Where to Get Free Graphics for Social Media Posts for your Business

As a business owner looking to dazzle your followers on social media, including a visual element can make your message resonate much more with your customers.

Consider this:

• Facebook posts that include an image have 2.3x more engagement than posts without any image.
• Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than tweets without images.

Including a graphic in your message can be vital to the success of your post. It helps tell a story—an even better story than just a text post. If you’re just getting started, here are a few resources where you can find or make free graphics for your business’s social media pages.

Use your camera phone

This may be the easiest way to generate images for your social media. Take pictures around your bar/restaurant of food, drinks, or an event. If you include any people in your pictures, make sure to get their permission to post their image on your social media pages.

Google Images

You may think that finding a graphic to use is as easy as just Googling the topic and downloading an image, but you want to be careful. Some images can’t legally be used for commercial purposes. We advise using Google’s Advanced Image Search and filtering by usage rights to only see those that are “free to use or share, even commercially.”

Free Stock Photo Sites

There are tons of options for free stock photos to use. Once you find a photo that fits your topic, you can download it to your computer, then use it as is or edit it by adding text or other elements to it.

Create images with Canva or Adobe Spark

Canva is a fantastic tool, especially for beginners! Canva provides templates for pretty much any need you might have - social media, posters, you name it. You can also set your own style guide within your account, so it's ready with your business' colors every time you need to create something from scratch. Best part? It's FREE to use. You just pay for upgrades or images that are noted as extra. Check out their guide to creating social media graphics here.

Adobe Spark is a design tool to create your own images and videos. It’s a great resource if you don’t have much design experience. Best of all, it’s free! First you’ll choose a template from their library, then you’re able to insert text and other design elements on top of it.

This is a great option if you want to start customizing your images but don’t have access to expensive graphic design software!

Share photos from your customers

Search Instagram, Facebook or Yelp for pictures taken at your location. People love when their images are shared by the places they support! Once you start sharing user-generated content, it encourages other customers at your bar/restaurant to share as well. However, make sure that you have permission from the source of the photo, and that you give them credit for it.

Gaming related graphics

Want to share how great your machines are? We regularly post gaming graphics designated for our locations to use on our Accel Facebook page. Save these graphics and use on your social media pages.