Lessons

Lesson Info

Enhancing Your Posts

eso enhancing your post. So I love this segment because it's talking about third party APS that really give your instagram post a boost, especially if you're struggling with what kind of content to create. I have many third party app that I use, but we're gonna talk about a few of them. And it basically it's like the appetizer before you eat your meal. And before you get to know someone, you can really start using these APS to make them stand out and entice people in and really created this just so many APS that I have on my phone that empower me to have something in hand at any time. But today we're gonna talk about three of them. The 1st 1 is word swag, and I'm really excited because the creator of this app is actually gonna be coming on stage really soon, showing you in detail how to use this app. But this is just a little preview of the before and after. So as you can see a quote here looking plain Jane right and what it can look like if you use a photo underneath the quote now, Gr...

ace talked earlier about her account and her engagement. That happens when she uses quotes. And I loved hearing that from you Grace, where the account that you manage for the hotel gets more engagement from ward swag than anything else that you've ever done. I also have experienced a lot of engagement in success, using words swag specifically for one of my featured accounts that I talked about earlier, the daily I g with the dots in between, where I Onley use ward swag to repost quotes. And I do that because it's the easiest way for me to get great content out quickly in a very, very creative way. So sometimes I use one of the templates that they have right there in the APP and I build off of that. And other times I'll take a photo that stored in my IPhone and do a text overlay. And what's so cool about this is that you can choose from a variety of different types of type styles right there within the app. I'm really excited that he's gonna be on stage soon. Another app that we talked about a little bit earlier that I absolutely love and it's my go to app when I'm trying to tell a story or share product shots more than one of the same. So these air three of the different necklaces that I fell at my store Soupy do. And as I mentioned earlier, it's all about the anchor. But what you're seeing here is how they're staged on the clothing that I sell into of the pictures. I'm also staging it on a starfish, and so many people that sell products, in my opinion, aren't staging them properly. Toe have them worthy of being on social media or instagram. And I think it's really important to enhance your product with the mood of what you're selling and these air examples of that. So behind one of the anchors I have address from this amazing company called Mao Mao e Gold and the other one, I have a tunic there and then I just used the starfish that we sell. So it has that kind of Kate look and feel and beach feel. I also use dip tick. You know there's vertical segments that you can use to create my testimonial. So when I grab testimonials from people we talked about this earlier is a posting idea. You can either showcase three of them or four of them because indep tick you can. You can choose from a variety of different layouts of what you want to share on the posts and its bite sharing multiple images in the post. But literally it doesn't have to be an image. It can be like I said, a testimonial that you've grabbed. So it's, you know, showing more than one at a time has a little bit more than an impact, Laura. So I think that you mentioned that earlier, too. That you, yeah, that you use more than one image is to set tell a story. So this is my go to app for telling a story. Um, and it's really easy to use. The 3rd 1 is Ronna. Ronna is a very, very creative act. There's so many different features to the app here on my account. Soupy jewels. I haven't really talked about this account much, but this account is all about nautical jewelry I've extracted out of sue be doo yet another niche. We're talking about knitting down earlier, and what you see on that account is Onley nautical jewelry, primarily anchors and starfish we have found that within Sue be doo. The most popular items that we fell are is jewelry and people, especially love nautical and nautical jewelry. So this is when we hit 200 likes. So that might be something you want to celebrate toe. Add to that, you could have wrote thank you fans for the 200 likes or, you know, just had any other text overlay. But the branding is behind the text and it was created in this amazing app. Can you mention the name of that apple more Corona Rh o and an A. OK, yes. So I'd love to hear from the audience who has used any of these three APs or has a favorite app that I didn't mention that you use because it makes it easy for you to create great posts. Anyone start, will. I used it. Took a lot. Somebody told me about it at a conference a couple years ago, and I love it. Fancy just created a little shot of the creative live logo out the lobby and the coal and I doing a selfie with the hashtag so you'll see it. I know it's Nicole's. You gonna tell the story. Tentacles one of her favorite app tickets. Yeah, well, there is an Internet commercial, and it's about dipped IQ. And it's called it Well, the thing that we always say is Show me your dipped IQ. It's on YouTube. It's an hysterical video of what this app does in the most entertaining way. And so it's our little like Show me your dipstick is like our little thing. Yet on YouTube, it's worth watching. So entertaining anyway. We don't want Take everybody off the show, but just jot that down for later. Little two minute entertainment about a nap. One of my favorites is picked play post, and it's mostly because I do video and you're able Teoh incorporate video into it. So yes, I use that one a lot as well. Yes, so this is what my word swag. The daily I G app looks like account. Looks like when