About Me

To kick things off, a quick introduction is probably in order.

My name is Brenda Cadman and I live in Charlottetown, on beautiful Prince Edward Island in Canada.

I have been an entrepreneur for more than 23 years. The majority of that was spent running a website development agency and it was actually just this past September that I retired my website agency, so that I can focus more of my time on my role as a Canva expert and educator.

To that end, I am currently one of a small group of Canva Verified Experts in the world, so that’s something I’m quite honoured and excited about.

Using Canva Successfully in Your Business

Ultimately, becoming successful at using Canva in your business or digital course means that you are no longer creating random graphics or marketing materials that just look pretty… but instead you begin to use Canva in an organized and brand consistent way.

I know that most of you are likely not designers and creating graphics in Canva isn’t necessarily your passion, and for some of you, it may feel like a chore.

You may be finding yourself making endless revisions, spending HOURS on creating a lead magnet or checklist for your business that should take 15 to 30 minutes if you knew what to do.

I want to take what can feel like a chore for many people and and make it feel as easy and enjoyable as possible for you.

So let’s get into the meat of today’s presentation, and today I’m going to be talking about 4 keys to creating professional looking, consistently on-brand graphics and marketing materials in Canva.

Key #2: Get Organized

So let’s move onto the second Canva success key, which is to get organized and I know this is a big source of stress for a lot of folks.

You’re in luck, because it is my favourite thing on the planet to talk about. In addition to being a Canva Verified Expert, I’m also a former professional organizer who specialized in organizing paper and filing systems, so this is my sweet spot.

I don’t want you to just be relying on using the Recent Designs list on your Canva homepage.

While it might feel manageable with just a handful of designs, if you suddenly had hundreds of designs to sort through, perhaps certain designs with multiple versions, then it will get very difficult, very quickly to find what you’re looking for.

Folders & Subfolders

If you’ve never created folders before in your Canva account, you can do so by using the “Add New” button in the top right corner.

Now if you’re new to Canva, it’s the perfect time to set up your system before you get to the point of feeling overwhelmed by all of your designs and images.

And if you’re already a veteran user of Canva, you may be feeling like it’s already out of control but I promise that you can still create a system and get things back on track. It’s never too late.

Canva has a few default folders that they create.

But you can also create your own custom folders.

At the end of the day, you’re going to want to create folders that make sense for you, and ultimately the most important thing is that you have a home for everything and then stick to using that system consistently once it’s working for you.

For example, maybe you’ll have a folder for your Social Media graphics you’ve created, and that folder might be broken down into various subfolders for each social platform like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc.

I also definitely want to encourage you to create a custom folder system to organize your images as well, so one of your custom folders may be called Photos, and then broken down into categories that make sense for you.

For example, you could have a styled stock photo folder that is broken down by source website, and then further broken down into subfolders by subject matter or colour palette.

Whatever works best for you to intuitively browse and find it in the future when you need a particular image.

The Uploads Folder

A lot of people don’t realize that you do not have to store all of your images in the Uploads folder, and to be honest, I would strongly advise against doing that because it just becomes a bottomless pit of images that makes it practically impossible to find what you’re looking for over time.

I do Organization VIP Days and I have seen Canva uploads folders with so many images in them that the account holder had re-uploaded the same image half a dozen times because they couldn’t find it any of the other times they’d uploaded it.

I’m going to encourage you to think about your Uploads folder like the in-tray on a physical office desk. Use it as a temporary holding place, and once you’ve used an image, file it away into an images folder system.

And then when you’re working on a design in the Canva design editor, you can access your folders through the Projects tab in your left hand editor navigation, and you’ll be able to much more easily find the specific image you’re looking for, without wasting a ton of time.

File Naming

Also, I would encourage you to be mindful of how you are naming your designs.

You want to name your designs consistently, ensuring that the design name is descriptive and that it includes any keywords you might search to find the design, and that’s because while having an organized folder system is really important, one of the fastest ways to find a specific design is to use the search field at the top of your page.

That said, Canva has made searching even easier for you now with the introduction of the ability to search for keywords that appear not just in the name of your file name, but also any keywords that appear in the design itself.

Key #4: Start with Templates

You’ve probably seen other business owners creating all sorts of beautiful designs in Canva, whether it’s social media graphics or e-books or workbooks or whatever it is.

You may have had the experience of opening up a new design in Canva and trying to create all of those things yourself and found it feeling next to impossible to do.

Or everything you create looks like cookie-cutter templates.

They’re definitely not the beautiful, branded images and designs you want to create. You know, like the ones your favourite influencer has, that you badly want for your own business.

