There’s no denying the importance of social media in our everyday lives, but I’m not just talking about keeping up to date with what our friends ate for lunch today. For many people social media has become way more than just taking a picture of your katsu curry and hitting post. It’s a source of income for many people, and for others it’s their main marketing channel. So, whether you’re a business or an influencer, looks matter. Which is why in this post we’re talking design, specifically for social media, based on my own experience and some research I’ve put together, here are the top 10 apps for designing social media posts.
Ripl:
The first app I want to talk about is Ripl, let’s start by getting all the boring stuff out the way. Ripl is a “freemium” app available on both iphone and android, as well as ipad and desktop. However, the free version includes a watermark at the bottom of each image designed or edited through their app. If you wish to have the watermark removed as well as a few added extras they offer two paid options, either $14.99 per month or $119.88 a year, both come with a 7-day free trial. Now let’s talk about what really matters, what does the app offer? So, having served 3.5 million small business’ so far Ripl is a very credible app, with several offerings, including 500,000 stock images available for use. 1000s of ready-made templates, and the tools to track social media engagements by channel. Overall Ripl is a fantastic social media design/editing app, we found it super useful when it comes to business use, it splits all its editing tools and features into categories, e.g., “Beauty & Personal Care” and “Government & Non-profit” making it easy to tease out what’s necessary for your business.
App store rating: 4.8/5
Canva:
Next up we have Canva, which is probably the one you have most likely heard of, it’s super easy and helps create some super professional looking social media posts! Much like Ripl, Canva offers a free version as well as a pro-version. Both versions offer a huge range of templates, images, and tools. Canva pro costs £10.99 per month or £107.99 per year. Canva is the perfect app for businesses and small businesses who use social media as their main marketing channel. It allows users to create ‘teams’ whereby multiple people can work on one design; it also allows you to organise your designs into folders and share them directly from the app on to your social media platforms. A unique feature is that Canva offers the kind of fonts you would find on a desktop, allowing users to maintain consistency on all their platforms. Some social media design apps only offer their own unique fonts, which can sometimes be annoying for users who want to have the same font all round. Canva is the perfect app for creating professional looking social media posts, and we also found it super useful for creating and designing logos.
App store rating: 4.8/5
Inshot – Video Editor:
This is one seriously COOL app; it’s focus is editing videos. Tools include, video trimming, cutting, and deleting, merging videos, adjusting speed, adding music and sound effects, voice overs and the list goes on. However, in my opinion the coolest feature on this app is the greenscreen feature, which allows you to create a video anywhere in the world from the comfort of your living room! However, I think InShot’s biggest selling point is the price, they offer InShot Pro for just £11.49 per year, in comparison to the other apps we’ve spoken about this is super affordable and this version offers access to all features and paid editing materials including stickers and filter packages. As well as all watermarks and advertisements being removed automatically. This one’s a no brainer if you ask me! Overall, we found this app super useful as an alternative to editing on desktop, it’s like a professional video editor that fits right into your pocket so you can edit videos anytime, anywhere.
App store rating 4.8/5
DesignLab – Graphic Design:
DesignLab is a fantastic graphic design app which helps you put together some very professional posts on social media, with over a million images to choose from. DesignLab markets itself as a “Graphic Design” app and its users are using it for exactly that, with many people designing album covers, business cards, birthday cards, invitations, and even real estate promotion. This list shows just how diverse the app features are. The features include, Customizable templates, the ability to save projects and continue editing them later, free stock photography (we’re talking millions of images!), advanced text tools, stunning artwork, layer-based editing, photo Filters and photo adjustments. A super useful feature on this app is that you can also set the app to “dark mode” for those late-night editing sessions.
App store rating: 4.6/5
Over (Now GoDaddy Studio):
Previously known as Over, GoDaddy studio is an editing app for all things social media. Using this app, you can create logos, edit photos, and put together posters and flyers that can be shared electronically via social media platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. GoDaddy studio markets as an app for businesses who need professional photo editing at a fast pace. Unlike the previously listed apps, GoDaddy Studio offers both image and video editing. However, this USP comes with a cost, if you wish to use GoDaddy Studio at its full capacity then you will need to pay for the pro version which comes at a cost of £84.99 per year. Overall we found GoDaddy Studio extremely useful for editing videos as it allows you to edit both existing videos from your camera roll and a huge selection of exclusive stock videos.