you look at it on the Web, I'm showing it to you here so that you can see the multiple images that are created. And as I mentioned earlier, it is the Onley ap I used for this account, and you're gonna see why soon I want to show you a testimonial that was sent to me again. This is something I did on you can take a screenshot. This was a tweet that came in, but this could easily be created into an instagram post. And, you know, he states that it's paved the way for him to reach his target market. Very similar to what Grace said earlier. And she he's like, fact, it works. So I'm gonna go over to my phone and tell you the story of how I discovered Ward swag. And, um then I'm gonna be introducing my guest. Okay, So I was at social media marketing world in March, and I met the amazing Kim Garst, and she came to a networking event with May, and she pulled me over. And she's like, suit. So you're not gonna believe this. I have to show you something. There's this new app, and it is amazing. I'm like, Show me. She's like, Okay, give me one of your favorite quotes. I want to show you how easy this is. So I said, do what you love, love what you dio cause that's my thing. That's what I mean. And she created this beautiful image for me in 30 plus seconds. And ever since then I became hooked because whenever I go to conferences, I often hear the keynotes and speakers say one little golden nugget that you could turn into a tweet that is, there's toe own and their quote and I wanted a way to celebrate that. And so what I did was I started the daily idea count, and Ward swag has made it so easy for me to post content when I'm not sure what to post, and it's really fun to use. It's very empowering. It's somewhat addicting. And I'm just so excited because today we have the creator of the APP, Ben Wong, here with us, and he is here to show us and tell us all about the app. So come on up, you hear? And I'm sure everyone watching is what she got. Creative. The activity on stage here is what I would love you to do is tell the audience how why you created this app in a little bit about you. And so I actually have a design firm called Orange. And the last two years we have been hand designing a lot of social media graphics for clients and the graphics were doing really well. But that whole process is pretty intricate. You have to work with the designer one on one. You have to tell them what you're thinking about as far as direction. Then the designer has to go ahead and design the graphic. And then there's an approval process, so it's Ah, it can be a pretty intensive process. So the whole inspiration for the APP was toe actually streamline that process and really make it for clients. I didn't have the time or budget necessarily toe work with the designer one on one night. And so that was the inspiration for that, which is great, because earlier we were hearing from the worldwide audience saying, You know what? If you don't have the money to hire a graphic team and your APP definitely makes images, look as if you have a graphic team that created it. So I'm so excited to have you here and to share with everyone what this does happen. Thanks so a little bit about my background. I have a background in design and photography and film as well, I mentioned I started my design firm Orange, actually in my college bedroom with a buddy of mine. And, uh, yeah, I just talked about the inspiration Forward swag behind that. So beautiful typography adds value. I knows who has been touching upon this about creating a visual story for your brand, for your feed on instagram. And I really wanted to touch upon beautiful typography and how adding type and messaging can add value to your images. So I wanted to show you a few examples of before and after images. I'm gonna show you some pictures of that of just photos and then show you what happens when you add type and messaging to those images and show you how that transforms the image. So here we have, Ah, beautiful picture of a sunset. And this picture by itself would agree. It is a very beautiful picture by itself. It's lovely, But let's see what happens when we add a little bit of type of messaging to it. So now we've added that message and designed to this photo. And when I look at this design now I am. This is telling me a little bit more of a story than just the sunset picture. It's expressing a point of view, and it's resonating with me on a deeper level than just, you know, the picture of a beautiful sunset. So I really like how that works. And this image is from Instagram user Jill Vidal, who is actually a pop star in Asia. So thank you for letting us use that we have another image here of a dusty road going on to the sunset again. I really like this image. Um, it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if you just posted this image by itself. But let's see what happens when you had some type and messaging to it. A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving. So I really love how that just comes together with the message, the quote, the way that type is laid out. The imagery, uh, that speaks to me on a deeper level and resonates with me more than just an image of a dusty road going on to the sunset. And this image is from the base projects, and they are actually a fashion label that uses fashion to hurt herself social causes. So now we have an image of cats looking out the window. Let's add some type. So again, example of, ah, image that is really greatly enhanced with type and messaging. And that is from Instagram user Khan Swan. So those are some general examples of type and image and how it works together. But I wanted to get a little bit more detailed and go into individual fields so you can get examples of how that works. So here are examples of individuals and how they're using type and imagery. On the left hand side, we have angelea PRs, see she's illustrator and fashion designer and most of her. She's actually really great photographers. Well, most