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5 Tips for Soloprenuers Creating Content in Canva
14 Plays1 month ago
I recorded this podcast soon after delivering a webinar through a program I contribute to as a coach, a digital guide supporting micro & small business owners with their digital solution needs.
There is of course more magic being in a session in real time and being able to ask specific questions which is what took place… however, I wanted to at least share these tips & some examples with you in today’s episode to support a little in your journey too, in establishing a foundation to support your creating content consistently, efficiently & effectively... cut out the overwhelm, create supportive systems & processes instead.
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Transcript
Instagram Design Strategy Impact
00:00:00
Speaker
This is a really good point why I do this. Because my two Instagram thieves, I have Marina Colmannier and Creators Nest, separate. And one day I woke up and Creators Nest was suddenly in the new format, the four by five format. And yet Marina Colmannier is still the square format for the grid.
00:00:18
Speaker
So my designs needed to change when it came to my Creators Nest designs. And if I do something that's a collaboration between the two, I need to account for that. So when you save it with that in the title, you actually know that this is designed for the four by five, or it's designed for square, or it's designed for a real, or it's designed for a YouTube short, which is different again, because I use different graphics on the front of each of like a clip that I've got for Instagram and a clip that I've got for YouTube Shorts, it has a different feel to it because it is a different way of connecting to the audience within
Marie Nicole's Introduction and Philosophy
00:00:57
Speaker
that platform. Do you desire to live a life that supports you in thriving? A life based on understanding your unique design and engaging more in your passions? I'm Marie Nicole and I am devoted to combining beauty, uniqueness and connection
00:01:13
Speaker
in everyday living experiences. As a creative professional and Dharma coach I help people connect to the truth of who they are and facilitate them in embodying their uniqueness. I am also a mother of two precious young men and with children in tow have established and run unique businesses, embraced opportunities that have contributed to my creative career while creating magical memories and living my life by design too.
00:01:39
Speaker
It's my hope that this podcast inspires you to live your life on your terms and earn your income through being uniquely you. Whether that's working for yourself or someone else, the key here is living a life in alignment with your unique design. After all, it's our unique thread that we each contribute to the collective tapestry that creates the whole.
00:02:09
Speaker
Welcome back to a Life by Design podcast.
Insights from the Digital Solutions Webinar
00:02:12
Speaker
I actually just finished running a webinar, presenting a webinar, and I thought I would actually share some of what I presented in that webinar. It was for the Digital Solutions Program, which I am a guide for, which I've spoken about before in this podcast.
00:02:27
Speaker
And I just wanted to share with you the five tips that I gave for working with Canva for solo printers to just ah reduce the overwhelm and to get you creating content consistently and efficiently. Now, of course, it would be much better for you to be able to see this webinar for yourself in person and turn up and actually ask questions. And we went through some specific pet um questions and I actually demonstrated how you do what was asked.
00:02:56
Speaker
so But we can't do that right now. I just want to share you the five tips um share the five tips with you so that that can at least be some step towards supporting you in overcoming your sense of overwhelm when it comes to using a platform like Canva, which can be really a daunting because there's so much in there that you can do.
Efficient Canva Usage Tips
00:03:16
Speaker
And especially with being a solopreneur wearing many hats and there are lots of things that we can do that maybe we don't do because we just think it's going to be too hard or we don't have the time. So the whole intention here is to help you to leverage your efforts.
00:03:32
Speaker
And creating a life by design is exactly that. It's working out your schedule in a way that's supportive for you and leveraging your efforts. So creating something that you can use in many different ways. So let's get started on the tips for today. The first one is understanding the basics of Canva.
00:03:52
Speaker
And the way that I recommend doing this is starting by exploring the dashboard, just allocating time to play around, working with pre-designed templates, get used to the tools before you actually work on something really important that has a deadline. And instead of starting with a blank slate, just actually play around with an existing design and familiarise yourself with it, use the tools and see how they work and make sure you approach it with Child Life Wonder. That is something that I think is really important with any app that you are new to. There are lots of aspects to apps that can be overwhelming and just ah applying that Child Life Wonder and playing and seeing, curiosity, just let it lead you. The second tip is to design efficiently within Canva is to save designs that represent your brand
00:04:43
Speaker
and work with them. So you don't have to open it up and like go, where do I begin? which What should I decide on today? Should I decide on paper cutouts or should I decide on clean cut lines? Just pick a selection of design, and it might only be two or three, that you actually save as the designs you're going to work with and just start consistently creating and become familiar with the app.
