Social Media Image Design Using Easelly

1. Welcome to Social Media Image Design Using Easelly: hi skills her students welcome to social media image design, using easily I'm Diner Ramirez and I'm a product trainer at easily where I provide learning experiences to easily Caesar community, along with helping businesses, professionals and educators communicate visually with their customers, clients and students. Creating a visual content campaign or creating infographics to promote your products and services can be time consuming and overwhelming for small businesses, especially if you don't have graphic design experience. Luckily, bite sized info, graphics and images use through social media can be just as compelling as long scrolling infographics. Everybody is busy so people are more likely to consume and engage with bite sized visual content on social media that they can quickly process, digest and share with their networks. I designed this course for social media marketers, entrepreneurs, bloggers or even educators who may not have the time to learn graphic design or the budget to invest in graphic design software but are looking to stand out on social media with custom images and visuals that are quick and easy to create. In this course, I'll introduce you to some ideas of visuals that you can create, and I'll review some branding basics. Also, he is started with using easily for your social media images and provide image sizing considerations for a variety of social media platforms. By the end of this course, you'll be able to use easily simple online design tool to quickly create images and visuals that are unique, useful and optimized for social media. If you want to stand out on social media with custom images and visuals that are easy and quick to create than this course is for you, whether you're managing social media for yourself or working in a business setting, there is something for you in this course hope to see you inside. 2. Project Video: your project will be to create an image easing easily to post to a social media platform of your choice. I'll provide a worksheet that will walk you through the brainstorming process for your own image, ideas and image design considerations. Once you've completed your design, you'll download the image from easily and upload it to the social media platform of your choice to showcase your work, either upload your image in the class project gallery or take a screenshot of your image being used in a social media post. We're always learning, so if you have any tips or tricks that you discovered while working on your project, feel free to share it with the group. 3. Image Types and Ideas: the world is diverse and every individual and business is different. Our personalities, interests, passions, products and services are endless. And we all have various reasons for sharing posts through our social networks. You know what's best for you, your business or the company you work for. So think about your goals and reasons for being on social media and what you want to get out of it. Knowing your goals will drive your content, strategy and ideas for posts that you can share. When it comes to sharing images, there are endless possibilities. Let's discuss 10 different types of custom images that you can create and share through social media. Number one infographics in infographic is the use of information plus graphics to tell a story. Infographics are powerful, attractive, effective share. A ble and memorable, successful infographics do not always have to be lengthy. Ah, bite sized infographic, used through social media, can be just as compelling as a long infographic. People are looking for unique content that they can quickly process and share with their networks, so don't feel like you have to create a long scrolling infographic with a lot of data and information. Number two photo based infographics. Take stock photos or even your own photos, and layer them with simple text icons, graphics or data to communicate your message. This is a great way to humanize your content or make a connection with your audience that they can relate to. Quickly choose photos that match your message, mood voice style or that evoke a motion from your target audience. Number three announcements launching a new product or have a product update adding a new service. Whatever your announcement is, be sure to make it visual for your social media audience. Ah, visual announcement is a great way to get them interested and wanting to learn more about your new offerings. Be sure to direct them to your website, where they can learn more. Number four invitations. Invite friends, family employees or customers to your events with custom image designs that match your events theme and share them through social media. In online visual Invitation is an excellent way for your business to promote any online event you're hosting and reach the masses. It is also an easy way to share reminders about the event and makes it easy for your followers to share it and spread the word for you. Number five. Promote a blawg post or article. Create a teaser image for your blog's post or article that will attract attention and that your audience can easily share with their networks through visuals and minimal text. You can summarize your content to provide a preview, but leave them wanting more. Number six quotes, reviews or testimonials. Showcase a quote from an inspirational speaker You watched or workshop you attended and share what you learned or show off your reviews and testimonials that you've received from customers. Layer these quotes or testimonials on top of a custom graphic or image to highlight social proof. Number seven poll or survey results. Create a visual to showcase poll results or survey results. If you have a long survey, create bite sized visuals for the most interesting results you've received and post them to social media. You can always redirect