Monday, April 6, 2015

Tuesday Tips and Tweaks


This week author Stephanie Queen joins us with her tip. USA Today bestselling author Stephanie Queen is a romantic by nature, a romance novelist by design.
Stephanie’s Marketing Design Tip for the DIY Author
Do you regularly post on Facebook to promote your books and wish you could make your posts look more professional? Do you see other authors posting with  banners and ads specially designed to promote a sale or a series and wonder how they did that or how much it cost?
Well I did, but I did NOT want to pay a graphic designer every time I had a sale or added a new book to my series to do a new ad or banner.

So what's an ambitious DIY author to do?
NOT buy expensive graphic design software like Photoshop
NOT use free but extremely confusing design software like Gimp.
Instead, I used a very simple, free (or very inexpensive) graphic design program called Canva. (www.canva.com)Using their Facebook post template, I added my book cover and some text to create a fabulous post for my boxed set sale - and it was FUN! And it cost $0!

(NO, I don't own stock in Canva and I'm not trying to promote them!)

You may know of another similar design program that's easy to use to help you create professional looking Facebook posts, and if you do, please feel free to share it here.

If you try Canva and create a graphic - feel free to share that here too!

That's my tip for Tuesday!

5 comments:

  1. I totally agree with Stephanie. There's so much we can do with just a little help and the willingness to learn a few tricks. And the plug-in sites such as Canva can be perfect for someone.

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  2. I'll definitely try this! Thanks Steph:-)

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  3. Thank you for having me, Beverly!
    E. and PJ, thanks for stopping by!
    Seriously, if I can use Canva, then anyone can. Their Facebook and Banner templates are perfect for every day use. I'm happy to post my new graphics on FB pages now right along with the rest of them.
    Stephanie Queen

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  4. Thank you for sharing. I'd love to be able to do things like that. :)

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  5. Thanks for this tip. It's awesome. I'm heading over to have a look.
    Jo-Ann Carson
    Smart, Sexy Suspense

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