An Easy Recipe for Making Text Overlay Images

As part of your organization’s digital strategy, you need to create engaging content for your web site, email newsletter, or blog.    This content can be easily optimized for social channels like Facebook or Twitter – with a focus on making it visual.    And, of course, there are benefits to visual content like increased engagement.     A popular type of DIY (do-it-yourself) visual is “text overlay,”  used to illustrate a blog post or shared on Facebook.      Here’s a simple recipe for creating one.
1.   High Quality Ingredients
If you cook, you know that your dishes are only as good as your ingredients.      For text overlay images,  you need the following ingredients:  text, photo, and branding.   Your text should be short, clear, and support your key messaging.   Your photos should not only resonate with your audience, it should tell a story, not be copyrighted, and be a decent photo (not blurry or poorly composed).     You can take your own photos or use stock photography.     Don’t forget to add your URL or logo.
2.   Kitchen Equipment
For many of your text overlay needs, you can easily create them in PowerPoint and save as a jpg.    You will also need to resize your image depending on what channel and how you plan to use it.   My favorite free tool for this is PicMonkey because it is very easy to use.  (You could compose the text overlay using PicMonkey if you want more elaborate design and graphic elements than PowerPoint)
3.   Measuring Tools
You will need a cheat sheet that gives you the up to date image sizes for different social channels.     “The Ridiculously Exhaustive Social Media Dimensions Blueprint”  from TentSocial is kept up to date and downloadable as a PDF.    If you plan to use the image as a promoted post on Facebook, make sure you understand the 20% rule so you time isn’t wasted.
4.   Presentation
All great cooks know how to present their dishes on the plate so they look appetizing and beautiful.    Remember some basic rules of graphics design:  Simplicity
Balance, Font Readability, and Contrast
With this simple recipe, you can create a great text overlay image to illustrate a blog post and use on social channels in less than 15-30 minutes.
Have you incorporated text image overlays into your content strategy?   What’s your recipe?  Any secret sauce?