One thing we bizzebee’s have noticed is the increased popularity of the .gif image being used on social media. For those of you who are not aware what a .gif image is look below and you will see what appears to be a video playing on loop.
What Is A Gif Image?
Well that is not a video it is in fact an image file, pretty impressive isn’t it? These moving images are great for businesses who want to stand out in a busy news feed on Google Plus. These moving images sat surrounded by many static images and text posts stand out and catch the eye of the viewer.
Unfortunately Facebook do not yet support .gif images but I am sure that must be their next move when you consider the increase in popularity of the gif image. Twitter allows very small .gif image files to be used as profile images and they stand out against the rest. It makes sense for Facebook and other social media networks to follow Google Plus’ lead otherwise they could soon be losing a lot of users.
How To Create A Gif Image For Free
What I found out recently by accident is that they are pretty easy to make using a free software. This software is an online vide tool that I love and regularly recommend for newbies to use when creating video tutorials.
There is a paid version that allows you to record longer videos and access editing tools for only $15 for a whole year. That is an incredible price however you do not really need to use the paid version if you are happy for your .gif images to have their watermark across your images.
Ideally I say spend the $15 and invest in the full software licence for the year and avoid having their watermark on your videos as it will detract from what you want to use .gif images for which is marketing and branding.
You do not want to make a great looking moving image designed to drive traffic back to your business or website which has another website written all across it no matter how subtle it is.
I see a lot of potential for .gif images for businesses, most people use them to create short funny clips of people falling over or of cute animals doing something even more cuter.
The adult industry was one of the first to start using .gif images in their marketing to drive people to buy memberships to adult sites because they could see the power and potential of having a small video clip playing without the need of a large video file.
It is this power and potential that I think will mean more businesses will be using .gif images on their social networks like Google Plus. As you can see, they work brilliantly in WordPress sites too and they add a whole new dimension to a post.
In the video below you will see what .gif images look like in Google Plus and I also show you how I made the .gif image above using a series of slides and using the screen capture tool from Screencast-O-Matic.com. Enjoy 🙂
How To Create A Gif Image For Free
Have any thoughts and opinions on this post? Please share them with us below 🙂
4 thoughts on “How To Create A Gif Image For Free. [Moving Picture: Video Tutorial]”
Great video Andi and I absolutely love the opening GIF you used at the top of the post, very funny.
GIFs are such a great way to make content stand out online (especially G+) that they are brilliant to use. Will be trying out some of my own by following your guide now. 🙂
Hi Matt, yeah I love that GIF too, I just love watching it, there are so many good ones over on G+. I look forward to seeing yours, just another thing to add to your ‘to do’ list 🙂
Hi Andi, what a great post!! I had absolutely NO idea how you made GIF’s I thought you had to be some kinda web wizard, well apparently not, you just need to read a post like this to help you make the most of skills and start getting creative!
Definitely going to be trying to make some to share on G+ – just hope the other sites follow suit …. especially pinterest 🙂
Thank you Clair, yes I was surprised how easy they were to make using Screencast-O-Matic. I look forward to seeing yours in the future, also I forgot to say, if people use Tumblr GIF images work well there too.