10 Easy Ways to Create Professional Graphics to Market Your Small Business

The power of visual marketing is huge and using graphics with your social media marketing is one of the best and easiest ways to increase your engagement and views on your posts.

We scroll through hundreds (thousands?) of posts a day, and what catches your attention? Most likely it’s a video or photo. Why is Instagram so popular and have over 400 million users? Because you can share and view amazing images, interesting quotes and cool travel photographs.

Many small businesses don’t have a large budget for professional graphic design, but luckily there are great options both online, and with mobile apps, so that you can create your own graphics to improve your social media profiles and marketing.

Start with Professional Images

First thing- you need some professional and interesting graphics for your website, blog and social media. If you are a camera pro and already have your own images to use- awesome! Otherwise, there are some really affordable options to try.

Use Unsplash to find amazingly beautiful images to use for your marketing

• Unsplash has an amazing selection of beautiful photos to use, mostly outdoor shots and scenery
• LibreStock searches 40 free stock photo websites to find the best images to use
• Pixabay has a huge collection of free images and videos you can use for free
• Picjumbo provides free photos and categorizes them to find what you are looking for fairly easily

Check to make sure the free photos you download are licensed under Creative Commons Zero. This means that you can copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including commercial purposes, without asking permission from or providing attribution to the photographer or the website you downloaded from. If you are using paid sites, that’s different.

If you want to check and make sure the images you are using are authentic, use the Google Reverse Image search tool.

• Using Chrome, visit images.google.com.
• Drag an image from your computer into the search box or upload an image
• Click search and a list of websites where the images are found will pop up

Create Inspiring Quote Graphics to Share

Create simple quote graphics with BeHappy.Me

Do you have a favourite quote that you want to share? Instead of just posting a status update, create a graphic with your quote. Here is a list of online quote creators you can use:

• Behappy.me
• Recite
• Quozio

If you don’t already have a favourite quote or need something specific to your industry, there are great quotes you can find on blogs like the Positivity Blog or Brainy Quote.

Another option for designing shareable quote graphics is to incorporate beautiful images to complement the quotes.

Make Quick Image Edits with Ease

Sometimes all you need to turn your plain-Jane images into shareable visuals are a few small edits. Free online editing sites like PicMonkey or BeFunky are great choices, because they are simple and fast.

Use PicMonkey to easily edit images online for free

Create custom graphics for your social media profiles

Canva is one of the go-to graphics resources I use almost daily. It’s easy to create graphics for your, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, ebook and the list goes on. You can add images, text and icons to create a beautiful brand across all your platforms.

Create shareable graphics for social media using Canva

This shareable social media graphic was made using an image from Unsplash and designed in Canva. If it doesn’t make sense to post inspirational quotes for your business, consider incorporating business tips, or quotes from industry specific thought leaders.

Mobile Apps to Create Images

There are so many apps you can use to create cool quote graphics and social media images, but my favourites are PicLab, Quick, Studio and Pixlr. inStatus is a cool app for making quote graphics.