“A brand is a reason to choose.” – Cheryl Burgess
A successful company requires a strong, authentic and refined brand. This requires much deliberation and time. However, there are many branding tools and software that can help your brand achieve the visibility it needs in order to stand out while saving you time and energy. Below are a few branding tools that are easy to use and lay the foundations for your unique brand image.
1. Canva
Not everyone can afford to purchase Photoshop or Illustrator, and even if you can, learning how to use it is a whole other story! Although they are powerful, there are some great, free options that are user friendly, have some awesome looking templates to inspire your creative side and will save you a lot of time and effort when it comes to keeping your branding consistent.
Canva is probably our favourite! A free online platform that allows you to create beautiful layouts and designs, from business cards to brand style guides. What we love about this website is that it has a drag-and-drop format and gives you access to millions of free stock images and vectors. Canva is an “amazingly simple graphic design software”, for non-designers as well as professionals.
Check these out: Building a Brand Kit || 50 Free Branding Templates For Your Business
2. PLANN
Plann is an all-in-one scheduler, social strategist, designer and content calendar where you can plan and auto-schedule your Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Facebook and LinkedIn posts. It is loved and trusted by 3-Million+ of the best brands and available on Desktop, iOS and android.
3. Unsplash
We know finding the right image for your post can be very difficult, but no one likes seeing those grainy watermarked pictures in their feed. If you struggle to find the right pic for your post, look no further.
Unsplash is an online image database with many beautiful high quality images available for free download. Everything uploaded to Unsplash falls under Creative Commons Zero, meaning you can use, post, and edit the pictures as much as you want, for free and without needing to give credit (They make it very easy for you to give credit, so when you can it’s always a great idea to do so!).
There are a variety of collections and trending images available for inspiration. We love using Unsplash images when creating websites, social media pages and case studies!
4. Unfold
Instagram stories have taken over. From personal accounts to brand accounts, the quality of this content and importance of stories has grown exponentially, however, planning and perfecting your Instagram stories can be difficult and time consuming. That’s because you haven’t found the right solution yet…
Unfold, an Instagram Story planner that is simple to use, effective, and just down right beautiful. Unfortunately, at the moment the style of the stories will look similar to everyone else who uses the app, but we’re holding out for some more customization options in future updates. And right now, we really don’t mind because the current style is just damn pretty!
You don’t even have to create an account to get started. Just get going by choosing a name for your story, pick from one of 25 templates that support both images and video, choose from one of the 5 fonts if you want some text and create your masterpiece. Create one Instagram Story item or plan an entire Highlight Reel, then download the entire story so you can upload to Instagram!
Released in late April 2018, we’re expecting many new templates, fonts, and other more to be added in future updates to Unfold!
5. Lumen5
Video, video, video. Everyone everywhere has been telling you that you need to post more video. “But how? I don’t have the time to film, edit, have titles, transitions, and everything else my video might need” you might be asking yourself and everyone else telling you to post more video. We know what you need.
Lumen5, an online video creation platform that uses A.I. to convert long text into engaging video content. With an easy copy-paste feature, you are able to create a video within minutes! Use it to quickly and easily turn your blog posts into videos to finally get some of those “views” we all want so badly!
It’s the perfect tool to make great video content, and you can change fonts, colours, and add your logo to make sure your branding stays consistent!
