5 Reasons To Use Canva to Spice Up Your Content

Have you ever stumbled upon another business's social media feed and thought to yourself: How do they create such visual compelling content for their brand?

You instantly think they must be using photoshop, or some other expensive design tool to create their posts… and who knows maybe they are. But did you know there are cheaper and easier alternatives out there you can use to create visual content? Yes, that's right! Canva is one of them.

Canva is a graphic design tool that makes creating custom graphics easy. It's easily accessible by phone or tablet and is user friendly. Not only can you use it to spice up your social media content, but you can also use it to design things like presentations, invitations, posters, brochures, business cards, etc.

When your business enters the social media realm, you need to provide engagement worthy content that will resonate with your target audience. Creating simple and boring graphics just won't do the trick. Luckily, Canva makes it simple and provides the tools necessary to create aesthetically pleasing graphics that will grow your social media profile as well as your brand. Here are 5 great reasons why you should be using Canva to spice up your business's social media content.

1 - There's a FREE Version

Yes, you read that correctly.

Canva has a free version for you to use and it's not for a "limited time only" either. You'll be able to create, download, and post visually appealing content without spending a dime in no time. How nice is that?

With that said, with free things comes limited access. You'll have access to several features in the free version, but if you upgrade to CanvaPro for $12.95 a month, you'll receive even more features you can use to spice up your content.

Our Best Tip: If you're going to be using Canva quite often (which you should be for social!) for more than one social media platform, our best advice would be to upgrade to CanvaPro to take advantage of all of their great features.

2 - Tons of Awesome Features

Whether you have the free version or CanvaPro, you will have access to many great features to help you make your social posts stand out against your competitors.

Images

In the free version of Canva, you'll have an image library that consists of more than 200,000 images for you to use. Whereas, in CanvaPro that number jumps from 200,000+ to over 60 million images, illustrations, & icons. With this amount of professional stock images at hand, you'll be sure to find the perfect image quickly.

Have an image or video of your own you'd like to use? No problem. Canva makes it easy for you to upload your image, logo, or video directly into Canva.

Fonts

If you want to add words to your graphic, you'll have several fonts to choose from. When it comes to choosing a font, make sure it accurately represents your brand, and try not to use more than 2 font styles within a single graphic. Using multiple fonts in one graphic will cause the image to look less professional and unorganized.

And just like with images, if your brand has your own fonts you'd like to use that Canva doesn't offer, you can upload them for use as well.

Templates

If you still feel as though you don't have the design skills to create a graphic from scratch or are short on time, templates are great to use! With an abundance of professional templates to choose from, you can quickly create professional-looking content in minutes! These templates come predesigned, but you can still make them your own by changing it to your brand colors, inserting your images, changing the fonts, resizing the text, adding your logo, etc.

Stickers & Animation

Want to make your graphic move and come to life? Easy! With the free version, you can paste digital stickers to your graphic to make it move like a gif. CanvaPro, on the other hand, provides the ability to not only use stickers but also allows you to download your image with a swift animated motion.

Stickers and animations are a great way to catch your audience's attention. A little hint of movement can get people to stop scrolling for a few seconds to catch a glimpse of your post.

3 - Easy Resizing

Now that you understand different ways to create a visual graphic using Canva, what about optimizing it for each platform? It's important! One image size just simply won't work for every social media platform. It is crucial to resize your social media images if you want your graphic to be effective. Posting images or graphics in the incorrect size will look unprofessional, lack quality, and will get you no closer to reaching your social media marketing goals. No business wants that.

Canva understands each social media platform has its own preference for image size. That's why they've made it simple to resize your image with a click of a button with CanvaPro. The design tool has most social media platform image sizes already listed out, but there is also an option to customize dimensions if needed.

The bottom line is if you want your social media posts to do well, be sure to resize your graphic for the appropriate platform. It will also help your brand stay consistent as well as have a better chance at grabbing and keeping your audience's attention.

4 - Create a Brand Kit

When you create content for your brand, you'll want to stick with your brand's color scheme and fonts to keep a consistent theme. Staying consistent will allow your brand to appear reliable as well as professional. Using too many offset colors or fonts will cause your brand to become unrecognizable and will reflect poorly on your brand. Luckily, CanvaPro has made a way for businesses to easily stay on brand by creating a Brank Kit.

CanvaPro provides this wonderful feature so you can store all your brand's colors, fonts, and logos in one place. There will be no need to continuously upload your brand's assets each time. When you open up Canva to create a new graphic, your brand kit will be there.

5 - Stay Organized

When you are busy making exquisite graphics for your social media you'll want to keep them organized and stored in a safe place where you can easily access them. It can be so frustrating and time-consuming when you can't find something you know you saved. Save yourself the stress by creating design folders!

Running a few different campaigns on social? Create a folder for each one and store the graphics that go along with the campaign in the correct folder. Organizing the folders in a way that's best for your business will be sure to help you easily find your graphics when you go looking for them.

In Conclusion…

Visual content is key for brand success on social media. Data has shown that high-quality visually appealing images typically have a higher engagement rate than posts with just text. With that said, your business should be focused on creating authentically pleasing content around the clock. Creating one graphic on Canva can be done in minutes - yes - but it's important to note that you need to be posting consistently which can be time-consuming for business owners if you have other important duties to attend to. That's why we're here to help you out! Speak with us today to learn how we can help spice up your custom content and Turn Social Into Sales for your business.