PowerPoint Templates

Social media images are very popular and people love quotes. They inspire us to keep going or they can help us put things into prospective when we have a skewed view of the situation. I love quote and love to share them with others. I can find a quote for almost any occasion. I would like to share a simple and effective way to make templates for your social media images using Power Points.


There are many ways to present a quote. 




You can simply just post the text and the author of the quote.


“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up” –Pablo Picasso

Or 





As you can see this image is much more appealing than just the plain text version. There are many free images like the one above that you can use with no licensing to create content like this. Check out my post for some of the best places to get Free Stock Photos.


There are several different programs you can use to make these social media images. One of my favorite programs to use is Microsoft Office Power Points. When most people think of Power Points they think of presentations. I thought the same thing. When I started blogging I discovered Hubspot they have a ton of resources for social media and content marketing. I downloaded a free zip file that was packed full of templates from everything from eBooks, social media images, infographics and blog post templates; to my surprise they used Microsoft Power Points for a lot of the templates in that pack.

Until this point I used Photoshop to make my social media images. Coming from a background in graphic design I already had the expensive program installed on my computer and I had been using it for years.

Microsoft Power Points is a great alternative to Photoshop because it is more cost effective and comes prepackaged with many computers. With Microsoft Power Points you can also make several different slides within your presentation with different themes. . By making a few templates and just plugging in the picture and text that you wanted it saved a ton of time.  

Most people have some experience using Microsoft Office. The great thing about the office products is the menus and operations are very similar thought out all their products. So even if you have never used Power Point most likely you have used Microsoft Word. So it is relatively easy to learn.

Here is step by step tutorial on how to make  templates for your social media images using Microsoft Power Points. These easy to use templates save a lot of time so you can focus on other tasks.  


 Getting Started with Power Points



 When you first open Power Points you will be greeted with a screen that looks like this.
 





Microsoft changed their menus and toolbars in the 2007 version and started using tabs . The first step is to change the default slide to a blank slide.





 Now that you have a blank slide selects the insert tab at the top.



Select picture this will pull up your file menu and you can navigate to the photo you would like to use. For the template you can use any image you'd like. After inserting the image you can easily right click on the image and select change image to choose a different image. It will keep the same format that you applied to the original image.


Once your image is inserted you can resize the image by grabbing the handles and simply moving it. Once the image is inserted it will automatically select the picture and pull up the format ribbon. Here you can add a picture style. You can resize or crop your image. And align the image where you would like. 






Next go back to the insert tab and insert a text box.

Click on your slide where you would like your text to go. Start typing or paste your text. You can drag and resize the text box however you would like.



By selecting the Home tab you can format you text just like you would in any other office program. You can change the font style, font size and color of the text. 








With most pictures it is hard to put text over it and make it legible. If you have white text with a light background it will be hard to read even though you may be able to read some of the text that is over the darker areas.

The easiest way to overcome this problem is to insert a shape under your text. Go back to the insert menu and select shape. 



Select the shape you would like to use and click on your slide about where you would like the shape to be places. Continue to hold down the mouse button and drag to the desired size and dimension. This will cover up your text.

Right click on the shape while it is selected and hover over the send to back option this will display a menu where you can select send backwards. This will place the shape directly under your text.

If you right click on the shape you can select format shape. This will pull up a menu where you can manipulate the color, fill, boarder, and the transparency of the shape. Play around with the settings until you get the look you desire.






You can also insert a shape and send it to the back to create different effect around your image.

Once you get everything set up the way you would like it click anywhere on your slide and hit Ctrl + A to select all. This will select all the elements on your slide.

Back at the top select the format tab. Then under Arrangement select group.



This will turn all of the elements on your slide into a single object. If you didn't start with a blank slide in the beginning then it will not allow you to group the objects.

 After you group the elements you can still go in a manipulate any of the objects individually the same way could before you grouped them.

Once the objects are grouped you can right click on the slide from the menu select save as picture. Just like saving any other file you can name it and change the file format. I will typically save the picture as a JPEG image because this is the most excepted format for social media.

That's all there is to it. Save your Power Point and you can go back in and change the picture and format the text and shapes to suit your needs.
I make a few different slides in the same fashion that way I can have different layout for dark and light images or different shapes and colors.

Have fun and play around with some of the settings and format options. You can make some very interesting templates using Power Points. This has been a big time saver for me. I hope this will save you some time  so you can focus on other things. Enjoy!


Leave a comment and let me know what other programs you use to make your templates.




Free Images for your projects  Best photos for Drawing    Scanning Your Images