5 Must Have Canva Templates to Streamline Your Social Media Posts

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I have been a Canva user for around 7 years now.  Over the years, they have continued to add more and more useful features to their platform, and I have discovered new ways to streamline my processes in an effort to save time.  Templates are a great way to minimize the time spent on content creation, and Canva is just the app to do it in!  Not only do they have loads of graphic and design elements, they also make it easy to design for your brand and keep your look consistent!  Brand recognition is important especially now with so many brands out there in the same niche.  Since Canva also has a mobile app, it makes it easier to create on your phone and desktop so you can post on the go or at your desk.

Here are my top 5 templates that everyone should have in place to streamline their social media posting process.

1/ Instagram Stories

Instagram story templates help to bring your story together and keep a consistent look and vibe throughout the whole story.  You can create an opening and/or ending image for your stories.  Perhaps your opening slide can show the day of the week with a glimpse into your morning routine and your ending slide for the day can be your last piece of a nighttime routine.  You can also use the templates for all slides in a story for a branded background with text and images on top.  Get creative, and think about the story you want to tell.

You can also create an โ€œAd Breakโ€ template for your stories if you work with brands.  This โ€œAd Breakโ€ slide will let viewers know that the following slides are for brand partnership promotion, and you can also let them know that any type of engagement from them counts and helps you to continue sharing products that they will love.  This is a great way to be authentic and transparent with your audience- something that we love to see on social media!

Story image size: 1080 x 1920 pixels


2/ Reels Cover Photo

Reels are incredibly popular now, so creating a custom reel cover will make your Reels feed have a consistent and cohesive brand look.  You can easily upload a reel cover image when getting your reel ready to post by clicking the image that says โ€œCoverโ€ on the reel description page.  You then click โ€œAdd from camera rollโ€, navigate to your template folder and upload the photo.

Reels cover image size: 1080 x 1920 pixels

 
 

3/ Feed Posts

Although Instagram has added many new features and types of content to post on the app, the original feed still draws viewers in.  Users will often post quotes to their feed.  If this is something you want to start doing, itโ€™s a great idea to make two or three branded templates to give your feed an extra jolt of excitement, and give a professional, consistent look.  These can also be used to spotlight an image of someone that you want to promote, a class you will be hosting, or a product/service that you will be releasing soon.

Instagram feed image sizes:

Square-1080 x 1080;  Landscape- 1080 x 608;  Portrait 1080 x 1350

4/ Carousel Posts

Informative carousel posts are great to include on your Instagram feed.  When viewers swipe through the images of the carousel, it increases your engagement and their likelihood to share your tips with others.  If you have a nicely branded carousel template, it can also encourage viewers to swipe through.


Instagram feed carousel image sizes:

Square-1080 x 1080;  Landscape- 1080 x 608;  Portrait 1080 x 1350

 
 

5/ Engagement Suggestion Slide

Along with a carousel template, at the end of the carousel you can have a static slide that encourages engagement by suggesting the viewer like, share, save or comment on the post.  This small nudge often results in more engagement!  These slides can be used in so many ways- maybe by providing a small blurb about you and/or your business so people that donโ€™t follow you can connect with you quickly and potentially follow you from the info they read on the slide.  The possibilities are endless!

Instagram feed image sizes:

Square-1080 x 1080;  Landscape- 1080 x 608;  Portrait 1080 x 1350

 
 

Once you have decided on the templates you want to create, I would recommend following these steps to streamline your posting process:

Step 1: Create a folder on your phone and computer for easy access to your templates.

 
 

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Step 2: Create your templates

 
 

  • Evergreen templates (these templates will not be edited before posting): Engagement suggestion slide, stories ad break, and story backgrounds.

  • Ever-changing templates (these templates will be edited before posting): Carousel posts, Reels covers, and feed posts.

Step 3: Save the templates to the appropriate folders on your phone and/or computer.

Step 4: Create your posts

  • For Evergreen templates, upload the template to your Stories and add text and/or images.

  • For Ever-changing templates, create the unique post contents in Canva, save the image(s) to your device, then upload (or schedule!) your post.

