Design

8 Best Design Tools for Creating Stunning Social Media Content

Social media marketing is a great way to promote your brand online. An online presence helps you potentially expose your brand to nearly 4 billion social media users. That’s over half the entire population!

Social media is a big part of an online presence. And one of the most important aspects that you need to take care of while growing your social media following is your content design.

Why is that so?

Most social media platforms are visual-first (like Pinterest, TikTok and Instagram). Some platforms, like Facebook and LinkedIn, aren’t necessarily visual-first. But visuals play a huge part in content strategy and audience interaction.

That’s why nearly 63% of B2C marketers increased their use of images in 2019. And we think they’re on to something!

So in a nutshell, your visuals are important. Whether it’s your video thumbnail on Youtube, an infographic posted to Pinterest, or an image post on Instagram, you need to get your design right for maximum impact.

That’s where social media design tools can help you. These tools can simplify the design process and help you come up with professional-looking designs that your audience will love. We’ve put together our list of the best social media design tools out there to get you started on your way. Let’s take a look! 

Top Social Media Design Tools in 2021

Here are the best social media design tools that you can leverage to take your social campaigns to the next level.

1. Tailwind Create

Tailwind Create is the tool you need when you’re short on time… and design skills!

If you’ve ever stared at your screen for hours trying to think of new post ideas, or been stressed out by starting all your social media designs from scratch – let alone scheduling all of them to your platforms – Tailwind Create is here to help you breathe easy.

You can start from almost done with breath-taking designs created for you by our smart designer. All you need are your photos! Tailwind Create instantly transforms your photos into hundreds of optimized designs for Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest with one click. Just choose from any of the “almost done” designs tailored specifically to your niche or industry!

The best part is, your brand styles (think: color palettes and fonts) are automatically applied to every post to keep your content seamlessly on-brand and matching the look and feel of your brand or business.

2. easelly

Pricing: Free Plan available | Student $2/month | Individual $4/month | Enterprise $5/month |

Platforms: Web

If your target is to create high-quality infographics for your social media audience, easelly should be your go-to design tool. The best part about this tool is that it’s completely free to use to start with  — you don’t even need to create an account to start using it. However, you do have the option to go for its paid plans if you want more features.

All you’ve got to do is choose from one of the numerous infographic templates on its website and start customizing it to suit your requirements. And the best part is that easelly has a huge library of icons, illustrations, and charts that you can drag and drop onto the infographic design to further customize it.

3. Canva

Pricing: Free Plan available | Pro: $119/annual| Enterprise $30/month pp |

Platforms: Web, MacOS, Windows, iOS, Android

When it comes to social media content design, Canva is one of the best design tools to have in your back pocket. It’s got hundreds of thousands of templates that you can seamlessly edit using the drag and drop editor to come up with stunning designs.

Apart from designing social media images and infographics, you can also create video thumbnails with ease. They already have the dimensions set for you for social media content and give you the flexibility to choose custom dimensions too.

What makes Canva one of the finest designing tools out there is also the fact that you can create social media videos using its editor too. 

You also get access to over 75 million premium photos, videos, and elements when you opt for its paid versions. But even in the free version, you get access to a big percent of them.

4. Adobe Spark

Pricing: Free Plan available | Team: $19.99/month| Enterprise: Custom |

Platforms: Web, iOS, Android

Yet another design tool that can help you take your social media designs to the next level is Adobe Spark. While Photoshop may be meant for professionals who have some level of expertise, Adobe Spark helps non-designers come up with striking content with ease.

This tool offers over 34,000 templates that you can modify to suit your requirements using the simple drag and drop editor. You can also upload your images and icons to further personalize your designs.

What’s more?

Just like Canva, Adobe Spark also simplifies the process of creating videos for your social media accounts. You can add icons, video clips, photos, transitions, and even your voice to develop your videos.

5. Pixlr

Pricing: Free Plan available | Premium: $4.90/month| Creative Pack: $14.99/month |

Platforms: Web, Android, macOS, Windows, iOS

Pixlr is yet another popular photo editor that doubles up as a social media design tool as well. Using this tool, you can seamlessly edit your photos to make them more attractive for your audience.

