Learn about the marketing tool, Canva, and how to use it.
Okay…you have a Facebook page and you’ve posted a few messages on your wall. Feeling pretty good about connecting with your patients outside of your practice, right? Well, are you ready to take your Facebook skills up a notch?
Of course, you are! Did you know that you can create beautifully illustrated, engaging posts with social media design tools like Canva? You can and we’re going to show you how easy it is!
What is Canva?
Now, you may be asking yourself, what is Canva? Canva is a graphic design platform, used to create social media posts, business cards, presentations, Zoom backgrounds, posters, documents and other visual content.
Canva offers over 50,000 professionally designed templates which you can use for your posts, posters, cards and other marketing needs. You can also upload your own photos to use along with their templates and graphics.
Canva’s templates use a drag and drop interface that essentially gives its users a simple and easy to use tool that doesn’t require extensive photo editing knowledge to use.
Best of all, Canva is free and offers free video tutorials! If you’re new to the platform or have questions about how to best use Canva for your marketing needs, there are plenty of great video tutorials that can help you. Canva’s Design School offers free courses on a variety of topics. A video to begin with is “Getting Started with Canva,” which reviews all the things you can do on the platform.
Steps to Creating a Facebook Post in Canva
Log in – To begin creating your Facebook post you must log in to your Canva account. You can learn how to create a free Canva account here. Canva also allows you the option to sign up or log in using your Facebook, Google account or Email. If you’re logging in via email, you’ll also need to create a password.
Choose your template – There are various templates you can choose from. We recommend selecting either Facebook Post or Instagram Post because these templates are already created with the recommended picture dimensions for Facebook.
Once you choose your template, you’ll be directed to Canva’s design page. On this page you can select from dozens of templates created for Facebook. While thinking about what kind of template you’d like to choose, consider these search ideas:
- Color: Do you want to create a great color story with colors that pop, or do you want to stick with one color for the background?
- Occasion: Will this post be used to advertise a specific occasion, like an anniversary of your practice or a grand opening in a new location?
- Photo Content: Does the photo in the template already match the theme of your post or will you need to customize?
Customize your photo – If the photo in your chosen template doesn’t match the theme or if you have another photo in mind that you’d like to use, you can customize the template by choosing from the dozens of stock images that Canva has on file or select one of the photos you have stored.
- Upload your own photo: Select Uploads to import a file from your computer. Canva will store the photos here for future use.
- Select a Canva stock image: Select Photos and type one or more keywords into the search bar to find free and paid photos.
If you decide to go with another photo from Canva, you can perform a search by typing a single keyword for the image you’re looking for in the search bar. Once you find an image you like, click it to add it to the template.
Some of the images Canva offers contain watermarks. You can purchase these photos for one time use or replace the photo with a free one. If you select a watermarked photo and don’t want to pay, simply remove the photo by clicking the trash icon at the top of the page.
Crop your image – Now that you have your photo, you’ll need to resize it to fit into your template. You can crop your photo by dragging the corner and side handles, or you can click Crop on the menu bar to make the dimensions of the photo smaller and make additional adjustments.
You can move the image around the template until you like where it is positioned. Click Done to save your changes.
Customize the text of your template – Canva templates come with text that most likely won’t work for your Facebook post. You can easily remedy that by changing the text by highlighting the text and typing your copy. If your message doesn’t fit the text box, you can adjust the font size by clicking the menu bar and selecting the font size that works for you. When you’re done changing the text, review it to make sure that everything looks correct.
Download and publish your post – Once you’ve reviewed your Canva post and are ready to post it, you are now ready to download a PNG or JPEG, and publish the post directly into Facebook.
Download as a JPEG or PNG: Select the Download icon. Next, select the preferred file type, then click download again. This will save the photo to your computer.
Publish directly into Facebook: Select the ellipses icon (…) and click Facebook Page. Upload the image to Facebook Ads Manager, and finish creating your ad/post. Click Publish.
Now that you know how to create a Facebook post in Canva, you can take your Facebook posts to the next level with uniquely creative designs.
We know work can be extremely busy. If you don’t have the time but would still like to be active on social media, another option is to sign up for Healthy Hearing’s feature for practice owners called the Social Media Sharing Library. Choose from pre-made engaging content with their most recent and relevant hearing health articles. To learn more about this offer click here.