I hope this post has encouraged you to look a little deeper into Canva and what it has to offer.  Do you use Canva or any other tool to create social media template graphics?  Tell me all about it in the comments!

3 tools to use to stay organized for the Holiday season

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The holiday season is in full effect! If youโ€™re like me, you may have a busy month full of fun activities and events surrounding the holidays. With all there is to coordinate, it can get overwhelming when you donโ€™t have a good system in place to keep track of important things.  I love to use digital tools to stay organized especially during the holiday season. Today I will be discussing the three tools that help me stay on track for the holidays.

1/ Trello

Of course Trello would be listed here because itโ€™s my favorite way to organize my world haha!

I have a Trello board dedicated to planning things out for Christmas such as table decor, games, recipes, and a daily list of things to do for the week leading up to Christmas Day. Since Trello has an awesome mobile app, it is easy to view your things to do on the go.

Here is a snippet of my Christmas Trello board for this year:

This is one of the checklists that I created in a card. The checklists keep you on top of your game!


2/ Giftster

My family sends Christmas wish lists out to each other and we purchase items from their lists. We were doing this through email for years and it was difficult to keep track of who is getting what for whom, and also remembering to remove the person from the To line of the email so they didnโ€™t see what you were planning to get them. We also do Secret Santa, so we would get together on Thanksgiving to pull names. BUT- sometimes we would forget to pull names so weโ€™ve had to find creative ways to pull names when we werenโ€™t together. All of this became too much to deal with and I knew there had to be a better way. 

One day I did a search for Secret Santa drawings and came across Giftster. It turned out to be what I was looking for and more!  Giftster is an online tool where you can create wish lists for any occasion and share them with your friends and family. Wish lists are great to use because you can give people ideas of things you would like (no more awkward gifts!).

Adding items to your wishlist is so simple- all you have to do is paste a web link to the item and all details are pulled in, or you can simply type the name of an item you want if there is no link available. The image, description, price, and link to the item are all pulled in. Itโ€™s so convenient! And yes, these are some of the actual items on my wishlist this year haha!


The app also has a Secret Santa option which will do an automatic name draw for you (automation!). You can enter your Secret Santa rules to send to everyone in your family/friend group. This makes Secret Santa such a convenient and easy thing to do.


Giftster can be accessed through the computer or their app. The app is great for tracking your shopping list, editing and adding to your wish list, and viewing other group memberโ€™s activities on the go. There is also an option for child accounts, so you can create and share a childโ€™s wish list. All wish lists have security levels of private, shared or public. 

You can also add gift preferences for your account profiles, so if there is anything that you do not like or certain colors you love, you can add these details to your preferences and much more.

Lastly, one of my favorite features of Giftster is you can see if an item on someoneโ€™s wish list is already reserved or purchased by someone else. This activity is totally confidential, so you will not know who purchased gifts for anyone, only that something is reserved by someone else. This is what makes the wishlist so great, you still will be surprised along with everyone else when opening gifts!

3/ Google Sheets

The last tool that I use for the holiday season is Google sheets to keep track of my spending for Christmas. I have a spreadsheet that lists everything that I want to purchase for everyone, how much things cost, and the total of everything against the budget that I have set for Christmas. Itโ€™s a good way for me to visually see how much I am spending, and to make sure that I am not getting off track of my budget. Since Google sheets is an app, it integrates perfectly with Trello. I can link my Google sheet to my Trello board and easily see and add new purchases to it directly from Trello.
Again, with this being an app, it makes tracking spending and viewing spending easy on the go. All tools that I use to keep Christmas time organized have an app, so it makes things run smoothly if Iโ€™m not at my computer.

There are many tools and ways to keep track of your holiday activities and spending, but these tend to be the three most frequently used tools that I use. I encourage you to take a look to see how you can use these for your holiday season as well. The holidays can be a busy time with a lot of things to keep in order, so having easy tools to use (especially on the go) will help to make your holiday season less stressful and more peaceful.  I would love to know if you use any apps or other tools to keep your holiday season organized. Leave a comment below and let me know!