HOW TO USE CANVA: A VIDEO TUTORIAL (CREATE SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS USING CANVA)

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Canva is one of the easiest and best graphic design tools you can use to create social media posts and other graphics.

In this short video tutorial, I will show you how to create an image to post to social media. I will give you step-by-step directions starting with an introduction to Canva templates, then on how to select a template and edit it for your own use. Learn how to change the colors, font color and size plus I’ll show you how to download the graphic to your phone and post it to social media.

I will show you how to do this using Canva on an Android mobile device.

The transcript for this video can be found below.

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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Romona Foster (00:06):

Good afternoon everyone. This is Romona coming to you from Social Media How To’s with Romona. Today, I’m coming to you with a quick video tutorial on how to create an image using Canva — and then, I will show you what to do with the image.

So first of all, in case you don’t know, CANVA is a graphic design app. You can use it on your mobile phone or you can use it on desktop. Today I’m showing you how to use Canva on your Android mobile device. If you have an iPhone, just know that what I’m showing you today, will be a little different when you’re looking at it on your iPhone.

So, the very first thing that you want to do is make sure that you have the Canva app. Download it on your phone. So if you’re using an Android, of course, you’re going to go to the Google Play Store. If you’re using an iPhone, you will have to go to your App Store. So the first thing I’m going to do is I am going to click on the Play Store.

Romona Foster (01:28):

When your Play Store opens, you’re going to click in the search. Type in Canva … C. A. N. V. A. The Canva app will be displayed. As you can see at the very top. You may notice, mine says open because I already have the Canva app on my phone. If you do not have the Canva app, it will say install. So go ahead and install it, follow the onscreen directions and then meet me back here. I’m going to go ahead right now and click open to open the app.

When you come to the Canva app, by default, it will bring you to the templates screen. On the template screen, what you will see are various templates that you can use in your designs. Meaning if you are not a graphic artist, you can actually create your own designs without any graphic artist experience.

Romona Foster (02:39):

So the next thing I’m going to do is decide what type of graphic I want to create. And for this video, what I’m going to be creating is a quote. And by the way, you can click on any of these templates here. If you scroll through and see anything that you like. There are different categories that they have, posters, logos, presentations, Pinterest pins, YouTube thumbnails, Twitter posts, etc. You will find on here social media posts, posters, flyers, banners, anything that you can possibly imagine, letters, photo collages, business cards — and you will see that by clicking on all categories. You can find whatever category you’re looking for in here or again, you can just scroll down or you can scroll to the left to see, to view all of the different categories that are available to you. So what I’m going to do is go ahead and click in the search bar at the very top and I will type in Quote.

Romona Foster (03:52):

Then I’m going to click search and I will scroll through to find a quote template that I like and I’ve already chosen this one and tested it just to make sure that it comes out perfectly for this video. So this is one that I chose.

The next thing I’m going to do is I’m going to click edit. So click on edit and then you will see the quote template exactly as it is. But now I want to change it so that it looks like my quote. Today I’m going to be using a quote that I was actually quoted or I actually spoke this quote while being asked about how I started out doing social media training. The quote, I actually have already on my clipboard. So what I’m going to do is, I’m going to highlight the text where the quote is, and then I will hold my finger down and then I will click paste. So this is my quote.\

“Miracles happen when you stop focusing on your fears and turn your dreams, (your vision) into reality!” ~ Romona Foster

Which is exactly what I did when I started in this business.

So then I want to put here where it has someone else’s information. I’m going to type my name because I’m the one that said the quote.

Romona Foster (05:23):

I type my name and you see this text up above where my quote is, it says motivational quotes. I’m actually just going to delete that out of there. So what I did was I highlighted it and I hit my backspace button on my mobile phone. Now if you look at the very top where it says text, there is a checkmark, I’m going to click on that checkmark to let it know that I’m done. So now that is saved. The next thing that I’m going to do is I’m not really fond of this color because my brand colors are red, blue, white, and two colors of gray. So what I’m going to do is, I’m actually going to change that color green in a moment. What I’m going to do is I am going to click on the image where you see the man just tap on it and I will click on the plus sign at the bottom right-hand corner and you will see various options pop up.

Romona Foster (06:35):

If you want to add text, you click on text. If you want to add an image, click on the image. If you want to add a video then video. So you would just scroll through all of these things. If you want to do any of these things, add a sticker, an illustration, another template, logos, or you can even add a page to this image. But for now, what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna click on the image and I have my images saved here.

