Make social creating easier.
A step-by-step guide to easier social graphics that flow.
Something I hear from clients quite often is that they create social media graphics, reels or p0sts and feel that they aren’t very good. I’m sure there is a bit of self-critical energy at play, but if you’re not well-versed in design or you find it doesn’t come easily for you, this blog post is going to be extremely helpful. I’ve taken my time-savers and ease-of-editing tools to “audit” a reel for a client so that I can show you exactly how to do the same when creating for yourself.
Placement
Focusing first on placement of fonts is helpful because you want:
What you’re saying to be bold and easy to read. This is especially important if you’re creating reels because they’re quick and you want people to easily read the text.
This helps you move forward to the images you want to feature (if any), and place those in centre view as well. If you’re a product business, this is obviously important because you want people looking at your product(s).
Photo Placement & Editing
The placement of images can be made easier if you remove the background— especially for products. This helps them stand out significantly, helps to crisp the entire slide up and increases product association as your audience sees them repeatedly. Below, I go through a few tips on editing images within Canva, the why behind image placement, and some photo editing considerations.
If you don’t have a Canva pro account, here are some websites that you can use to remove the background on an image:
Transitions & Flow
A great way to help your reels to feel and look more polished and professional is by paying attention to transitions between slides. They can make or break how fluid the visuals are and take you from choppy and disjointed, to smooth and in flow. Canva has some great options for you to explore and if you’re feeling overwhelmed with them or don’t know how to use them, I’m excited for you to take what I go through in the video below and create with more ease.
Animations for Text & Images
Using animations is awesome and I highly recommend trying them out! Get creative and just play to see what you can come up with to make the visuals pop. Where you want to pay attention to these is to not do the most —too much isn’t always better and often takes away from the simplicity and directness of your purpose for the reel. Below, I go through my preferences and recommendations on all things animation AND I show you how to create a custom one inside Canva!
Polishing & Finish
The average person pays attention to a reel for 7 seconds unless you do something to maintain their energy. Part of this is being smart on timing of slides and the other part is overall length or duration of the video. I recommend under 30 seconds, but even more than that, 15 seconds with a GREAT and information caption. This is a great template to go by:
slides with bold statements that drive home your main focus of the reel
in-depth information in the caption that invites your audience to learn more, comment or action your suggestions.
Consider lingering a little longer on slides with key messaging, showcase a particular product or aspect of your brand or offering, or when you want to build a little suspense and invite them to continue watching (or read the details in the caption).
We went from THIS 👇🏽
To this 👇🏽
Need some support with design?
I’m looking for 3 volunteers who have a social media post created, but aren’t feeling it and need help to make it flow better. I will get you to share the design via canva with me, record myself editing and explaining the why behind changes I make, and then you get the updated post to use (as well as the tips I cover in the edit video!).
If you’re interested, DM me on Instagram @k.brand.energy ! I’m only taking 3 so don’t wait on this!