As a writer or author, social media marketing is quite vital in advertising yourself and your work. With an increase in content creation, and social media users, Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok and other platforms have been the major channels of advertisement, whether for businesses or for content creators.
Writers cannot overlook or take away social media from their book marketing or promotion of poetry.
These social media platforms depend heavily on good content that is audio-visual. Posts and videos have to look good and catchy. In other words, aesthetics matter a lot. No one would look twice at a Facebook post or an Instagram Reel that looks bad.
This is where these graphic design apps come in. These apps make it very easy and fast to create social media posts that look attractive. Many of them have pre-made templates, so you don’t have to start from scratch.
Let’s be honest, many of us writers suck at designing. There was a little cringe there, but unless you have had a graphic design background, you and I know that though the truth hurts, we are better at writing than designing.
So, which apps should you consider, now that you need to create your next book promotion post on Facebook? Let’s look at 5 graphic design mobile apps and websites to get you through the process, and make your writing and promotion easier.
1. Canva
This is often the first app that comes to mind when we talk about design. Canva is the most popular app today for all design needs: social media posts, presentations, websites, etc. There are definitely lots of reasons most people go to canva as their first option.
Their mobile app and website are very easy to use and navigate through. There isn’t really anything complicated to make you start googling ‘how-to’s’.
Their templates are uncountable, aesthetically pleasing, and thankfully presized for each purpose. You can import your own photos, videos and pdfs, and edit them within canva. As a writer, you can even create your ebooks and add all your social media and website links on the necessary pages.
What distinguishes Canva from other apps in social media marketing is, first of all, its integrations with other sites. You can export or import directly to or from other websites and accounts. Secondly, you can plan and schedule your social media poetry or book promotion posts for the month or year, so they get posted directly to Instagram, Facebook, etc from within the app. On the topic of book promotion, canva has integrated with smartmockups to provide mockups for your fictional, non-fictional and poetry books.
Canva has a free plan where you have access to fewer templates than the pro plan, but there are lots of free templates. Social media planning and scheduling is only part of the pro plan, which starts at $12.99 a month.
2. Vista Create (Crello)
Vista create is another beautiful graphic design option, especially if you are looking for a Canva alternative. There are very exciting presized templates available for you to edit to your taste, and create those catchy poems and excerpts from your book.
You can easily create reels, Tiktok videos, Instagram stories, Pinterest graphics, YouTube video thumbnails, etc with lots of templates, even with the free plan.
You can add your brand colours, add animations, remove backgrounds and directly post to Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. You can schedule posts as well. These features are quite a lot like Canva’s, so its a good choice if you don’t want to use Canva. You cannot create websites, mockups or integrate Crello with other websites though.
The pro version is at $13 if paid monthly, and $10 if paid yearly.
3. Adobe Express (Adobe Spark)
When you hear Adobe, you think design. Adobe Express has pretty design templates to add colour and style to your writing, and bring out the creativity in you.
From social media ads, to blog banners to social media posts, they have lots of design elements and templates to choose from. Like Vista Create, Adobe Express helps with all your design needs for social media and beyond.
What’s great is, even with a free plan, you can easily remove backgrounds of objects in photos. You can also plan, schedule and publish on social media, and add your branding. This is, however, only available on the pro plan. To get started, you need to create a Adobe account.
The premium plan is cheaper than Canva’s and Vista Create’s, with a $9.99 a month if paid monthly, and $99.99 if paid yearly.
4. GoDaddy Studio
GoDaddy Studio is a UK based design website and app. Actually, they are quite know for website and hosting needs, and email marketing, but they thankfully have a designing app for social media marketing. Just like the others, GoDaddy Studio is great for all your graphic design needs as a writer.
There is a free forever plan you can start with. The premium or pro version costs $9.99 a month.
Apart from social media templates, they have a logo maker, just in case you are considering branding yourself as a writer, and Link in Bio creator. You will definitely need a beautiful link in bio for your Instagram to display all your links and make it easy for your readers to access your websites and socials.
5. Desygner
Desygner is a great alternative to canva with as many features as you can get with Canva. With the free plan, you can create beautiful social media posts and animated designs.
One advantage with Desygner’s free plan is that you get to easily resize your social media posts, especially if you on different social media platforms and would like to repurpose one post for every one of them. Instead of going through the stress of redesigning the same post over and over again for each platform, you can to resize it with one click. Canva has this feature but only with pro. The pro plan for Desygner costs $4.99 per month.
Conclusion
As writers, we definitely cannot put away graphic design. Though our focus is usually on creating a good story, a thought provoking non-fictional piece or a poem with strong visual imagery, we cannot relay our good work to our audience without giving it all the beautiful aesthetics it would need. The best way to draw audience to our work on social media is to make sure whatever we express or present looks beautiful. And this can best be done through graphic design, and through the apps that help make designing easier. I hope this was helpful, and thanks for reading.
