Garnering a Share from fans, friends, subscribers and followers is the new top goal in social media. Like takes a back seat; you still want likes but your brand needs shares in order to create the kind of viral visibility that was once known as word of mouth promotion. Facebook values shares as a more reliable indicator of a deeper relationship with your followers than just a like.
Facebook rewards brands for posting pictures by giving those posts higher EdgeRank.
Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know that social media users love inspirational or educational quotes. Your brand can benefit from the quote craze, garnering exponentially more likes and shares than the tip or quote alone simply by creating an attractive poster for the quote. By poster, I simply mean placing the quote on a nice background or block of color to create a pleasing that others will find desirable to share.
I tested free tools this week and here are my recommendations for the time strapped and/or technically challenged amongst us:
Free Tools to Create Quote Posters
Quozio
Quozio was so simple I was able to create a simple quote poster in seconds and post it directly to Facebook. I wish it would let me choose one of my pages versus just posting to my profile, however. A workaround is to do a screen capture of your final quote board and simply upload that screen capture to your Facebook business page. I’ve demonstrated that on my page here. I could also Pin it or send it to myself or someone else in an email. This tool requires no learning curve, a limited palate of backgrounds and I’ll definitely use this in the future. The bookmarklet for your toolbar will allow you to create a quote the moment an inspiration hits you. The “Keep it” feature saves your quote posters in the “My Quotes” section and you can revisit and use them whenever you need to. This is a free account and just requires you to register by creating your own password.
PicMonkey
PicMonkey is not really a quote making tool but I’m including it because with this simple two step process, you’ll love the results, and it’s free.
1. Upload three photos from your computer to PicMonkey and press “auto-fill.” PicMonkey will place your photos into a collage that you can download to your computer as a jpeg.
2. Next open a new powerpoint presentation and drag or insert the jpeg into a blank slide.
Finally, add a text box to the image and enter your quote.
3. Now take a screen capture. On a Mac you hold down Shift and the Command button and the number 4 to get a cropping tool that will help you capture just a specific area on your computer. You could also drag the original PicMonkey image into a word document, type your quote underneath and do a screen capture that includes the typed quote.
PinWords
Pinwords has some very nice fonts and templates. There does not seem to be any option to upgrade and take off the Pinwords.com logo from the lower left, however. So this is more of a personal tool rather than a business at this point although the site says it is in Beta and hopefully a white label option will be available at some point.
Here’s what the final image looks like on the website Pinwords, and you can see options on the right hand side for sharing. I was quickly able to add this poster to my Pinterest Account and I think I’ll use this again in the future.
Recite This!
Recite This! is a simple, st
raightforward template that prompts you to type in your quote and pops it into a pre-made template. They have a terrific, very creative set of templates that makes poster making child’s play. Here’s a fun example of one I made in just seconds. You can add your URL in the text and use these images on social media, to dress up a blog post or even in marketing materials such as a landing page or splash page.
BONUS TOOL
Another of my favorite tools for creating images to use throughout social media, although not free, is The Print Shop 2. Ideal for teachers and parents who want to create cards, simple graphics to accompany lessons or make posters for book sales, this tool is just up my alley. I was able to learn to use it quickly and it was inexpensive. You can use your own photos or photos and illustrations from the program. And the best part? No branding from the program. You can see great examples of the way I use this program every day to help build the following for Queen of Your Own Life on Facebook. Each of these vintage images was enhanced with the Print Shop 2 program.
Social media is increasingly visual and an emotional connection to your potential customer is a business tool that can be as effective as advertising. Images help us connect with our ideal audience at an emotional level. Every author, entrepreneur and business needs images to help their posts stand out in social media. Try these free quote making tools to help turn your thoughts into posts that cause your followers to press “share” and help your ideas gain the viral buzz they deserve.
Do you have a favorite graphics creation tool? Let’s start a list.
Cindy, Thanks for the Quozio (http://Quozio.com) mention. You wrote:
“I wish it would let me choose one of my pages versus just posting to my profile”
I’m not sure when you last used Quozio but we now support posting to your pages. Just click Post and then select which of your Pages you want to post to. We’d love your feedback.
Trevor I’m so glad to hear from you about this and sorry I missed that feature. I’m off to try it this morning and will amend the post to note that. Than you so much!
Great tips, Cindy. Never thought about using Power Point as a quick fix for making these or the blog cover images I talked about a few weeks ago. With Power Point you could also save the slide as a .jpeg. Just click “Save As” and choose jpeg from the list. Much easier than futzing with a screen capture.
Great tip, Deb. Thank you.
What a great compilation Cindy! Thank you for sharing. I had no idea about some of these tools.
I was searching for things my clients could use and some of these are just so simple.
Thanks Karmen. I’ve been having so much fun checking out these tool. I’ll be posting about a few new ones next week, too.
Thanks for sharing your extensive knowledge, Cindy! Quozio looks like the simplest option for me. Either that or hire my 12 year old daughter to manage my digital dilemmas… ;)
Thanks Pamela. I still love this little elementary school program, Print Shop 2, the best. I post so many quote style posts for clients, I don’t know what I’d do without it.
Great info, Cindy! I use Picasa, but it’s not always easy. I will definitely check out your options. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks Kerry. I haven’t tried Picasa yet. I’ll add that to my list.
Cindy,
I’m going to Pin this post in my Things to Learn Board, as I know this is one I will refer to over and over again. Thanks SO Much!
What a great idea Wendi. Pinterest as a bookmarking tool. Love it.
http://pinterest.com/pin/139470919682603243/
HI Cindy,
Thanks for these tips! I was looking for a way to quickly add text to photos on my iphone and upload directly from there, on-the-fly. I found a few, but each one has its limitations. If you ever do an article for the iphone, I would love to read it.
That’s a great idea, Lisa. So many of us use mobile devices as our social updating tools. I’ll see what I can find.
Nice! Fast and easy way to get an effective visual message across in less than 30 seconds of preposting to blog time!
Thanks Sandra. My goal is to give entrepreneurs with modest budgets a way to begin using the same strategies as the big guys, inexpensively. Design is important to me and in the long run, when budgets permit, I always recommend using a professional graphics designer.
Cindy thanks for much for your useful and practical tips! This is awesome. Thanks for much for always turning us on to what’s available. I can’t wait to try it!