App store rating: 4.8/5
Clay:
Clay is all about aesthetics, it’s the perfect app for up-and-coming social media influencers. Despite the controversy, social media influence is all about portraying the best version of any situation. Whether that be having a meal, doing a workout or even lying-in bed! Clay is a slightly less extensive app, and it’s more for daily use when uploading stories. Clay markets itself as an app for influencers. Some might say that aesthetics isn’t at the forefront of social media marketing, but it’s the first thing users notice when they come across your, page, post, or story. The choice of colour, and the images and visuals used are all part of your brand identity and they define you. It’s how users will remember your brand, product of service. Clay’s focus is to create the best possible aesthetic to be remembered by. Overall, we feel Clay is THE perfect app when it comes to aesthetics and its best feature is its simplicity.
App Store rating: 4.5/5
Blastr:
This is one for the bargain hunters! If you’re looking for a super affordable pro version of any social media design app, then this is the one for you. Blastr offers its pro version for $2.99 per month or $17.99 per year. This enables you to unlock all templates, over 300 fonts, over 4000 stickers, and over 1 million royalty free stock images, as well as remove all ads from the app, to stop interfering with those creative juices! A cool feature on Blastr, is that it allows you to create memes, and who doesn’t love a meme? Not only do they make us laugh, but have you heard of the new marketing strategy, “meme marketing”? According to a recent study, memes can yield 60% organic engagement on social media platforms. For this reason alone, meme pages are being offered huge commissions for product and service advertisement due to their level of reach. Perhaps Blastr could help you create some meme marketing gold!
App Store rating: 5/5
Impresso: Video design studio
Impresso is one for small businesses who are looking to create high quality videos to be uploaded on their social media platforms, both inexpensively and quickly, the app offers both a free version and a PRO video editor version, at a yearly cost of £49.99. Making it super inexpensive for small businesses and up and coming influencers. In terms of Video editing, we found Impresso to be the easiest app to use on the market. All the reviews rave about the quality of the video designing tools and we can confirm the quality is impeccable, and it’s also super easy to use! We found that impresso is the best video editing app for posting directly to your social media pages. While most social media design posts offer the option to post, they do not offer the option to post directly to reels, stories and IGTV, impresso however does. Impressive right?
App store rating: 4.7/5
Boosted Ad Maker by Lightricks:
This app is all about ad making, so if your main purpose of posting on social media is to advertise a service or product. Then this is the app for you. “Boost your brand or business with boosted” is their main philosophy. You can create ads, tips, tutorials and pretty much anything else you can think of. The App also offers a premium version which gives users unlimited access to all video templates and 50% off photos from Getty images. Based on recent studies, 49% of internet users say they are likely to purchase from brands they see advertised on social media. Boosted is the perfect app for creating eye-catching ads that are bound to sell your products and services! In terms of creating ads, boosted is the top app on the market, you can create super professional looking ads in moments for free! Yes completely free, this is the only app in our top 10 selection that offers all of its services completely free!
App store rating: 4.7/5
Mojo – Insta story
And finally, it’s all about the stories! No, it really is! There are over 500 million active daily Instagram stories users, and you NEED to be one of them! Mojo is the number one content making app! It’s always good to end on a high, right? Although Mojo markets themselves as an app for Insta stories, they do in-fact cater for all types of social media video content, including the new craze, TikTok videos. Mojo offers access to over 400 original text styles, effects, music library, animated templates and more. Mojo also offers a pro version at a yearly cost of £29.99. It’s super easy to use and offers a great range of tools regardless of whether you decide to use the app’s free version or pay for the pro version.
App store rating: 4.9/5
So now that we’ve covered the top 10 social media post designing apps, let’s conclude on just how important social media design is. With 57.6% of the world’s population using social media daily for an average of 2 hours and 27 minutes, there’s so much potential to influence, whether your aim is to sell a product, a service or to simply influence people, the key is to stand out. These 10 apps all have their unique ways of helping you achieve your social media marketing goals!
SUMMARY
So there we have it! Our top 10 apps for designing social media posts. If you have an idea for an app around social media, why not get in touch with us to find how to make it a reality? We were recently rated Excellent from independent analysts, Tech Behemoths, so we’re pretty good at what we do! Get started today with a free App Discovery Workshop here on digiruu.com/get-started