How To Create Facebook and Instagram Posts for Your Business Using Apple Keynote
This article was originally posted on Keynotopia’s blog. You can read the full tutorial here.
As part of our regular tasks at PingTag, the leading lost-and-found QR code platform, we need to create engaging social media posts for Instagram and Facebook for different occasions ( announcing new features or content, running sales and promotions, giveaways, feature voting, events, etc.).
In the past, we have experimented with various tools, and while the most popular option like Canva provides a quick and easy way to do 80% of the work in 20% of the time, we found ourselves spending a considerable amount of time to do the remaining 20% of the work, which included tweaking designs, adding custom animations, etc.
Since we already had a lot of success creating whiteboard explainers and promo videos using Keynote, we thought:
Why not use Keynote to also create social media videos for our business?
And the results exceeded our expectations!
Not only we were able to create fully animated posts in 10–15 minutes, we were also able to create Instagram and Facebook business templates that allow us to create those posts in a couple of minutes by simply adding new content and switching between various designs to pick the best fit for that content, and without having to design each new post from scratch.
In this article, I am sharing our step-by-step process, and our best tips and tricks, for creating social media posts with Keynote.
Why use Keynote to create Instagram and Facebook posts?
- It’s a familiar tool for most Mac users
- It’s simple and easy to use
- It has powerful design and animation tools
- You can create resuable post templates using slide layouts
- It allows you to export your presentation to videos, animated GIFs and still images
- You can collaborate live with others using iCloud
- It’s 100% free
Who should use Keynote for social media posts?
- Businesses: eCommerce sellers, entrepreneurs, product and social media managers, etc.
- Agencies: design, branding, marketing, development, brand management, social media, etc.
- Professionals: consultants, coaches, freelancers, trainers and influencers.
Step-by-step tutorial
Here is the entire process that we use to create our posts. I am using Keynote on Mac, but a similar process can be used on the iPad.
If you prefer watching instead of reading, here is a step by step video:
Set the slide dimensions
Create a new slide, locate the Document tab on the right panel, set the slide size to Custom, and then enter 1920×1920 to create a high resolution square slide.
Add images, shapes and text
Design your post on a slide (or multiple slides for a carousel post) using text, shapes and images. Keynote has a rich library of vector shapes that you can use and configure, and it recently added support for SVG import, which opens the possibility to adding custom shapes from Illustrator or Figma, or files that you download directly from the web.
Add animations
This is where Keynote really shines!
Instead of a static post, you can animate your slide to create more engaging IG and FB video posts.
To animate the shapes and text on your slide, select them and then use Build In, Action and Build Out. You can also duplicate the main slide, move elements around, and then use Magic Move to let Keynote automate the animation between slides.
One of my favorite Keynote hacks is to use the Slideshow Recording feature to control the timing manually, especially when you want to sync animations with background music.
For more information about how I use that feature, check out my earlier tutorial for creating product promo videos with Keynote.
Export
Once your post looks good, click the File menu, and select Export to, and then choose image, movie or animated GIF.
Create reusable social media templates
One of the best ways to accelerate your process for creating social media posts with Keynote is to design reusbale templates that integrate your brand’s identity, and that you can quickly add your content to and export to your social media accounts in a couple of minutes.
The easiest way accomplish that is by moving your final post designs to new slide layouts, and configure those layouts with placeholders for new future content.
Make sure you use the same placeholder names across different slide layouts within the same tamplte (e.g. option 1 photo, option 2 photo, header, call to action, etc.). This allows you to switch between layouts once you have added your content, and test different designs without having to add the content to each of them, which is a huge time saver!
How to accelerate your process further
Over the past year, we created a comprehensive library with dozens of designs across several catories (new products and features, reviews and tesimonials, new content, upcoming events, contest and giveaways, voting, comparisons, hiring, spotlights, sales and discounts, person spotlight, etc.), which allows us to create posts for our Facebook and Instagram business accounts in less than a minute.
Today, we are making those templates available for other businesses and professionals to use for their social media marketing efforts.
If you’re an entrepreneur, an agency, a coach or a consultant, the templates will turn your favorite presentation tool into a social media powerhouse.
Check out the templates here.
