Are you struggling to make new content? Something that looks clean, professional and put together? If you run your own social media for your business or organization, you might be on the lookout for some kind of application, some software that makes this really easy. It's super customizable, but it's also not super time consuming. This video is all about graphics and motion.
What I'm going to do is I'm actually going to teach you how to use an application called Adobe Express. This software is amazing to create beautiful, professional, consistent content for you and your brand. As always, let's start with some principles. First of all, we need a software - we need a process - that's easy. Second principle is that you should include motion whenever possible.
Three, consistency is important, but so is variety. Now I know that that's a little bit of a contradiction, but you'll see what I mean. Let's talk about the steps needed to create your own content. The first thing that we're going to do doesn't even involve the software. Grab a piece of paper and let's start writing down some things for these categories.
First of all, your call to action. What is your goal? What are you calling people to do? Second thing that you want to write down is problem, solution, result. Now there might be multiple versions of this. Write down as many as you can get into the head of your audience, into the client or your customers. And think about what problem are they facing?
What is your solution that you provide and what is the result of them utilizing you to provide that solution? Also, write down your features and benefits. Write down descriptions of your products. What you can also do is use your primary points that you've written in a blog or something like this video that you might produce. When you've got all of this written down, type it up because these are all phrases. This is content that could be copy and paste so that you always have something that you can add to one of these graphics, you can animate the text, and you've got this catalog of phrases and options that you can use. Now I do recommend an application called Adobe Express. It's very easy to use.
It's what I'm going to show you how to use in this video. It's also inexpensive. When I say that it's inexpensive, it's $10 a month. Now, I know that's like another one of these subscriptions that you might need. But to put that into perspective, a professional graphic designer is going to charge you anywhere between $35 and $125 an hour to be putting all of this content together.
You've already got your phrases ready to go. You've got a template set up, ready to go. So do you really need to pay for somebody else? You might need that. You might need an agency who can help, but you also have this application that makes it very easy to do it yourself. Okay, third thing that you need to do, get photography.
Ideally, this is brand photography, meaning it's photos from around your workplace, your team interacting, you providing services or products to your customers. I highly recommend hiring a professional photographer. We have photographers on staff who can do this for you. And what you do is you get this collection of fresh content - photos that you can pull from as you're talking about all of these different products and services you provide.
Now, what you can also do, because I know that sometimes that's not feasible, you can use something like stock photography. There are plenty of options. There are different websites. There are subscription based or you buy an individual license. But brand photos and stock photography, they work really well. What you could also do is take an iPhone, take your phone, snap some photos around the office, throw a filter on there that are already built into Adobe for you.
And then suddenly you've got an edited photo, something that's actually showing your face, your team, your products and services. Okay. Step four. Like I said, we always want to have motion. We have options. Okay? Adding motion this part is actually really easy in Adobe Express and yes, I said easy. Now what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to walk you through the process of grabbing a template, adding a photo, adding text, adding animation, and exporting a post that is ready to go for your social media.
All right, y'all. So we are now in Adobe Express. It's Express.Adobe.com. It's pretty easy to set up an account. I've already got an adobe account, so I just logged in. You can see some of the posts that I've been working on here. Again, this is $10 a month, right? So let's do this. Let's create a Facebook post.
You can also use it on Instagram. It's just going to be a landscape, a wide post. So let's click the plus sign here. And here are all of the different sizes that you can do. There are also different actions that you can do over here, but we're going to avoid that for now. And instead, I'm just going to click on Facebook Post.
Okay. Now, once you're here, you can see I've got this blank canvas, just this white box. If you're working with a graphic designer, you can upload a file called a PNG, which has a transparent section to it, overlay it on top of whatever images you might want to use. Instead of doing that, that is a little complicated. I'm going to go over here and see the templates.
Okay. So I really like this one. I like that I've got this this curve here that has a different color. We've got an image behind it and there are plenty of places for us to add text. So let's start with this. Let's say that my brand color is blue and I don't incorporate red or pink anywhere in it when you click on that particular element.
And then over here is your editing panel so you can see the fill is currently this red. Instead, let's make it this blue. Okay, perfect. Starting to look pretty good. Now what I want to do is update the image. So I'm going to click on that that image. You can also see you've got your different layers here that you can choose from.
So once we select that layer, all that we have to do is hit replace. Again, over here we have we have free options. These are stock images that you can use and you can grab. There are some that come with the premium membership. I have access to them. Some are just free, which is great. So instead of that, let's actually upload a photo.
I've got a stock image here. I got it from Envato Elements, but we'll use this image. I just kind of like this showing the girl on her phone. So let's click on it and upload. Okay, perfect. We've added it. Now, what you're seeing here, which isn't great, is that she's actually covered up by this circle. I don't like that.
What I would rather have is her in this empty space. So check this out. All that we have to do is flip it. Now, I did add that is a level of complexity to this, but I want... really want to show you that you've got all of these editing possibilities built into this editor. Now what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to create a promotion for getting getting on here and making some graphic design in motion.
So let's start this. I'm going to click on these boxes. This accesses the text. Once you've selected that text box, all you have to do is start typing, create your beautiful graphics. Okay, let's go down here and here. I want to say "graphic design and motion should be easy." Okay.
It's got a little bit more text lays out a call to action here. Okay. So this will be "if you have any questions, just reach out." Okay? Now, look at this. This line just feels a little funny because I've only got one word on that second line. So all I'm going to do is just drag down on over and you can resize it as well if you want to.
But let's add one more line, which is my email address. hello@thehavenagency.com
Okay, perfect. So we have our graphic made here, right. It looks pretty good, but we want to add motion right? Now, we've got options here. All we've got to do is go over to this panel, click on animation. Right now, there's none. Let's let's play around with some of these. I'll be honest, I don't like a lot of text animation.
I like it to be really simple. You could do something like Grow where it just appears like that. If you want to get funky with it, you could do it. Dynamic again. Not my favorite. I'm a big fan of the typewriter though. Okay, so there we go. We have we have text animation already ready to go for us.
If the text if that's not something that you want to animate, well, you've got options for the photo animation as well. You can do something like Zoom, you can do something like a fade, you can do a pan. Actually, you know what? I really like that. So let's call this done. This is ready to go. I'm ready to post this.
So what do I do now? All you got to do is come over here, click download as an MP for video. This is going to be the video file that 99.9% of your social media networks are going to support. And we start download and it will create that four or five second video for you, Then, you're ready to post.
So what is all of this result and why is this worth spending your time to do? First of all, you establish the look of your brand. Secondly, you're able to communicate with your audience in ways different than just a photo. You're actually able to communicate with text, with motion, with call to action that are a part of this graphic that they see.
Three, it's super time efficient. You've seen how this works. You've seen the options to import add text, add photo, create your template, export. You're ready to go. Now finally gives you more content and more content is more better. Hopefully this has been helpful. If you've got any questions, please reach out. Me and the team are here ready to help you.
Let's schedule a call. Let's answer questions.
