Create a Thanksgiving Facebook Image
Did you ever want to create a facebook image that’s really intended for social media? You know the ones with the cool quotes and messages that everyone likes to share? Now that it is Thanksgiving in the United States, maybe you would like to create your own Thanksgiving message. That is exactly what we are going to do today!
I have created a video that shows you how to get the right tools and how to create a nice looking image to use on social media in less than 10 minutes, all using free online tools.
In this tutorial we are going to find an image and jazz it up for your online marketing use. In this example we are going to create a Facebook post with a Happy Thanksgiving message. Please note that this is a great way to build awareness for your website. In this example you can see that I have added my website in the lower right hand corner. If people like my image and they share it – my website info gets shared along with it. Not a bad way to get a little website traffic.
In this tutorial we will use the following free tools.
- pixabay.com to select our image
- colorcop.net to help select colors
- canva.com to jazz up our image
A little bit about the tools we are using and how to access them.
Pixabay is a site that offers free images that you can download. They can be used for commercial use. You will notice that they have some images with a shutter stock watermark – these are the images that they sell and that is how they make money on this site. When you download an image, you also have the opportunity to buy a cup of coffee for the photographer.
Colorcop is a tool that allows you to use an eyedropper to match a color number so that you can set your color easily. This is a free download from colorcop.net. In this tutorial you will see this tool IN ACTION. This tool only works on PCs, but if you are using a Mac – check this one out: http://www.colorschemer.com/colorpix_info.php.
Canva.com is a website that offers free and paid options for creating anything from a Facebook timeline cover to a blog post image. You will need to set up a free account with Canva.
In this example all options that we used were free of charge.
After installing the color picker and getting a free account with Canva.com, our first step will be to choose a photo that we are going to use. In Pixabay I typed in the word, Thanksgiving. This brings up several pages of great photos. The photos on the top are the paid options from Shutterstock and perhaps I might find the PERFECT one and be willing to pay for it. But in this scenario I found the perfect image amongst the free items. Click on the image to download and save it to your computer.
The next step is to log into your Canva.com account. Since this will be for a Facebook post, I am going to choose Facebook post – but as you can see you can choose from several options. Once I choose this I am given a lot of very cool layouts to choose from. I am going to choose the first one. I want to use the picture that we found on Pixabay and so I will go to Uploads and upload the image. Drag it over to the layout and it replaces the image that was on Pixabay.
I want to update the text that is in the circle. I just deleted all the extraneous verbiage – however you could certainly use them – and I will simply write my Thanksgiving message.
Now I want to add my website URL so people know where it came from. I click on text and found all these cute text options.
The colors for these components are not quite right, so I am going to use my colorcop tool to pick out the colors from the photo we are using. Click on the element and it will allow you to choose the color. I copy the color number from colorcop and paste it to the color option for the element.
Once I am done, I can save my image and download it to my computer. Voila! We have our image!