of her images are beautifully stylized images of accessories of clothing shot on really dramatic white backgrounds. But I love how one of her post was just white is the new black because she's a huge fan of white and that it's such a simple, minimalist quote. But I think it really speaks to her aesthetic and her point of view. So I thought that was great. The third image from the Left is from the happy kind. She's actress of writing a writer and aspiring filmmaker and sure she's just sharing her breakfast, which is I wish my breakfast looked like that. But that's, Ah, beautiful breakfast. And she's a sharing a morning greeting with their followers. And this is when I was looking at her feet. This was actually one of her post that got the most engagement and likes. And on the right hand side, we have the daily I, G and I. That's from Suze Friend Jill, who I believe in that picture just finished a marathon. So I love that quote. Do one thing that scares you every day in a combination of her diss crossing the line of the marathon. So let's look at some photographers and how they're using type and image. I wanted to point out the image on the left hand side from adhere. CSA. It's I was blown away when I saw this image. I thought it was so creative just how he's taking this vast, beautiful shot of a coffee cup. And then the type is coming out of the coffee cup, almost as if it were steam coming from the coffee. And then the quote is. Either you run the day or the day runs you, Which is what better quote, you know, for your first cup of coffee in the morning. And we also have their final left, a image from blue lips. She's a photographer, I believe in Atlanta, and I just love how she's played with the combination of imagery and type. It just give us a really magazine, very high end feel. And on the right we have Caroline W. Photo, and she used a photo that she took as a backdrop. And then she put the quote, Do what you love and will love you back and then it below that she has a tagline or her website. Caroline White photography dot com. So I thought that was a really great way to get her brand out there without, you know, necessarily hitting you on the head and saying, Hey, I'm a photographer. Hire me. It's a really nice way to add value to her audiences. Streams a really another great use for image and type is for the religious and spiritual mark market. A lot of what they do is based on text, so to be able to add typography that's expressed beautifully really adds value versus just plain text. And finally, we have pet lovers. Everyone loves pets in the middle. We have an image from Mrs Photo, but I thought was really fun. She took a picture of her dogs and then made a collage of all the things that go through her her dog's mind. So now I'm going to do a tutorial Inward swag on the IPhone I'm actually gonna do to tutorials. So when we launch word swag were given two options, we have weaken press the button on the lower left that's gonna take a picture on her on her camera. And we can also press the button on the bottom right to access our album. So this first tutorial just want to kind of give a quick overview of how the app works. When I select the the button on the bottom right. I'm presented with some pre included backgrounds at a design toe. Work well with type. And then, for this example, I would actually select my camera roll on the bottom to the top, right, going to select an image here. So we have this image of a sense it and I'm going to go ahead and select square crop because this image is going to go on Instagram. So we want toe choose the square crop option. So does anyone have a quote? I believe. Lynn. Did you have a quote that you like to? Sure. Well, I just thought of my tagline immediately. There's enough for everyone. Get your slice. There's enough for everyone. I like that in his Atta relate with your business. Or is that you? Get your slice Your slice. Okay, Awesome. So it might be a little all my quotes there so long? No, I think that would be great. So when we first opened the app we have different font styles that we can choose from and in each font style were given five different options are five different variations within that font style. So, for example, if I choose this one called trend and I select the numbers below, that's going to select different variations within the trend style. And if I don't like any of those, I can go ahead and hit the dice but in, and that's gonna go ahead and generate five more styles for me to choose from. So let's go ahead and enter that quote. So when Can you remind me what the quote was theirs? You know, for everyone, for every one period. Get your slice. Good. You're like you usually do that as a hashtag get your slicer. Yes, but it's also a quote. It's on my website and everywhere to with them without the hashtag Great. So and that's your quote. Yes. Okay. How do you Lynn? L Y n n uh, And then capital A e a t e. It looks like a bait. A B a t t a b a e e e. No. There it is. Okay. Came up. Johnson. Johnson. Sorry. It's hyphenated. Okay, So that bottom boxes where we can put the authority Aviation attribution of quotes. So I'll go ahead and hit. Saving close Our great, huh? Let's try some different styles. So then I have a quick question. I was messing around with it earlier. Can you reduce the size of the font? Yeah. So the way you reduce the size of fun is you just pensions do so, Aiken, both of my fingers on that quote and make it smaller. So I just selected 20,000 leagues. I kind of like the way that looks would agree. That looks like yes. Looks beautiful. OK, great. So that's actually pretty much it I would hit done on the upper right hand corner and that goes ahead and automatically saves it to my camera roll. And then from there, I can also share directly to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or email. Um, so now let me show you a little bit of a different image and how we would do with that. So I'm gonna go