Canva Secrets Every Business Owner Should Know!
The Power of Canva for Social Media
Written By Brittany Peckham
Have you ever stumbled upon another small business's social media feed and thought to yourself, “How do they create such beautiful content for their brand?†You instantly decide they must have a designer on staff and conclude you don’t have the budget to compete with them.
While this could be the case, there are alternative options out there for you even if you are not a designer with tools like Photoshop or the skills to use it. Many small businesses these days are utilizing a FREE accessible design platform called Canva to create high-quality branded images.
What is Canva?
Canva is an online graphic design tool that makes creating custom graphics easy. It's easily accessible by phone or tablet and is user friendly. The platform allows you to quickly put together design content such as social media graphics, newsletters, posters and more. Canva features a large bank of preloaded stock photos, graphics, fonts, illustrations and even moving graphics. Though the online program was created for the non-designer, it has many similar functionalities to Adobe Photoshop (a professional level design program). Here are 5 reasons why Canva is a powerful design tool.
1. You do not need design experience to use the platform
Canva is a drag-and-drop editor that is intuitive and easy to learn. They also have a large online library of articles that teach you how to use the tools and features.
Whether you are looking to create a Youtube thumbnail, a Facebook post, or a flier, Canva has ready-to-use templates. Just search for the type of project you are working on and browse for a template you like. Once you select a template, it’s easy to change the colors and fonts to match your brand. You can also add in your logo and upload your own photos to brand it further.
Once you start to get the hang of the platform, you can use Canva to build your own custom designs. Start with a blank page, then add in your own photos, designs, fonts, and more.
2. Canva is FREE and upgrading is affordable
Unlike Adobe Creative Cloud, Canva is a FREE platform. A free Canva account has access to hundreds of templates, stock photos, and other elements right away. For many small businesses, a free account will suffice.
However, if you want your content to be more unique, you can opt for the pro version of Canva. Besides rarer templates, you also gain additional features such as saving your brand colors, a background remover tool, 100GB of cloud storage, the ability to save custom templates, and you can add in team members. The pro version starts at just $10/month if you opt for the annual plan. If you're a nonprofit organization, you can have the pro features for free as well!
One of the best Pro Account features is the ability to easily adapt and resize your social media designs for different platforms. Once you’ve successfully designed a Facebook banner, you may decide you want a Linkedin version as well. But one image size won’t work for every social media platform. With Canva Pro’s Magic Resize button, you’ll be able to alter the size of your design to a variety of templates with just a few clicks.
3. Canva automatically saves your progress and projects
Another appealing feature to Canva is it automatically saves the progress and drafts of all of your designs. Even if you have just selected a template to work on, it will save it for future editing. You can find all your drafts waiting for you under “Your Designs†in Canva. Canva is also a great solution for collaboration since it’s an online platform. If you are working with team members on a design, you could go in and make small changes, and then they could continue to edit that draft. You do not have to worry about saving a design and sending it back and forth over email.
4. You don’t have to keep up with recommended social media sizes
Social media platforms tend to frequently innovate and as a result, the ideal ratios for posts and graphics are always changing. Canva is on top of those design changes and does the work for you. Whether you are making a Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or Youtube graphic, Canva has all the correct dimensions for those platforms preloaded. All you need to do is choose the platform and Canva will set up a page that’s the current recommended size.
5. Canva is more than just a “still photo†platform
Take your social media content to a new level, by creating branded Instagram Reels and other small videos or animations in Canva. In 2021, Canva launched Canva Video Suite, an end-to-end video creation product that empowers everyone to design and publish professional-quality videos. Canva offers thousands of video templates, 27,000 royalty-free tracks through a partnership with Epidemic Sound, and a selection of pre-made animations.
According to a recent study by Canva, 68% say that video is becoming more important in the workplace, and 53% of workplace teams have created video content in the past 18 months. Canva has made it so easy to incorporate moving graphics as part of your content creation process due to its simplicity to create professional videos.
Overwhelmed by all the possibilities of Canva and want to simplify the design process? Swave Engage offers editable Canva templates. Purchase our templates to create high quality, visually appealing social posts. Upon purchase, you can easily change the Canva posts to incorporate your brand fonts, colors and images. These templates will save you time and money (you do not have to have the Pro account to edit the templates). Choose from the Generic Theme or Motivation Theme template packs, or purchase both to stock your template library.
Canva is an amazing tool that you should take advantage of if you are looking to communicate across multiple platforms and utilize consistent and quality branding. The ability of Canva will help to amp up your content, impress your clients, execute on your brand vision, and help improve your brand awareness. When you harness the power of social media with professional content marketing from Canva, you will propel your business forward.
Though Canva is a great tool for in-house designs, at Swave Engage Social Media we rave about our social media designers and the expertise you won’t find anywhere else (or we like to think :)). If you have any questions at all, feel free to reach out to us at www.swaveengage.com/contact