your audience to the full set of results. To see more number eight your success or impact, share the impact your organization has had on your community or showcase the results you've successfully reached to your stakeholders. All it takes is one bite sized piece of information to show the significant impact you've made. Number nine frequently asked questions. Do you get a question that gets asked all the time? If so, it's likely that your other customers and followers have the same question. So it's a great way to address these questions to the masses, creating image for the question and answer it in the image. If the answer is short enough or direct people to your website to get the answer Number 10 Industry information or data do you have some insights into your industry? Did you analyse and make sense of any industry data that was released? Creighton Image that communicates this information and data for your followers to engage with. You could always direct them to the original source of information. Or you can lead them to your website if you've written a post that goes into more detail as a final note, one of the best ways to get ideas for social media posts is to visit the postings from businesses and people you respect and admire. Always be observing. Take note of what you like and what you don't like about what they're posting. What do you like about their images? and designs. Are they using photos, illustrations or simple icons? Do the images make you want to learn more or share it with others? What type of response are they getting from their postings? You may want to create an inspiration folder where you can grab her screenshots of designs you like, or start a document with links to images you would like to go back to in the future for ideas. It'll save you a lot of time when you hit a creativity block and need image ideas to get you going. 4. Branding On Social Media: When it comes to social media, branding can mean different things in the traditional sense. It could mean that you have a visual identity, such as a logo specific colors in a fund that you use across all platforms and that you incorporate into all your image posts. But branding includes non tangible things, like tone of voice and personality. Your goal is to make your visual identity authentic by incorporating your persona to communicate your overall message, values and experience you want to provide to your followers, audience and customers. While it's important to be consistent with all of these aspects when it comes to branding, it is also important to keep in mind that not all social media platforms are the same and that they may cater to different audiences. With that said, you may not want to use all social media platforms if it doesn't make sense for you, your blog's or your company. You also don't have to share the same images and messages across all your social media platforms. If it's not what the audience wants to see on that given platform, the different platforms can also give you an opportunity to share different aspects of your personality. For example, Lincoln Concertos Case your suit and tie personality, where you Onley focus on content specific to your industry expertise or professional accomplishments. And then you can have a Twitter account where you may also share these things. But it can also showcase your helpful side by answering questions about your products or services. Or you can even let loose and share images to show your humor or fund side of your personality. You know yourself better than anyone else and know the amount of time you can realistically spend on social media. Let's face it. Not everyone has a full time social media manager, so pick the platforms that align best with your personality, time, workflow and style. You also need to figure out which aspect of your brand personality is most appropriate for the channel you're on. Then all you have to do is embrace them. Let's summarize Number one. Pick your social media channels. Number two. Decide what you want to share on each channel. Number three. If appropriate, create images that visualize the messages you want to post number four. If it makes sense, brand your images with your logo colors and funds number five. If you don't have branding guidelines, consider the message you're trying to convey and use icons, graphics, colors and a fund that best represent your messages, values and persona. In the following lectures found in Section two, I'll be sharing tips and had a size your images for all the most popular social media platforms. But if you're only using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, for example, then just watch those three applicability lectures and skip over the lectures that do not apply to you. You can always come back to this course if you decide to incorporate other social media channels into your strategy. 5. Getting Started with Easelly: Let's walk through the steps of getting started with easily to create professional and eye catching visuals that you can use for social media posts. To get started, go to www dot e a s e l dot l y. If you haven't done so already, you'll want to register and create an account, creating an account to use the basic images. Fonts and tools are completely free. To get more out of your easily experience, you could always upgrade to Easily Pro, which offers an extensive library of icons, graphics and stock photos. You can find a graphic or icon for pretty much every idea you need to represent in your industry or line of work. You'll also get full access to all charts and graphs that you can customize. There are also hundreds of professionally made templates that you can customize for your needs or get inspiration from. You'll also have 100 fonts to choose from, and you can even upload your own custom font if needed. You can even get design help from the design team to improve your infographic creations. Best of all, you