I’m going to tap on the man again because you have to make sure that he’s highlighted in order to add your image. And then I’m going to click on the image I choose. So I clicked on my image and you see now that one of my class photos is there. Now what I don’t like about the way this looks is that it has cut off some of the people who I am actually speaking to.

Romona Foster (07:33):

I want to be able to see that group a little better. So what I’m going to do is, tap in the text area and then click where you see the font size. So I want to tap on this and I’m going to say I want my font size to be about, it’s on 33 right now. I’m going to make it 28. I’m going to click the checkmark to the right of 28. You see the text got smaller. What I want to do is I actually want to move the green box that is on top of my picture … the green overlay. I want to move it over because I want to see the people more. And then I’m also going to tap on all my text again and move that over.

Romona Foster (08:33):

I’m just doing all of this with my finger. I’m just dragging everything with my finger on my mobile device. So I drag this over to the left. It still looks like my texts needs to be a little smaller. I am going to click in my text and make it. Make it 24 and then I’m going to click on the checkmark again to the right of 24 and you see it got a little smaller. So I’m going to drag it. See there’s a drag handle to the right of my texts. Where you see into, I’m going to click on that white handle — and I’m going to drag my box in and then I’m going to click on my quote text again, and I want to move my box over more. Now, you see how you can see the audience a little better.

Romona Foster (09:36):

The next thing I’m going to do is I’m going to click on the green overlay box again and I want to change the color. So I’m going to try out my colors and see which one I like best. Don’t like that. That’s probably too bright. I’m going to choose the red I think. Yes, because that looks a little better. So I will do the red. I’m going to move my text just a hair more just so it fits in there a little better. And then I also want to change the color of my name. My name is green, so I want to change. Click in the box and you see the green square box under the photo, which is showing you what color is being used. Go ahead and click one time, just tap on that green box. Then click on the white font color.

Romona Foster (10:42):

So that’s what color I want it. I want it to match the other font color. I think I like the way this looks and what I’m going to do now is, (and by the way, if you don’t like something that you’ve done, what you can do is click the undo button right above where you see my text where you see two icons above. You’ll see a checkmark to the left. And then to the right of the checkmark is the undo button. If I didn’t want that text to be white, I would just tap on that and it goes back to green, but I really don’t want it green. You should see now there’s a redo button available. To the right of the undo button, now you will see redo.

Romona Foster (11:33):

I’m going to click on redo. Now my text is white again and again I think this looks okay. So what I’m going to do is I want to download this photo onto my phone so that I can upload it to my social media accounts to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter so I can share it with people that I’m connected to there. Do you see in the upper right-hand corner a white download arrow? It’s the second one from the right, I’m going to click on the download arrow and now it’s preparing my design. Then it shows different places where I can share. I can share it actually directly to my social media. But what I like to do is actually to click all my photos and download it there. So you’ll get a button, it actually says upload by the way.

Romona Foster (12:43):

So I’m going to go ahead and click on upload my photo to my photos on my phone and that’s that. So it’s there. Now, what I will do now is I will go back to, and you can do this, you can follow along as well. Go back to your photos on your phone. Mine is on my home screen so I’m going to tap photos and I will see it there. But what I’m gonna do is I can actually share it from there, but what I’m going to do is just so you know there’s a different way to do it as well. If I want to share it on Facebook or LinkedIn, I’ll actually do LinkedIn and I’m going to hit the plus sign for the post on LinkedIn. I’m going to click add a photo and then I am going to click on recent photos and I will find my photo quote photo here and I just tapped on it and then I can hit the blue arrow in the bottom right-hand corner. And then if I want I can actually post my quote and I’ll actually put my name here. If you want, you could say something profound or you don’t have to just put your name. I’m just doing this for this tutorial. So I typed in my name. If you want, of course, you can add your hashtags on your posts, but I’m just going to go ahead right now and click Post.

Romona Foster (14:35):

So, I posted it on LinkedIn. That was so quick! You see how easy that is just to create something in Canva — and post it onto your social media? That did not take me long at all. You can do this!

I hope this video was helpful. If you have any questions, as always, there will be information in the description of this video letting you know how you can contact me if you have any questions. Please be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and click on the bell so that you will receive notifications each time that I upload a new video tutorial. I hope that you have a wonderful day and thanks for hanging in there with me.

This is Romona Foster signing off.