00:05:08
Speaker
Now if you don't have the paid version of Canva and you don't have access to setting up a brand kit, which I highly recommend setting up a brand kit that is invaluable because it saves you a lot of time where you get to pick the colours that you work with regularly, the fonts that you work with, even to the point of the font for ah your titles, the font for your content like the body of texts that you use, the font for a subheading, you can do all of that with a a brand kit. But if you start with a free app first, there is a way of actually recording things like the font, the colors that you use by actually recording the color code, setting up a document that you have allocated to your brand kit and choosing just a few fonts that you work with and a few colors that you work with that align with your business brand.
00:05:59
Speaker
Now, I highly recommend upgrading to the Pro and utilizing other aspects of um the platform, not just sticking with the free if you start to use it consistently. But this is a good way to get you started and just to get you over that hesitation to actually work in it.
Organizing Projects in Canva
00:06:17
Speaker
Now, the third tip is creating a content plan.
00:06:21
Speaker
So if you plan out what you will post when things for like your podcast, yeah Facebook, YouTube, newsletter, for me, my membership portal, my empower dressing promotion, by actually having a plan laid out and a template that helps you see what that plan is, you can actually do it a lot more efficiently and you can allocate that time to batching it out, which I'll come to later. But I just wanted to say within Canva itself, you can actually open up a content calendar template that guides you visually to how to create that plan and save that document somewhere in a Google Drive that you can access on your phone or you can access on your desktop.
00:07:03
Speaker
and you can just see what was I planning to post and you can plan it ahead of time according to what events you've got coming up and work with those templates that you've chosen to design your your um content with. So that was tip number three. The fourth one is organizing your projects. Now when you open up Canberra you have a home screen but off to the left there's this little um folder icon that says projects. And if you click on that, that actually takes you to a window that allows you to create folders and subfolders. So for my Canva, I have a folder for Marina Colmeneer, which is my personal brand. And then I have another one for the podcast.
00:07:45
Speaker
and within that I have the two different podcast names like my previous Business to Your Own Beat and the current ah um A Life by Design and I save things into those folders so I know it's easy for me to find. Then I have a separate one for Creators Nest and another folder for the Digital Solutions Program because I create the webinar presentations and handouts to those fall um for those webinars. And when I'm coaching clients through that program, I often send them a handout that I have created um for a webinar that is specific to what they're trying to work through in that in that session that we just unpacked that they wanted to understand how to get the basics of Instagram going. So I keep the handout that I can then share with them because they're within the program. So doing this for yourself I think is a really powerful thing.
00:08:34
Speaker
actually creating folders and then relevant subfolders. The subfolders could be things like webinars, handouts, digital products, social posts. That is really key because you you might have different ah brand identities. Like I was just saying, Marini Coleman, yeah, then I've got creators nest and I've got a life by design, my podcast, and then I've got the digital solutions program. But within those,
00:09:00
Speaker
I have different things that I design for. So my digital products come under the Marina Coleman. Yeah, because I my empowered dressing is a good example of that the empowered dressing guidebook. I create that under my Marina Colman year brand, but I sell it through Creators Nest as a shop front. And then I do social posts, which are dedicated to Creators Nest and dedicated to Marina Colman year and they have different brand kits and fonts and colors that I use. So by saving these into subcategories, it makes it a lot easier to find what you need to work on according to your content calendar and create that way.
00:09:43
Speaker
The fifth tip is the biggest, most important one right now, and that is creating processes.
Streamlining Content Creation Processes
00:09:50
Speaker
Creating processes to streamline your work, streamline your content. It is actually starting with choosing your templates, like I said, rename them, save them, just work with them. But also, when you actually save those templates, I would save them with the purpose in the title.
00:10:10
Speaker
So I would save it as something, if it's Empower Dressing Guidebook, promo, Instagram, real, just insta-real is in that title. ah YouTube short, or if I'm creating something for a webinar, actually putting in webinar presentation or handout. it sounds It sounds logical, but it is something that we can easily overlook. And then when it comes to recreating something based on that previous design, we go, oh, what what is the actual Instagram Which, okay, this is a really good point why I do this. Because my two Instagram feeds, I have Marina Colmannier and Creators Nest.
00:10:50
Speaker
separate. And one day I woke up and Creators Nest was suddenly in the new format, the four by five format. And yet Marina Colman is still the square format for the grid. So my designs needed to change when it came to my Creators Nest designs. And if I do something that's a collaboration between the two, I need to account for that. So when you save it with that in the title, you actually know that this is designed for the four by five or it's designed for square.
00:11:19
Speaker
or it's designed for a real, or it's designed for a YouTube shot, which is different again, because I use different graphics on the front of each of like a clip that I've got for Instagram and a clip that I've got for YouTube Shorts, it has a different feel to it because it is a different way of connecting to the audience within that platform.
