Episode 293: 3 things you didn't know you could do in Canva
Do you use Canva? In this episode, Fiona talks about a helpful tool for small business owners - Canva. She shares three features of Canva that many users may not be aware of, including Magic Write, which generates content for those who struggle with writing or who are not confident in their writing abilities. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Canva
Magic Write feature, which generates content based on a prompt or question
Time-saving templates and customizations for social media posts
Collaborative design features for team projects
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Welcome to episode 293 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. You can probably hear that I am smiling as I say this because I was just playing around with the tool that I wanted to talk about in today's quick tip episode. It's just magic. It's not magic, but it's blown my mind. I can't wait to get stuck into today's quick episode and tell you all about it. But before I do, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land in which I record this podcast. And that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the East Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
The other thing I want to quickly mention is that we are rebranding. It is very slight. You may not even notice it, but I think the thing that you will notice is that the artwork for this podcast will be changing. We have no idea when Apple puts that live, but if you do notice that the artwork has changed, don't worry. It's all the same great content, just under a slightly different name and slightly different artwork. Let's get into today's quick tip episode.
Today I wanted to talk about Canva, which you may or may not be using. If you're not, this episode may be the catalyst for you to use it. If you are, I am sure that a lot of you may not know about these features, which I'm about to share with you because I have been using Canva for years, I think since 2015. I'm not sure exactly when they launched, but pretty much then I remember doing a pitch for a particular company in the US and I'm pretty sure that was 2015 if not 2014 even. Way back in the day before they had all these bells and whistles and they just keep adding more and more great stuff. I have to say, Canva does not sponsor me. I wish I was. Canva, please come and sponsored this podcast because I use it all the time.
Everything that I recommend in this podcast, are things that I genuinely do think help small business owners. Today I was going to walk you through three things that you may not be aware that you can do on Canva. Now, if you are somebody who needs more time, and let's face it, which small business owner doesn't feel like that, or if you are somebody that is not yet at this part of maybe getting somebody else on board to help you with your business, particularly the marketing of your business, then this is definitely for you. Before I get stuck, just to let you know that anything I'm mentioning today and the links can all be found in text format over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/292. Let's just get into these things. The first, which I think is pretty awesome, particularly in light of everybody going crazy about ChatGPT is magic write.
That is part of Canva. If you may not even know that Canva has Canva Docs, almost like a Word doc or a Google Doc. You can find Canva Docs when you go into your normal Canva and you just search Canva Docs, and it'll open. Once you have that, it is like a blank page and it'll have a plus symbol to start writing. And if you hit that or click on that plus symbol, you'll have various options. And one of them is Magic Write. If you click on that, you just need to put in a sentence or a question and it will spit out content that if you wanted to, you could use. There is a part of me inside that is like, no, because I trained as a journalist and I am a writer.
I've written books, and I've written my Sunday email, which is a thousand words every Sunday for six years. I have also been a published writer and author and a published journalist around the world for feature articles. There is a part of me that feels a bit "ugh" about a computer writing stuff rather than people, but I'm also aware that a lot of people struggle to write or write in a way that they feel makes sense. I also have clients who are living in a country like Australia or the US where English is the predominantly first language, and it is not their first language. They questioned and doubt themselves when it comes to writing, and that can be something that blocks you. I'm all about trying to help small business owners find things to make life easier and to love what they do and love their business.
Suppose you're getting stuck on every single post for social media because you don't feel confident in your writing ability or like I said, maybe it's not your first language, wherever you're living. In that case, this allows you to write content and feel good about it. It's called Magic Write. I just had a test. You go into Canva and then you open Canva Docs and as I said, it's just a piece of paper really that comes up like a digital piece of paper. And I just put in how can you buy a house when you earn no money? Because this is a question that one of my clients said to me the other day, day. She said, “I want to buy a house, but how can you buy a house when you earn no money?”
