6 of the best Canva tips for Facebook users

Angela McDougall, Creative Lead – International Templates, Canva and Liz Harper, Creative Agency Partner, Facebook share their top tips for small business owners to create engaging content.

Facebook and Instagram have given small businesses the tools to connect with billions of people. To be more precise, there are over 3.1 billion monthly users, and 180 million businesses using Facebook’s platforms. While these are impressive numbers, it’s vital small businesses catch the attention of their audience quickly.

Insights from Facebook show businesses have three seconds to establish a brand association with their content, and five seconds to deliver their key message for better results in ad recall and conversion. As people continue to spend more and more time on their phones and online, it’s vital to create content that is going to capture the attention of your audience immediately and we’ve found that video and images are some of the most effective ways of achieving this.

Over half of the participants in the Boost with Facebook Australia, Facebook Group shared they were using Canva as a creative solution. So it was only natural that Facebook partnered with Canva to provide some easy tips on creating beautiful and engaging video content (plus lots more!) for Facebook and Instagram.

6 tips to create content that captures attention

Start with a storyboard

When creating your video content, think about what you want to say and communicate with your audience. Try mapping out the most important key messages on post-it notes, and then think about what visuals you will use to bring that to life. Try to keep things simple, with one key message per frame.

Design with sound off, delight with sound on

80 per-cent of people scroll through their feed with the sound off, so it’s imperative to have your key messages visually available in your content. Don’t forget to space out your written content on video so it’s easier for people to digest.

Animate with purpose

Animations are a great way to add movement to your content and catch the eye. They are useful to help convey a key message, but should also be used sparingly, as the more you use them the less effective they’ll be.

Think about the text

Building on the last point, consider how your text and visuals are placed together. You can draw the attention of the audience to your key text by using visuals and movement to direct an audience’s gaze towards a certain direction on the screen.

Get the timing right

Timing can be everything and can help the many elements in your video complement one another, whether that be with text timed with visuals or pacing of key messages.

Save time by creating a Brand Kit

Your Brand Kit is the key to understanding and communicating your brand identity including your logos, colour palette, fonts, and messaging that represent your brand. In Canva Pro, you can upload your colour palette, fonts and logos in your Brand Kit so you can create your designs or customise one of the thousands of templates on Canva faster with your brand feel. In the Canva free program, you could try the Copy Style function, which lets you apply colours to shapes and fonts to different text boxes to help speed up the process.

For even more tips and design trends from Canva, you can re-watch the Q&A session for small business owners on the Boost with Facebook Australia, Facebook Group here. And if you would like to try out Canva for yourself, you can get started with the free version here.

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