As a small business owner, you’re likely in a position where you need to create at least some, if not all, of your social graphics and online marketing designs.

Or, if you’re a course creator, you likely already know that you need to create a wide variety of course materials.

But you’re likely wasting too much time inside Canva trying to create your social media images and lead magnets, when you’d rather be promoting your business or digital course.

So I want to invite you to shift your mindset about how you approach Canva.

Please take the pressure off of yourself.

You do NOT have to design from scratch.

I officially give you permission to never have to create a design from scratch again.

No more staring at a blank Canva design editor page.

Use templates. Templates are your best friend, and you have so many of them out there to choose from.

There is zero judgment if you don’t create from scratch… in fact, it’s often the very best decision you could make in terms of your Canva time.

So why is a template so helpful?

Reduced Frustration

First, they can save a TON of frustration. If design isn’t your zone of genius, having to create from scratch may leave you wanting to tear your hair out, burst into tears, or throw your computer out the window. It’s how I feel if I have to do my own accounting… which is why I haven’t done my own accounting in many, many years.

Save a ton of time

Next, it saves SO much time – otherwise you could spend hours creating a design… back to that “how much is your time worth” question; using a template frees you up to work on the roles and tasks in your business that make you money and that fall within your zone of genius.

More professional looking designs

It often results in creating a more professional looking design – because it is designed by a professional designer who understands layout, balance, spacing, and so on. And I know you’re looking to create content in Canva that looks less DIY and more professional, so this can be a massive shortcut to achieving that goal.

Design inspiration

And finally, templates can also provide you with plenty of inspiration for how to use Canva in ways you hadn’t previously thought of. For example you may see elements combined in ways you wouldn’t have thought to do yourself.

Categories of Templates

I like to break templates down into 2 categories.

Canva’s Template Library

First you have Canva’s free templates, many of which are free regardless of whether you’re on a free or pro plan. But they are also building out their Pro templates on almost a daily basis. Canva has what they call their “Creator” program and that involves having designers creating and submitting templates which, if approved by Canva, end up available to you for use.

You can search or browse for those from your main Canva homepage, or their template library, or even within the Canva editor when you have a design open.

Third Party Template Sites

But an increasingly popular option is to purchase a template pack or membership from one of the growing number of template shops out there.

In those template shops, a lot of wonderful designers have done the heavy lifting for you in terms of designing templates for the kinds of graphics and documents you may be wanting to create… so that you don’t HAVE to spend hours designing that perfect e-guide layout or whatever it is.

While this is a paid option, whereas the templates Canva provides are included in your Canva subscription cost, ultimately it can often be a much more effective solution if you’re not finding quite what you need in Canva’s template library.

For example, one area I find that Canva is lacking right now is in lead magnet and workbook layouts.

What can you create in Canva with templates?

So what sort of templates might you want to use, and there is a lot more available to you in Canva than just social media graphics.

• You can use Canva templates to also create your slide decks for presentations or trainings.
• You can use templates for checklists and workbooks and lead magnets.
• I’ve used it to create roadmap or success path images for my digital courses.
• I’ve even used it to design and print custom welcome cards as part of a branded welcome package when new students joined one of my bigger Canva programs in the past.

If there is something you want to design to support your business, there’s a good chance you can create it in Canva and there is most likely a template out there that you can use as a starting point.

Customizing Canva Templates

Let’s talk about what it looks like when you *customize* templates for your own branding.

The key here is to customize your chosen template by consistently using your Canva brand kit that we talked about earlier.

You want to use your logo variations, your set brand color palette, your set brand font hierarchy plus your own brand imagery in order to take a general template and end up with a layout that is unique to your business.

Now we don’t have time to go through the full step-by-step process of actually customizing your designs today, but I do want to give you some inspiration about how some Canva templates could be customized for a handful of different brands.

First, an example of a customized set of social graphics templates.

Here are the original templates, and these are all from a Canva Creator called My Social Designer. And here’s those templates customized for a brand.

Here is an e-book template example from The Template Tribe, and actually the rest of the examples I’ll give are using Template Tribe templates. And here are a couple of customized examples.

This is a customized workbook template, before and after.

Here’s how a checklist template could be customized, before and after.

Here are a couple examples of how you could customize a slide deck template, which you could use as a starting point for webinar slides or course lessons.

So here is the original template, and here is what a customization might look like.

Finally, here is a set of customized promotional graphic templates, so before and after.

Consistency is Key

At the end of the day, the key here is to use your brand kit in Canva and to make customization choices that are always consistent with your established visual branding.