Repurposing Content Across Platforms
00:11:40
Speaker
Even though the avatar may be the same person, they behave differently in the different platforms. So the part of this tip that I think is really important when it comes to streamlining your content creation process is to allocate time to creating
00:11:57
Speaker
content in batches. So I like to do this two ways. One is to create a big piece of content like my podcast. create that podcast and then break it down into smaller pieces of content. And I can pull out quotes from it. I can do a lifestyle post that relates to it with a reel or um with a, or I can create a carousel based on that bigger piece of content and have graphics that align with that. Or I can just do something that is um one
00:12:30
Speaker
one image that relates to the topic, but I can direct people to more information on that. So it's taking the inspiration from that bigger piece of content that you've created and distributing it across different channels in smaller bite-sized chunks. Now that's a pretty standard way of operating in terms of marketing and creating content, but the second way that I have been finding really powerful is actually to create content specifically for a platform and to test it, to test an idea. So I actually just put up some video footage that is relevant to a good example for this is when I captured my Empower Hour
00:13:11
Speaker
and video footage and I just did that on a whim. I was yeah stopping down by the river. I'd set up a beautiful scene and was just between appointments and I was dressed in garments that I had made. The whole lot that I was wearing was garments that I had made and I decided to take some video footage. And I just did a little post on, you know, what do you do with that hour that you just have available to you and and I call it an empower, an m empower hour where you get to reset your nervous system and sit in wild nature and just absorb the beauty that surrounds you. Now because I was wearing all of my own garments and my artisanal products were in the background which you know it was perfect for
00:13:51
Speaker
actually promoting what I do and the products that I create. So when it came to the Empower Dressing Guidebook, I then used that footage for that. Now testing what actually stops people in the scroll is really powerful. There are other videos that I've created with me just doing something, a lifestyle based video down by the river with the dogs wearing again my garments because I do. I don't wear them to promote them. I wear them because I believe in what I do. And so wearing that down by the river and then taking video footage of it and getting high engagement in the footage
00:14:26
Speaker
and then reusing that and adding extra text in there that aligns with say a podcast episode or a product like the Empowerdressing Guidebook that I'm selling or if I do a course or something, it's just using that content to distribute that out just by changing the caption or pulling out imagery and using that as a part of a graphic to as a part of a promotional process. So that's a really important second um tip for ways of using this tool.
Exploring Canva's Features
00:15:00
Speaker
Canva is such a powerful tool. There are so many aspects to it as a you know professional photographer previously who worked predominantly in Photoshop and used it like a design app and then worked in other video editing apps and then worked in um presentation creation apps. And then having it all come together in this one platform is
00:15:21
Speaker
amazing but is quite overwhelming when you first get started. So it's finding ways to actually um simplify it for yourself and so that's why I hope these tips actually do that. Now in the actual webinar I shared a couple of other things based on questions asked and the fact that we had time to go into it.
Joining the Digital Solutions Program
00:15:40
Speaker
So i won't be out I won't be sharing all of that here because I actually did screen shares and showed but I just wanted to let you know that if you are in New South Wales um and you are a micro or small business owner that is a for-profit business then and you want some guidance on using digital tools like Canva, then join the Digital Solutions Program. And you can do that by clicking on the link in the show notes and you could potentially have me as your guide and I can help you through some of the things that you just have questions on, which is really what it's about. It's customizing it to you. But if you're not in New South Wales, of course, you can use the other options of working with me just as a coach personally, or you can join the Soaring membership.
00:16:23
Speaker
and we meet twice in the moon cycle and we work on ways to be strategic in the way that we operate our businesses and life and plan a life by design.
Soaring Membership for Strategic Planning
00:16:35
Speaker
Now in that, I get asked questions that are related to business as well. So that is a portal to to get some of the insights and information that you require. But I just wanted to share these five tips with you today for today's episode to again, encourage you to just approach things with childlike wonder, allocate time to create and leverage your efforts so that you can create a life that supports your thriving and create a life by design.
00:17:04
Speaker
So I look forward to seeing you next week and wish you a magical week ahead. So thank you for listening all the way to the end of this episode. I hope that it provided you with insights and inspiration that you need right now on your quest of fostering thriving. Please do pass this episode on to someone you think would get value out of it too.
00:17:25
Speaker
and I'd really appreciate if you'd leave a review for this podcast on Apple or Spotify or a comment on YouTube. I'd love to hear any insights and or inspirations if activated in you and look forward to drumming, dancing or soaring alongside of you.