are free to use your infographic creations for personal, educational and even commercial use. You could still follow along through this course with just the free basic account. But just keep in mind that you will not have access to all the graphics, templates or other features that are available with easily pro. Once you've registered and logged in, you can start to browse the customizable templates that you can use as a starting point. If you'd like to start with a clean canvas, click on the empty template button and delayed the instructions on the canvas. If you decide that you would like to use a template after clearing your canvas, just select the templates button and browse through the available templates. You can scroll through the template carousel, or you can select a template category to narrow your template results down. Once you find a template you'd like to work with, just click and drag your template onto the canvas. Here are a few things you can do to customize the template the's air basic, but it's an excellent way to get you started and accustomed to using easily is designed tool to change the background color, click on the background button and change the color of your background or you can select a background pattern or image. You can also upload your own background image. Or you can browse the stock photos library that you can use as a background to edit, add or delete text, double click on the text box and edit your text. You can then go to the edit menu for all the customization options for your text. To add text, click on the text button and dragged the type of text you would like to add to your canvas . As before, I go to the edit menu for all the customization options for your text. To delete text, click on the text and hit. Delete or click on the trash button from the edit menu. To edit, add or delete icons and graphics. Click on the object and drag the handles to enlarge or shrink it down. Grab the handle on the object. To rotate an object, Grab the sides of an object to flip in image. Go to the edit menu for all the customization options for your icon or graphics, such as changing the color or the capacity. Keep in mind that customization options will vary depending on the type of graphic icon or image being used to add icons and graphics, click on the objects button and do a search for the type of icon you are looking for. For example, do a search for clothes or clothing to find an icon appropriate for a topic on shopping, fashion or even gifts. Then drag and drop the icon or graphic onto your canvas. To work with. To delete, click on the object and hit, delete or click on the trash button from the edit menu. If you're a easily pro subscriber, don't forget that you have design help from the design team included in your subscription email support at easily to have your images reviewed. 6. Determining Social Media Image Sizes: social media companies are always updating and changing social media image sizes for their platforms. It can be hard to keep up with the changes and, quite frankly, hard to find the information in the help sections For each platform. I've shared a few online sources that provide image guidelines to the most common and not so common social networks. Links to these sources can be found in the additional resource is section of this lecture. These articles will help you determine what you need to create in terms of image size. Depending on the social network, you plan to post your images to these articles. Also provide additional specs for profile images, had her images or cover images. If you'd like to get familiar with those, but this course will strictly focus on images for social media postings. Because most people have already uploaded profile pictures or cover images of themselves or their companies to their social media channels, why is it important to size your images correctly? Following these guidelines for image sizes will keep you from creating an image that is too small that it will picks late and get blurry when you uploaded to a social media platform or prevent you from creating an image that is too big with text and images that gets cut off from your audiences View. Once you upload it in the next lecture, we're going to go into easily, and I'll show you how you can set up your image sizes using the's dimensions and guidelines . If you don't want to get bogged down by image sizes for different social networks, you may want to stick to creating images in the following three sizes that work well with most networks. For a horizontal or landscape image, use 1024 by 512 pixels. For a vertical or portrait image, use 800 by 1200 pixels for a square image used 800 by 800 pixels as a final note. While it's important to work with proper image sizes for your visuals, toe look great for your audience. Realize that there is a little flexibility at the end of the day. Social media companies know that most people are not graphic designers, and most people don't have design tools at their fingertips to post perfectly sized images to social media. So if you're off by a few pixels. Don't worry or lose sleep over it. Your image will still work and look great once you upload it. 7. Sizing Your Images in Easelly's Design Tool (Twitter Example): If you're looking to create bite sized infographics or visuals to share through social media, then you'll want to make sure you're using the optimal image sizes for each platform. In this lecture, I'm going to show how you can quickly and easily adjust your image dimensions before you begin designing for social media, it's ideal that you start with a properly size canvas for your image. You'll first want to determine which platform you want to share, too, and the suggested dimensions to work with. Let's use Twitter as an example. The maximum image size that works best in Twitter is 1024 by 512 pixels. Since we know the optimal image size for Twitter will want to go ahead