Inspiring creativity | 10 apps to boost your social media content game

Let’s start with the premise that engaging visual content is crucial for success in today’s social media landscape. A quick Google search — or even a scan of your own Facebook or Instagram feed — will quickly let you know how dominant photos and especially videos are.

In fact, a staggering 100 million hours of video is viewed daily on Facebook, a number that’ll be on the rise this year.

Keeping a steady pipeline of good visual content is either A) really challenging or B) really expensive — or both. Unless you’re lucky enough to have a team of graphic designers, photographers and videographers ready to spring at a moment’s notice, you’re likely working with a limited amount of visual content to fuel your social presence. Finding ways to reuse and refresh that content to make it engaging is paramount.

Fortunately, there are some simple-to-use tools that can make that job a lot easier, and you can use them all from the comfort of your phone.

Below is a list of the top apps for creating engaging photos, making your own meme-style graphics and even turning still images into short looping videos. Most of these are free or inexpensive to download, but note that some of them do require a subscription in order to access the best tools or rid your content of the pesky brand watermark in the corner.

Photo enhancing apps:

• Adobe Photoshop Express: Edit photos and apply borders, frames and filters
• Adobe Spark Post: Transform photos with design and animation templates. If you’ve ever used Canva.com to create images, some of the tools here will feel familiar, but there are lots, lots more.
• PicLab: Add text, borders and overlays
• Plotaverse: Turn still photos into videos or gifs. There are some seriously cool ways to add “motion” to still images in here, but it takes a little practice (and a little money) for them to look good.
• Ripl: Layer animated templates on top of photos

Video enhancing apps:

• Videoshop: Combine photos and videos, experiment with stop-motion, resize and edit videos. This is a good one-stop-shop for a video-producing app, with lots of utility to help you be creative.
• Quik: Apply video templates, text overlays and music
• Instagram Stories: Add text, drawings and stickers to videos. Instagram Stories are in a huge boom, and many businesses are getting on the bandwagon. Google “Instagram Stories hacks” for some “hidden” features to enhance your creations.
• Boomerang: Create short looping videos
• Legend: Add animated text to a photo or video. This is a simple-to-use tool that’s great for turning a still image into a simple eye-catching video with a few words.

What other tools have you found for easily creating engaging visual content for social media? Let us know your favorites in the comments below.