Whether its collages or removing backgrounds and adding layers, this tool can do pretty much what every professional photo editing tool does. 

It’s also got numerous design templates that you can edit using its drag and drop editor. While this editor may be slightly more complex than that of the other tools, it does offer a wide variety of features so once you’re used to the UI, creating designs will be a breeze.

6. Snappa

Pricing: Free Plan available | Pro: $10/month| Team: $20/ month |

Platforms: Web

No list of social media design tools is complete without the mention of Snappa. This all-in-one design tool helps you create eye-catching graphics for your social media accounts.

Snappa removes the guesswork for dimensions by providing you with the right dimensions for all your social media designs. 

All you’ve got to do is start with one of their templates and choose from over 5 million stock photos. You can then add text, effects, and graphics using its drag and drop editor to make your design more attractive. 

One feature that’s particularly helpful here is its ability to remove backgrounds. Other tools offer similar features too but with Snappa, you can do it with a single click.

However, Snappa doesn’t allow you to edit videos. 

7. Desygner

Pricing: Free Plan available | Pro: $4.95/month| Business: $9.95/ month| Enterprise: Custom Plans|

Platforms: Web, Android, iOS

Desygner has everything that you’d want from a designing tool such as professional templates, royalty-free images, and a drag and drop designer. This ensures that you’ll never run out of images to use. 

But what makes it really appealing is its automatic resizing feature. With a single click, you can resize your design based on the social media platform that you want to publish it to.

It also takes designing to the next level by letting you upload and edit PDF files as well. This makes it a powerful tool for even B2B businesses that may be looking to upload PDFs on platforms like LinkedIn. 

Be it infographics or video thumbnails, this tool helps you create all the designs you need for social without spending much time.

8. Venngage

Pricing: Free Plan available | Premium: $19/month| Business: $49/ month| Enterprise: Custom Plans|

Platforms: Web

Venngage, like easelly, is a powerful infographic maker that helps you develop colorful and engaging infographics for your social media audience.

It’s got over 7500 pre-made infographic templates that you can load into the editor and then start customizing. 

The drag and drop editor allows you to add photos, icons, and text to the infographic. One of the other features that comes in very handy here too is that of creating and adding charts to the infographic. 

Charts play a major role in infographics and Venngage does extremely well when it comes to them, and this makes the infographics even better.

9. Visme

Pricing: Free Plan available | Standard: $15/month| Business: $29/ month| Enterprise: Custom Plans|

Platforms: Web

If you’re looking for a design tool that can not only help you design infographics but also powerful charts and animations, Visme should be your go-to tool. 

This tool not only lets you create stunning social media posts but also makes it easy for you to develop presentations. 

Its charts feature, in particular, is pretty amazing due to the sheer variety of charts that you can create using it. From simple pie charts and trees to maps, you can work on a whole range of charts on Visme. 

These charts, in turn, can come in very handy for numerous social media posts, especially if you’re into the B2B space.

What’s more?

It’s also possible to create animated social media posts with motion so that you can further catch the attention of social media users.

How a Social Media Design Tool Helps Your Content

Visual content is an important ingredient for the success of your social media strategy. Be it images, infographics, or videos, all your social media posts need to have some sort of visual appeal!

That’s why it’s absolutely critical that you have a good designing tool in your arsenal to amp up your marketing efforts.

All of these tools can help you take your social media game to the next level and most offer free plans for starters as well -including Tailwind! And when you try Tailwind for free, you not only get access to a powerful design tool for all your social media posts, but the ability to schedule, visually plan your feed and craft attention-grabbing captions!

Which design tool is your go to? Let us know in the comments below!

Melissa Megginson

Melissa Megginson is resident Community Manager and Cat Lady at Tailwind, the leading Pinterest & Instagram tool for brands. Melissa specializes in affiliate marketing, public speaking, and making our members look good. Find her on Twitter and Instagram at @MelMegg.

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