Web, iOS, Android)

Best for powerful template-based graphic creation

Canva Price: Free for 8,000+ templates, 1GB storage, and up to 10 team members, Pro is from $9.95 a month.

2. Desygner (Web, iOS, Android)

Best for designing on a mobile device

Desygner Price: Free version and then Premium is $9.95 for more templates and assets, as well as features like versioning.

3. Snappa (Web)

Best for fast text design

Snappa Pricing: Free for 5 downloads or shares per month; Pro from $10/month for unlimited downloads, shares, and social accounts, as well as full access to Snappa’s template library and Buffer integration.

4. Over (iOS, Android, Web – coming soon)

Best for simple design and video creation on mobile

Over Pricing: Free for certain designs, some templates do come at a cost.

5. Unsplash (iOS, Android, Web)

Best for free to use images 

Unsplash Pricing: All photos published on Unsplash can be used for free. You can use them for commercial and noncommercial purposes. You do not need to ask permission from or provide credit to the photographer or Unsplash, although it is appreciated when possible.

If you would like to read more details about these different tools, discover more here with Zapier, The 6 Best Free Design Tools to Create Social Media Graphics

If you have a business idea and want support in growing that idea, or looking for help to expand your current business, take our quick Small Businesses Self Assessment to see if we are right for your.