I’ve been using Canva for years to support clients with their social media marketing and content marketing efforts. In the beginning, design options were limited so most of the graphics I would design were from scratch.
Now all that hassle is not needed as Canva provides hundreds of templates for you to use. To help spare you any social media stress, I am sharing some tips below so you can be empowered to get more out of this wonderful image-creating solution!
Templates are pre-made designs Canva offers for web or print. They offer pre-made blog graphics, presentations, social media covers designs, flyers, posters, invitations and so much more. Once you select the template you want to use, you can edit the font, color, photos, and if you’re a paying customer, you can change the size of the design.
Templates are great for entrepreneurs who are non-designers! With templates, you can make professional looking graphics and since templates are pre-designed, it saves you a lot of time – no need to start from a blank page.
The templates can be found on the left side of the Canva website, once you’re logged in. Under Explore Templates.
Once you click on Explore Templates, I suggest using their search bar. Let’s say you’re looking to design a social media graphic for Thanksgiving. In the search bar, type ‘Thanksgiving’. 10+ pages of Thanksgiving-related designs pop up.
When choosing a template, don’t focus too much on the color or the font used because that can be changed. Instead, focus on the overall feel. Ask yourself, does this graphic go well with my brand?
Also, you’ll notice that some of your template options will be posters, post cards, social graphics, etc. You don’t have to worry about this if you pay for Canva for Work, which I strongly suggest you do because then you can choose any template and easily resize the design to your liking.
If you do not pay for Canva for Work, then you have to choose a template specific to the type of design you’re creating. If you’re creating a graphic to post on social media, you’d need to choose a template that’s a social graphic.
Since we are paying customers, we chose this design; a postcard.
First things first, let’s resize the image into a graphic that can be posted on social media. We always resize it to the Instagram size option Canva provides because we’ve noticed that size is larger than the other social graphic options in Canva.
Here’s how to change the dimensions of the graphic (remember, this only applies to Canva for Work customers!): Click on File -> Change Dimension -> Instagram Post.
Ta-Da! Our design went from post card dimensions to Instagram.
After you resized your image, you have to edit it to reflect your brand. In this case, I’m going to change the color, the font, and the messaging to be more on brand with Web Marketing Therapy.
Here’s the final product:
All done!
My favorite part of Canva is that your templates are automatically saved. So let’s say you use Canva to design a flyer about a workshop you’re going to host. And then let’s say a few weeks later, you have another workshop coming up. Well, you can use the same template that you edited prior, just change the details. Easy peasy. Ah, Canva rocks!