If you want to create beautifully branded, high-quality content to help your business stand out online, I'm a big believer in starting with the right tools for the job! And by tools I mean purpose-built design platforms and software.
Content creation can be freaking time-consuming. One of the best ways to combat this is to use platforms that are fully equipped with all of the things you need to design with flow and ease, ensuring your outputs are top-notch quality and made to look exactly how you want.
That said, sometimes figuring out which platforms will do this for you, and most importantly, which ones are worth the investment, can be a time-consuming task in its own right.
So, to help you up your content game and produce graphics, emails and videos that your audience will love to consume, I'm opening up my own toolkit to share with you the top four pieces of creative software that, as a graphic designer and small business marketer, I recommend investing in.
The four pieces of creative content software that I recommend having as a small business owner are Canva, CapCut, Flodesk and Plann.
MEET CANVA, THE HOLY GRAIL FOR SMALL BUSINESSES
Well this one is a no-brainer really. If you're a business owner and you haven't heard of Canva yet, man oh man I'm about to rock your world. Seriously. Go and check it out.
For everyone else, chances are I'm probably preaching to the converted on this one. Canva makes designing graphics and content for just about ANY medium - social media graphics, reels, videos and animations, flyers, business cards, presentations - a total breeze.
As a content designer, one of the big reasons I love Canva is because it comes with an almost endless built-in library of graphics, photos, fonts and templates that you can use to make something super unique in minimal time. And unlike stock websites, you're not paying for every individual photo or icon you chose to use - it's all included.
The interface is a simple drag-and-drop style, and tasks like layering items, resizing and re-formatting are easy. OMG who remembers the days of clip art and using Word and when you move one photo, everything else on the page moves to?!
When using Canva, I highly recommend having a paid subscription. This will give you access to a heap of features that are seriously worth it. Some of my favourites are the background remover, quick re-size, and the brand kit. In the brand kit you can even create and save templates for your most used designs to make producing branded content even faster.
Better still, Canva’s mobile app is equally as powerful enabling you to whip up designs on the go.
Canva is also being continuously upgraded with better and better features, so you’re never at a loss.
FLODESK, THE EMAIL PLATFORM THAT RULES THEM ALL
Flo Desk is an email campaign software purposefully built for creating and sending beautifully designed emails. As a total design freak, I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it. Yea it's a little pricey compared to a lot of other platforms out there, but if you want to send emails that make a statement (but are still easy to pull together) Flodesk is the place to do it.
The layout feature is my absolute phase. Gone are the days of having to design graphics elsewhere then upload them as images. With the layout feature I can select from a massive range of amazing and unique styles, then easily apply my branding to create an email with some serious pizazz.
Other awesome features include the ability to upload your own custom fonts and brand colours to the design kit, embed your Instagram feed, and just generally create emails in a user-friendly interface that’s nice to navigate.
Want to give it a try for 50% off? Follow the link below to sign up and your first year is half price. You can thank me later.
CAPCUT, FOR MAKING REELS & VIDEO EDITING LIKE A PRO
For quite some time I heard a lot of social media managers talk about CapCut, but as someone who hates fiddling with design on my phone, I never really paid much notice. That is until CapCut launched a desktop app and web browser version of the software. Okay, now I’m sold.
They also enabled auto-captions so you can easily generate captions for your video. The software then also allows you to edit and design them to match your branding. Sold again.
This is a feature I used to pay $40 a month for in another software. Now I get it for $14 a month in CapCut - alongside all of the other amazing video editing features CapCut has on offer.
In addition to having the usual features you’d expect like timeline views, audio editing, and transitions, the software also has templates. These are game-changing. With templates you can take a pre-edited video sequence someone has created and apply your own videos and images to make it yours. Gone are the days of spending hours trying to edit something from scratch yourself. And there’s no shortage of templates either. Sometimes the hardest part is deciding which one to choose!
PLANN THAT, YOUR GO-TO CONTENT SCHEDULER
Last but not least we have Plann That, a scheduling software that caters to pretty much every social platform.
Plann has a simple and stylish user-interface, which makes it really nice to use. Other schedulers I’ve tried have been really clunky, or had features in places that just made zero sense. Or the layout of their post editing page has just been whack.
One of the things I love most about Plann is that you can preview how your grid will look before publishing your content. If you’re still a fan of having a beaut looking feed like me, this feature takes away all the headaches. You can also drag-and-drop draft posts around on the grid to figure out the perfect sequence for your posts to go out in.
Other features that make me LOVE Plann include cross-posting, saving hashtag sets, the calendar view, and most of all the ability to upload a custom cover photo for your reels.
I’ve tried a lot of schedulers and this one is BY FAR the best.
WANT HELP CREATING STUNNING CONTENT FOR YOUR BUSINESS?
One thing I always say to my clients when they’re trying to decide if a particular software is worth the investment is this, “What is your time worth and how much time will having this software save you? If you’re wasting hours per week that could be saved by having this software, then she’s a worthwhile investment.”
Another worthwhile investment can be having custom branded templates designed for your business. Whether it’s email newsletter templates, social media carousel templates, before and after video templates - having pre-set, professionally designed templates for these things can help you create content faster while also ensuring the final product looks amazing.
And if you need a gal to create said templates for you, this is something I can help with.
Simply use the link below to get started with a planning call. From there I can go forth and create.