and size our canvas accordingly. There are two ways to do this. Here's Method number one. Once you've longed in, click on the blue set custom size button from the home page. A menu will open up where you can define your image size. Enter 1024 for the with enter 512 for the height. Make sure pixels is selected as the measurement and then click on the create button, you'll be taken to a clean canvas and easel ease design tool that is size perfectly for Twitter images. You can also resize your image. Once you're in easily is designed tool, click on resize and select custom size. You can then enter the width and height as we did before. Here's Method number two. Just click and drag the bottom right corner of your canvas until you get the right pixel size 1024 by 512 pixels. You can also dragged the side or bottom of the image separately until you reach your desired image size. If you've already started your design and need to resize it, no problem. You can resize your canvas at any time using this method, But depending on your design, you may need to adjust some or all of your visual elements in order to fit the ideal Twitter image size. Once you've finished your design, you're ready to download select low quality, which is a JPEG image file, or, if you have a pro account, select high quality, which is a PNG image file. Then upload your perfectly sized image to Twitter. Follow these same steps for the other social media platforms based on the suggested dimensions provided in the articles from the previous lecture 8. Sizing Images for LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a great social platform to share information, knowledge and ideas with other professionals in your industry. There are two main ways that you can upload and share images on Lincoln. The most common way to share an image is through your newsfeed as a photo or image post. You can also share an image through an article post. In this lecture, I'm gonna walk you through sizing shared images that are optimized for Lincoln. Now there is some debate on what the ideal image size is for an image post on Lincoln, but according to a Lincoln moderator, the ideal image size is 552 by 368 pixels. Now that you know the basics, let's go into easily to create an optimized image post for Lincoln. Once you've logged in, click on the set custom size button from the home page. A menu will open up where you can define your image size. Enter 552 for the width. Enter 368 for the height. Make sure pixels is selected as the measurement and then click on the create button. You'll be taken to a clean canvas and easily is designed tool that is size perfectly for sharing images in your news feed on Lincoln. From here, you can either upload a photo, use a stock photo or create your own custom image that represents the information, data or knowledge you want to share with other professionals in your industry. This is great for bite size pieces of information you need to share quickly. Once you've finished your design, you're ready to download select low quality, which is a JPEG image file. Or, if you have a pro account, select high quality, which is a PNG image file than upload your perfectly sized image to your news feed on Lincoln. LinkedIn's publishing platform is another great way to share your knowledge, experience, perspectives and expertise in your industry through a more in depth written post. But you'll want to make sure your article gets noticed, so be sure to at least at a cover image that reflects the content in your post. The cover image appears at the top of your article and is also used as the thumbnail image that represents your article in your profile news feed and throughout Lincoln, according to Lincoln the cover images in articles should ideally be 744 by 400 pixels for the best viewing experience across all devices and locations that Lincoln will post the image when using easily to create your images, you'll want to follow the same steps we took earlier in this lecture toe. Optimize your cover image for Lincoln articles. - One thing to keep in mind when designing your images for article posts is that linked in May resize your image. For example, By default, your image will appear as center wide when you upload it to Lincoln, but you'll have the option to change it to center. Narrow center wide will cut off part of your image. So if you use this option, make sure any important elements stay off the edges of your canvas when you're designing and easily as you're designing your images, remember that all images must follow Lincoln's professional community policies 9. Sizing Images for Pinterest: Pinterest is a very easy way to share your ideas visually with others, according to Pinterest, pins should represent your actionable, inspiring ideas. And the best part about Pinterest is that it encourages users to find an idea that captures their interest and then take action on it by leading them to the original source of the pin . This is good news for you because it could mean more traffic to your website, blawg product or brand. In this lecture, I'm gonna walk you through sizing shared images that are optimized for Pinterest. Because pins are organized into columns, Pinterest suggests that images are 600 by 900 pixels because vertical pins stand out more on their platform. Square pins work well to so a square image that is 600 pixels by 600 pixels is suggested. Now that you know the basics, let's go into easily to create an optimized image post for Pinterest. Once you've logged in, click on the set custom size button from the home page. A menu will open up where you can define your image size. Enter 600 for the with and turn 900 for the height. Make sure pixels is selected as the measurement and then click on the create button. You'll be taken to a clean canvas and easily is designed tool that is size perfectly for sharing images on Pinterest. As you're designing your images for Pinterest, here are a few design tips to keep in mind. High resolution. High quality images are best for Pinterest and don't crowd your image with a lot of text and graphics. You want to make sure that text is legible in the feed and on a mobile device. If you have a tall or long infographic, you may want to consider designing an image for your infographic that get someone interested in clicking to your website for the complete details. Lastly, remember that all images must follow Pinterest community guidelines. 