Original Image Creation Tools: Visual Marketing April #MyBlogU

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Visual marketing is one of my favorite topics for two reasons: (1) There are a lot of tools involved (and I love tools!) and (2) There’s lots of creativity and inspiration needed (and coffee!)

It’s one of those areas where the more tools, the better because it’s less about being productive and more about being creative which is awesome!

This whole month we are going to talk about visual marketing helping our new and established bloggers to find more inspiration.

Today’s chat is about creating original images for your site.

Canva: Create Article Intros with Consistent Look

Canva is my favorite image creation tool because it’s so easy to use and oh-so inspiring. You can come to Canva with no actual concept in mind and 5 minutes later create an awesome visual. It’s full of templates, ideas and creative concepts.

Two problems with Canva:

• It’s easy to overdo your concept. With the abundance of visual elements, it’s easy to create an image containing too many of them. I prefer minimal readable designs. Stay away form too much of anything in your design: Too much color, too much text or too much design elements.
• It’s to easy to spend your whole day there and accomplish nothing else. I am saving my favorite Canva templates on my Canva dashboard and the first thing I do is try and edit those to create a new image. It’s faster and more productive.

Similar and alternative tools:

• Picmonkey
• 5 Easy-to-Create Infographics Types That Work for Any Niche (Bookmark!)

For mockups, I love Balsamiq – the desktop tool is very nice! #myblogu

— Andy Drinkwater (@iqseo) April 7, 2016

Snagit: Create Annotated Screenshots

I don’t remember myself blogging WITHOUT taking screenshots. A screenshot is worth thousands of words and since English has never been the most powerful part of my writing, I use a lot of them

Snagit is the best and most productive screenshot annotating tool I’ve ever seen. It’s quite minimal in features but what it does offer is consistent appealing look.

Similar and alternative tools: SnapDraw (Windows), Awesome Screenshots Plus (FireFox, Google Chrome, Safari), Clarify it (Windows, Mac)

MyBlogU: Get Your Visual Concept Crowdsourced

We’ve already talked about how MyBlogU helps in your visual marketing. Here’s a quick recap:

• Ask for Infographics Design Help. Are you building an infographic but seem to be missing a cool concept or interesting data? Ask our community to do some research for you!
• Find Quotes for Your Slideshare Presentation. Collect inspiring quotes from MyBlogU members, visualize them and put together in a crowd-sourced Slideshare presentation!
• Discover More Concepts for Your Logo. MyBlogU is the free way to ask the crowd of strangers how to best visualize your brand message in a logo. Just create a new project and ask the users to send you their creative ideas.

Gifdeck and Gyazo GIF: Animated GIFs

I like creating animated GIFs because they add variety to my Twitter feeds and people love re-sharing them. Here are two very easy tools to create them:

• Gifdeck: Turn any of your Slideshare into an animated gif (Here’s a quick example I created to promote my project)
• Gyazo GIF: Record your screen actions and turn them into a gif

Similar and alternative tools: 10 Easy-to-Use Tools for Creating Animated Images and Videos

I use Xara 3d5 to do animated Gifs #myblogu

— Phil Turner (@The5Currencies) April 7, 2016

More Ideas: Fiverr

Fiverr is surprisingly an awesome source of original visual marketing creatives if you know how to search. I’ve been using Fiverr for ages to:

• Cartoonize actual people (remember our team?)
• Get my book covers created
• Get my site logo modernized

Sometimes, simply browsing Fiverr visual-related tasks gets me inspired. It’s a great tool: All you need is to avoid its clutter.

DeviantART is also great to find logo and cartoon artists! 🙂 #myblogu

— Luana Spinetti (@LuanaTF) April 7, 2016

Don’t forget to showcase your BEST creations in MyBlogU Media Gallery!

Are there any other ideas on creating great visuals? Please share them in the comments!