“Great stories happen to people who can tell them.” ~ Ira Glass
And now, it’s easier than ever for businesses to tell their stories… with images.
Canva, the premiere online tool for creating graphics, has just released Canva for iPhone (Android coming soon!). It’s an incredible app that will make it easy for businesses to whip up beautiful, custom graphics on the fly… on the go… wherever and whenever you need.
Imagine being able to promote your business on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter with photographs that not only capture the moment, but also have gorgeous lettering and editing designed to keep your brand top of mind.
As a cloud app, Canva automatically syncs your work across devices, so a design you start on desktop can be finished, saved and shared on your iPad or iPhone. It’s also handy to be able to scroll back through your designs to find one you created months ago and re-share or re-purpose it.
Using Canva for iPhone for Mobile Design
When you open Canva for iPhone, you’re offered a number of tabs across the top which give you access to your previously created designs, as well as templates for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Presentation, Facebook Cover, Pinterest, Post, Blog Graphic, Card, YouTube Art, Flyer or Invitation.
While you’re currently unable to start a blank design or choose custom dimensions, it’s easy enough to select a template that’s close to what you’re looking for and start making changes. You can remove the existing imagery and replace it with your own, and edit the text or other elements as needed.
Another option for businesses is to have one or more designs saved to use as templates. Within Canva for iPhone, you can copy and edit an existing graphic to create a new one. (This is actually an easy hack to bring in standard branding elements like a logo.)
If you begin working on a design and think that a different template has a better approach, you can tap the Layouts button below your design and select a different layout. The new template will be applied to whatever imagery you’ve already added, so you’re not starting over. Text remains as well.
Tap the Text button to simply create a new text field which you can edit and reposition. Or, select one of the pre-formatted text blocks to use that as inspiration.
All of the normal Canva fonts are included, but note that any custom fonts you may have uploaded to Canva for Work are not yet supported on mobile. You can easily adjust alignment, bold, italics, caps, spacing, color and size with a nice slider.
To replace or edit the image, just tap it. You can then apply filters, advanced filtering like blur or vignette, or tap Replace to get a new image. You can search Canva for images to use or upload one from your camera roll! As with Canva for desktop, there are free images and premium images, with the premium images costing just $1 to use once.
For most business, it’s the easy access to your phone’s camera roll that’s going to make this a game changer. Being able to easily snap a picture and then do editing in Canva can really make an image pop. More importantly, it enables you to tell a better story.
When you’re ready, tap Share and save your new graphic to your camera roll or directly to Facebook or Twitter.
Social Storytelling
The most successful businesses use social media to tell stories. Sometimes they’re literal stories – stories about customers or partners, or stories about themselves. Sometimes they’re implied stories that, through the combination of text and imagery, paints a picture for the reader that is enlightening, educational or entertaining.
In other words, don’t look to an app like Canva for inspiration on what to say on social media. That’s something you should be figuring out offline. Instead, let Canva help you articulate and illustrate what you want to say. <tweet this!>
What’s your business about? What are your customers and prospects interested in? What kinds of stories can you tell or imply?
Once you’ve figured that out, then it’s time to come up with ideas on the kinds of images and messages you can share.
The Pokémon Go craze that’s sweeping the nation is a perfect example.
If you’re not familiar, users download the Pokémon Go app and create an account. The point of the game is to find and collect Pokémon creatures in the wild. The real wild… like, your neighborhood. Savvy business owners have recognized that they can help players and bring themselves foot traffic at the same time!
All they have to do is snap a screenshot of themselves in the game, looking at some rare Pokémon creature in front of their storefront and then share that social media. Using Canva, they can add some additional information and flare right to the image.
Tell fans where to go and now you’re actually participating in their story.
Of course that’s just a fun way to leverage a trend. Think about what your business stands for and what your customers care about. What stories can you tell around those ideas?
Use Canva to help you tell those great stories, and watch the kinds of great stories that happen to you as a result. Grab Canva for iPhone from the Apple Store today!
Related: 5 Reasons Canva Will Rock Your Blog
