Be your own designer: How to customize your content on the cheap

Small businesses can design sleek, social media-friendly content using free online programs such as Canva. (We used it to create this.)

By now you've heard the growing rallying cry for adding more images and videos to your online and social media marketing.

Good news, bad news: Video is both difficult and expensive to produce. The good news? Adding compelling images to your content is much easier.

For small businesses, the subjects of the photos you should be using are all around you. Consider the restauranteur, furniture maker, or even dog trainer. Each is surrounded by fodder for images that can be used on websites and social media.

And while we'll have to tackle in another post tips for effective visual storytelling, we'd like to talk about the more elusive part of developing custom images: graphic design.

If you're reading this, you likely don't have the budget to hire a designer. So do it yourself. We personally like using Canva, which was founded for those of us unable, or unwilling, to learn the ins and outs of graphic design. 

It's what we used to design this Facebook post for an attorney who wanted to promote his perfect score on a legal referral website.

We started with a simple shot of the courthouse, overlaid text using one of the many layouts and fonts available, and voila! 

Give it a shot. You just might find that there was a designer lurking inside you the whole time.