10. Sizing Images for Facebook: Facebook has a few different ways to post images for your friends and followers. But the most common way is through a shared image post. In this lecture, I'm going to discuss optimizing your images for a shared post. The recommended upload size for a shared image is 1200 by 630 pixels. Let's go into easily to create a Facebook shared image. Once you've logged in, click on the blue set custom sized button from the home page. A menu will open up where you can define your image size. Enter 1200 for the with and her 630 for the height. Make sure pixels is selected as of the measurement, and then click on the create button. You'll be taken to a clean canvas and Easley's design tool that is size perfectly for shared images on Facebook. Because the images are resized to appear in different places on Facebook and resize, depending on the device being used to view it on, it's important to make sure your images are clear and easy to read. Don't use small text or graphics that will be hard to read and interpret at smaller scales as you're designing. Remember that all images must follow Facebook community standards 11. Sizing Images for Instagram: Instagrams focus is on visual storytelling and is one of the most popular photo sharing social networks to communicate visually. In this lecture, I'm going to discuss optimizing your images for a shared post on instagram. The recommended upload size for a shared image is 10 80 by 10 80 pixels, which is a square image. Let's go into easily to create an image that is optimized for sharing on Instagram. Once you've logged in, click on the set custom size button from the home page. Ah, menu will open up where you can define your image size. Enter 10 80 for the with enter 10 80 for the height. Make sure pixels is selected as the measurement and then click on the create button. You'll be taken to a clean canvas and easily is designed tool that decides perfectly for shared images on instagram. Now, one thing to keep in mind when it comes to posting images on Instagram is that you have to do it from your phone using the instagram app. Another option is to use a paid social media scheduling service like Hoot Suite, Buffer sprout social or Tailwind, which allows you to upload images from your computer and schedule them for posting. If you're using one of these services, great. If you're not ready to pay for one of these services, then here's a quick and free way to get your image from easily onto instagram. First, you'll want to download your image as a J peg or a PNG file from easily and attach it to an email that you send to yourself or to the person managing your instagram account. Open up the email and the image attachment from your phone. From here. You can save the image to your photo library on your phone, or you can select export and then select copy to Instagram. If you have the option on your phone, then you would simply complete the typical steps of posting to Instagram as you normally would, using your phone's instagram app. If you're designing for Instagram, remember that all images must follow Instagram's community guidelines 12. How to Download Your Image and Choose the Best Image Format: So now you've designed some great visuals that you're ready to publish and share with your followers or customers through social media with easily. You have a couple options to download your work. Let's download this image and see how it looks. Let's start by saving this image first easily saves your designs periodically, but you always want to save your most recent work so that you don't lose any recent edits. Next, I'm going to click on download and you'll be presented with a few options to choose from. Let's select low quality first. This option is a JPEG file and is available to all easily users, whether you have a free account or an upgraded account. Some quality is compromised with the JPEG image, but it creates a smaller file size once it's compressed and it's widely supported across all platforms. For online sharing, it should be used any time. It's important to have a small file size. Ah, smaller file size for your image is also helpful if you're hosting the image on your own website because it won't slow down a page as it loads. Additionally, some social media platforms have file size limits, so using a JPEG file may help you stay under a certain file size limitation for most social media purposes. A J Pic file works perfectly fine in terms of quality and is usually sufficient for your posts. For users that upgrade to easily Pro, you'll have the option to select a high quality download, which is a PNG file. Also pronounced Ping, it has a larger file size than a J peg, but that's because there is no loss in the quality of the image once it is compressed. A PNG file is also great for text, heavy images and graphics because it won't blur these things the way a J. Peg might. So after everything we've discussed, you're probably wondering which one is better. Which one should I use? And the answer is that neither is better. It just depends on what your needs are for each situation. And when it comes to social media, you're likely fine with either one 13. Thanks! Can't wait to see your projects!: thanks for taking my course, and I hope you enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to seeing your social media designs and let's start a discussion if you have any questions about using easily.