by Beth Ziesenis
Motorcoach professionals are becoming better and better at tweeting, posting, sharing and pinning news and promotions. But if the content they share is boring, the three clicks it took to get the information out there were wasted.
Luckily the app world is full of tech tools that help elevate a snoozy picture into a snazzy, share-worthy graphic or multimedia masterpiece. Check out these top tools to create great content to make your posts more interesting in minutes.
Turn an image into a story: Word Swag
Way back in the day, a motorcoach organization could share a photo of a bus on the road and be done, but these days the images with text overlays get all the attention. Word Swag (iOS and Android) allows you to add text to an image in mere moments. Without having to have a degree in design, you can plug in your own text and play around with the typography with a few clicks. Just snap a picture and add branding with a couple of clicks.
Make a movie in an instant: Animoto and Magisto
Animoto is one of those tools that make motorcoach clients go “wow” and look at you in wonder. The premise is incredibly simple: Gather 10 or more pictures and/or videos, throw in a title and choose a theme and soundtrack, then push a button. Presto! Animoto instantly creates a perfectly timed, perfectly professional, perfectly awesome video to showcase your offerings. It’s so fast that you can take pictures of your clients’ voyage then have the wrap-up video online by the time you drop the final load off.
Magisto is another instant movie maker. Just shoot video and photos on the fly and tell Magisto to do its magic. Within five minutes, you’ll have a share-worthy montage of your clips and pictures.
Design for social media: Canva and Adobe Spark Post
Canva is a graphics tool for those who can’t find their way around Adobe Photoshop. Non-artistic folks love the templates and professional-looking graphics. The site provides modern and retro frameworks for everything from Facebook timeline images to Instagram posts. It takes just a few clicks of the mouse to make a downloadable PDF or JPG—perfect for professionals who just need a quick graphic for a newsletter, social media post or website. The best part? If you use your own images, Canva is free. Use Canva’s professional images for just a buck apiece.
Adobe Spark Post is a worthy Canva competitor that also resizes your images and can even add a little animation to make your posts come alive.
Go beyond the online post: Postagram and Felt
You can snap a million images of your vehicles and post them all to social media, but they’re buried in followers’ feeds in a flash. Felt and Postagram let you turn images into beautiful snail mail postcards and letters to give your clients true keepsakes for a small price.
Beth Ziesenis is Your Nerdy Best Friend. She is the author of several books on technology including The Big Book of Apps. Beth travels the country talking to organizations about free and bargain technology.
