Hello INBOUND attendees and other readers! This is a resource post with links to the tools that I shared in my INBOUND 2016 session DIY Design: How to Design Compelling Visual Content for your Blog.
Adobe Spark: My favorite for creating great visuals for my blog. I love them so much that I’m a brand ambassador for them! Everything I create in Spark is sharp, crisp, and professional. I get oodles of compliments on my Spark designs.
DIY Design is a must for small business owners, social media managers, and entrepreneurs. Time is the most valuable resource we have for our businesses. Being practical with project management and smart with our money has never been more important. We can’t always afford to work with a professional for our marketing and design needs. Enter Adobe Spark.
Learn more here: How to Kickstart your DIY Design Skills
Social Warfare: This plugin allows you to add graphics to the backend of your blog posts so it doesn’t slow down your blog but gives people great graphics to share. On this article I have a featured image, a main image at the top, a Twitter graphic, and a Pinterest graphic. So many great ways to share this with graphics!
It’s very important to test your blog post social sharing to guarantee that your blog shares well on social media. Also check your blog and blog graphics on mobile devices.
Trello: Keeps my life organized and easy to access across my desktop, smartphone, and tablets.
GIPHY: Find super fun GIFS to add a spark to your content. This is a cinemagraph which is animated photography – part of it is a still photo and part is animated. How cool is that?
Create these graphics for each blog post as well as a featured image. Give people lots of opportunities to share. Here are graphics in each size so you can see how different they are. But each was created in Spark with one click to the resize button.
Pinterest 2:3 ratio or 735 pixels by 1102 pixels
Twitter 2:1 ratio or 500 pixels x 1000 pixels
Facebook and Instagram 1:1 ratio or 1000 pixels by 1000 pixels
I hope these resources help add more vibrancy and spark to your blog posts and bring more traffic to your website with great visual content!