ahead and hit new. Then what is re swag? That's a good question. Re swag. Actually, Lyles uto apply another text to your image after you finished your first image. So that last last case, we could've taken that image and then applied another text graphic on top. So it keeps the image, and then you can do a different tax. Exactly. So I'm gonna select another image, so I'm gonna press the button on the bottom right hand corner. I'm going to select my camera, roll on the upper right, and when it's like this image. So I wanted to show this image to you because sometimes you have images that don't have an obvious place for type. For example, in the last image we have the sunset and a really obvious place to place. The text on the image was above the sunset because you had this big clear area for text. But sometimes you have images like this, for example that are really busy, and there's not really an obvious place to put text on it. So let's go ahead and hit square crop and see how we can put text on this image so you can see immediately by default. The text gets a little bit lost on the image. I don't know if you can see that, but it says double tap me to change text. So I'm gonna double tap that. And if I'm also not feeling inspired, there's a library of different sayings and quotes I can choose from. But I'm going to go back to custom and I'm gonna take my text in. And in this example I want toe control how the text breaks over lines. The last example we just had the app automatically decide where to place the words on lines. But in this case, I want to ensure that each word is gonna have its own line. So as I type. I'm actually going toe tap. The auto line breaks on switch on the left to off, so that turns off the app from automatically setting the line breaks in my quote. So now that I have that set off, I'm gonna type in passion in an incident line, break never and then another line break and then fails Whip. And that's going to ensure that each word has its own line when I save out of this, so I top saving close. So when you're presented with this situation, you have a busy background as kind of fighting your text. One solution is to go ahead and select a really thick, heavy set fought so you can see this. This fine is much thicker and and it's much more readable. I think I did a double tap on this real quick cause, I think have extra space after passion. So this is pretty readable. When you goto a thinner font, it gets a little bit less readable. So a really good tip is to go ahead and choose a really thick, heavy set find that's gonna make it a lot easier to read over your busy a background so I'm gonna actually go ahead and select this style right here. See if I can find a variation I like. So like how that looks and you can see that's really readable. So this is this could be our design right here. But what I want to try is actually show you guys a cool feature, which is, if you select the color tab in the very middle, which is the three colored dots, we can change the color. And we can also go ahead and tap the invert switch. So what? That does go ahead and tap that that uses the type as a mask for the image. So now the image in the background is shining through the type. And this works really nicely with this image because the images pretty that the type is pretty readable. And you also get this really fun textured background of the New York City skyline poking through. So I like how that looks. I'm going to go ahead and had done to finish that up. And there you go. So if you need any inspiration, you can definitely follow at work. Swag on Instagram. You can also look for the hashtag work swag up, and that's whether you're using word swag or another app. That's a really good source for inspiration to see how people are combining type in image. I think there's over 20,000 posts under that tax, so it's discreet kind of scroll through that and see what other people are doing. And you have any questions? Definitely. Feel free to email me abanet orange dot com or tweet us at words. Wake up. Can we ask you a couple of questions? Right now, I'm just off the top. We have some android users who are wondering if this is going to become a reality for them. Yeah, or if it is already. It's, You know, it's something that we've been thinking about a really long time, and we've been trying to do. And it's just, um, developing for Android because there's so many platforms you run into issues with different fonts and licensing. So that's really the trickiest part is just being able to do that. So if we do do it, we want to make sure it's a great experience for all android users. So at this point, it's still up in there. We're trying to see if we can make it happen and make it a really great experience for android users. That Kickstarter idea. We do have a question from an IPad user. Is there a word swag for the IPad? Is it the same application? Yeah, Right now it's built for IPhone so you can run it on the IPad little run in sort of the expanded IPhone mode, just like if you're running Instagram, which is only made for IPhone. But that's actually really big priority. So I'm hoping not in the next update with it. After that, it's gonna be universal APS that'll be optimized for both I've had and, uh, as well as IPhone. Okay, great. You're getting a lot of compliments from our global audience. So let's love for word swag. Any of our in studio audience have any questions or we just gonna give some love to Ben? This is something that you guys are gonna use if you haven't already. All right, Well, let's let's get let's give a big round of applause to bend. Thank you. I think it's great. Thanks so much. Really. I'm thrilled to have a part of this course because, like I said I love words Wag and I use it pretty every day on my daily eye G and often on my other accounts Is there anybody that you don't know? Instagram? I think I think I know all the players. Yeah, there's more coming. All right. You know it, Yeah.