Franchise PowerUp 
In this community post, we’ll tell you about how real social media marketers create, use and implement visual posts. As we’ve told you in the past, visual posts are the most effective, and we’ve even told you how to pick visual content for different social networks. At PromoRepublic, we are all about visual social marketing. So we asked members of our community how they work with visual posts and they had a wealth of information for us! We asked how they create posts, how happy they are with the posts, and other questions, and we’ll tell you about it in a framework that underscores the importance of visual posts in a social media marketing plan for 2017.
It Can Be Time-Consuming to Create Visual Social Posts From Scratch
It isn’t hard to create great visual posts. First you have to find visual elements, then use them to create a social post. Now, this CAN take a lot of time. If you don’t have a good source for images, or you don’t have a tool that will help you manipulate them, it can take hours to create a visual social post. The time it takes depends entirely on the tools you use and your skill level. Tressera Trujillo, owner of Tressera Web Media, is an online producer with no need to hire an outside designer. She keeps a personal library of images, and will scout free image sites. In terms of the amount of time it takes an image professional to create a social post, she says, “It really depends on what I want and how I want to manipulate the image. If I’m just adding text to the image that will take about 15 minutes because I play around with different fonts, colors, shadows and placement. But if I manipulate the image, I usually spend a lot more – 30 minutes to an hour to get what I want…” Sunday Vidal, partner at APC Collective, says that depending on client need and approval, it can take anywhere between 5 minutes and an hour. She says, “I can do graphic work, and we have someone in-house if it’s more labor intensive such as infographics.”
We found that while our community uses PromoRepublic to find post ideas and even ready-made posts that they can publish, users find images from other places on the web, as well. Tom Vestgard, founder of Live it As, says, “I used to search in all kinds of stock photo services online, and spent quite a lot of time on it. I also took some photos myself, and as I got better than became my main source. Now, I try to only use my own photos to have a consistent style, but of course, sometimes I use whatever PromoRepublic suggests.” PromoRepublic’s content suggestions give Tom the time to work with his own images for his social posts. Pamela Howard, event and catering director, says it can take days to find an image for social if she doesn’t pay someone to do it, so PromoRepublic can help her a lot!
It Can Be Expensive to Create Visual Social Posts, But It Doesn’t Have to Be
Some people, like Sazed Alam, founder of Cyberdude, have several places they look for images for their visual social posts. To search for images, he says “we use pexels, canva, picmonkey and a paid subscription from freepik to search for images for social posts.” In addition, Alam has a paid subscription with Adobe Creative Cloud. Stig Solbert, from Visible says that the company pays $50 – $100 per month on licensed stock photos. Bev Helpting, public speaking coach, wishes she could afford a graphic designer, but relies mostly on Canva to play with images. (Bev, your social game looks great!). Elizaveta Hesketh also uses Canva, and is aiming for a low-cost graphics solution. If you’re like Pynpinie, however, you may need to amp up your image search. They say, “I post on Twitter 5 times a day (2 of mine and 3 retweets) and on Instagram twice a day. It takes me about 3 to 4 days to find images I need to get all the images I need for the month.” That’s a lot of images! Glenn Bauer with C&D Group says that they spend a monthly fee for Adobe Stock Photos, and employ a graphic designer.
Sometimes, however, you just don’t have the budget yet to pay for a lot of images. The folks at Just a Little Spice, a company that provides spices that are organic, kosher, gluten free and all natural, say, “we are a brand new company and have to go as bare bones as possible” when asked about a budget for stock photos. Luckily, PromoRepublic is there to help!
You Don’t Have to Create Social Posts From Scratch
PromoRepublic offers pre-made, stunning visual social posts that you can modify or post as-is. Avinash Chandra from BrandLoom Consulting says that they might spend $100 – $200 per month on photos for different clients, but when we asked about their graphic designer, he said, “Yes, we have a full time graphic designer, but we use him for complex web design requirements only. For social media posts we use various tools. PromoRepublic is our current favorite.” Jason Wyatt, former aviation electronics technician and founder of Touring Freedom, says that when looking for visual social post ideas, “The first thing I’ll do is go through PR’s calendar to see what kind of graphics they have available for special dates. I’ll usually use 2-3 of these per week.” That’s a great plan to help offset any other marketing cost you might encounter! Photographer Rafael Sepulveda says that he doesn’t employ a graphic designer because, in his words, “That’s what I love about PromoRepublic.”
We are so appreciative to our community for their help in understanding the pain points associated with visual posts and how they use them!
Special Thanks!
Thanks to our community members who participated!
Tressera Trujillo at Tressera Web Media
Sunday Vidal on LinkedIn and Twitter
Tom Vestgard with Live It As
Aron Martinez with AMWeb
Sazed Alam with Cyberdude
Stig Solbert with Visibile
Bev Helpting, Speaker and Coach
Elizaveta Hesketh
Pynpinie on Instagram and Twitter
Pamela Howard on Facebook and Twitter
Chris Butler with Just a Little Spice
Glenn Bauer with C&D Group
Avinash Chandra with BrandLoom
Jason Wyatt with Touring Freedom
