How your Small Business can use Canva to Get Ahead of the Game
Marketing is made easy with Canva. Canva is a great tool to use for creating social media posts, ads, marketing designs, logos, business cards, and much more. This tool is very easy to use. Your business can use Canva to significantly improve the marketing of your services. First, we will walk through the steps of using Canva for beginners, then we will look at a few things it can create that are crucial for your business to have.
What are you using Canva for?
When you begin using Canva, you will first choose what type of plan you need. What are your business’s needs? Choose from a Free, Pro, or Enterprise plan. With the Free plan, you have access to over 250,000 free templates and 5GB of storage. This is great for those just starting or light use of Canva. If you use it for work or your own business and are looking to gain access to more exclusive templates, choose the Pro option. If you are a bigger brand looking to unlock complete access to everything Canva has to offer, contact Canva for their Enterprise plan pricing.
Start with Templates
When starting your design, it is important to make sure your design fits the scale that it will be published as. Instagram Posts are published in a different size than Instagram Stories. Everything is a different size because they are being placed in different locations. Therefore, you must start with the correct template. Canva has a tab dedicated to Templates on the top of the site.
Create a design
Here is your blank canvas. You can now choose from the following on the left tab to begin designing:
- Template
- Element
- Upload Photo
- Text
- Background
- Logos
You can start with a basic template Canva provided for free, then use tools like Effects and Elements to take your design to the next level. In this example, I will create a basic logo design.
Effects
Use Effects on text (located on the top right when text is selected) to take your design from this to this:
Then use Elements to take your design to this:
Do this by clicking the Elements tab located on the left of the design page. I then selected Bright Leaves to add to the design to give some color and a few focal points. Utilizing this tool will help make your design more interesting and unique.
Stories
Are you struggling to find something aesthetic to post on Instagram? Here are just a few of the hundreds of templates Canva has ready to modify and use for your Instagram story. Replace the words with your content and you are ready to post! Instagram stories are another way to get in front of your audience without paying for ads.
Posts
Finding your creative spark can sometimes be difficult. Creating an appealing Instagram post is crucial when trying to drive customers to your business. This becomes an easy process when using Canva. Use one of the many Instagram post templates to start your design off on the right note. You can modify these designs as you have full control of each part of the template. Don’t like the background color but want to keep the gradient? Simply change the colors in the design and watch it turn into your creation.
Canva Pro Users Exclusive: Background Remover
Canva offers a tool to remove backgrounds from your pictures uploaded to your design. A background remover is a unique tool that works very quickly to quickly remove the background of your photos. To use it, simply select the image you wish to remove the background of, then select edit image and this option will pop up first on the left tab. Keep in mind that this tool is only available to Canva Pro users.
Business Cards
Are you looking to create business cards to get your name out there? Canva offers affordable prices and several options for personalization on business cards. They have thousands of free templates to create unique cards for your business. Choose from the elegant Rounded corner business cards or Standard business cards. Then select from the following options.
Paper types offered:
- Standard
- Premium
- Deluxe
The paper finishes offered:
- Matte
- Gloss
- Uncoated
- Soft-touch
Choosing Canva to supply your business cards is a good choice because it allows you to keep designs consistent within your business’s marketing. It also makes designing the cards easy with its many free templates.