We were like, "Okay, let's get stuck into the finances part." But I just put that in as a question. It has spat out within seconds. “Buying a house typically requires a source of income to qualify for a mortgage loan. However, there are alternative options such as saving up a significant amount of money for a down payment or finding a co-signer with sufficient income to help you qualify for a loan. It's also important to consider your overall financial situation and whether buying a house is a feasible and responsible decision for you at this time.” It created a paragraph within seconds of me putting in a question. Now, at the start of this episode, I was smiling because I was laughing about something. This is not what I was laughing about cause this is not a laughing matter. I know that there are plenty of people out there that would love to buy a home or even just be able to rent their own home right now.
Here in Australia, we have a massive issue with a housing crisis and affordable housing. This is not the one I was smiling about. I do think that it's spat out quality content in a very short amount of time. And it doesn't sound stiff, it does sound like somebody actually wrote it. But the thing that I was smiling about is the second thing that you may not know that Canva does. That first thing is called magic write. And that's by Canva Docs. The second thing that I thought was just brilliant in a way is their AI text-to-image. This can be another thing that stumps people where they think, I just can't get the image right for what I want. You might be visualizing something in your mind, or you might have a whole lot of words and you can describe it.
It's almost the opposite of the first issue where you don't necessarily feel confident with your language. This second is that maybe you do feel confident with your language, but you just are not confident with your design skills or maybe photography skills, or you're just like, how can I bring this image to life? You may even be creating a prep doc for or a mood board for a photographer. Maybe you're getting a brand or a photo shoot of some sort, or maybe you're working with a graphic designer and trying to show what you mean visually, but you can't seem to find the image that fits. The tool that can help you do this in Canva is called text-to-image. I was laughing at the start of this episode because I was putting in stupid stuff and or just nonsensical sentences or words and the images that it was spitting out were so good.
I mean, some of them, yes, they look a little photoshopped or a little fake, but this is the first iteration of this and I just think it's awesome what can happen. I put in one saying Australian Bush with Rainbow dog smiling and warm sunny day, and it sped out all of those things in an image. Then I put another one, which is a bit silly, confident woman, 42 years old, laughing while drinking coke out of a beer pint. And it's created it. I wish I could visually show you the image that it's come up with. The third one that I put in is feeling glum. Then a friend arrives holding jelly to cheer you up. And again, within seconds it has created four different images that capture that. One of them isn't so great at capturing it, but the other three capture it and it's just bizarre that you can randomly come up with this stuff and it can use AI to create an image that is very close to what you're trying to describe.
That one is just called Text to Image. You can Google Canva text to image, and how to get in there, but I just went into Canva, looked at their learning tools, and then looked up text to image and it came up. I mean, it's just fascinating what can happen now. And in some ways it's scary and in some ways, it's just incredible and amazing. I think it's more the latter. It creates endless possibilities and opportunities for you as a small business owner. That's the second one. Text image. The first is magic write. And the third thing from Canva that you may not be aware that you can do is to create a colour palette based on an image. Let's say you are creating a new collection, or maybe you're creating a sub-brand, or maybe like festive branding for a particular time of year.
And you want it to be similar to what you have already as a brand. You want to have maybe different colours or different colour palettes in there. You can use their colour palette generator. You go into the Canva colour palette generator and we'll link to that in the show notes and you can upload any image and it will within milliseconds, spit out four colours that really bring to life that photo through these four different colours. Creating a colour palette from an image. Now I've tested this with a couple of images and I just put in images from things that I've done in my life in the last couple of weeks. I had an image of the children and I had an image of some nature, like some walk I'd been on.
I had an image from my own graphic designer that we've worked with Ashley Simonetto. And I put that in, and within seconds it was like, these are the four colours that match. Let's say you had like a beautiful image that you want to start using on social media, and then you want to put maybe some graphic text images around it. Maybe you're creating a carousel. You've got this image as the first thing, and then you've got five posts that people can swipe and read about. Let's say it's a case study of a place that you've designed or a new collection or something like that. You can find the colours that you could then create those quote cards or those text cards in seconds by just uploading that one image to start with. And then it will tell you the colour palette.
You could go away and create some quote cards or some text images for your carousel, for other things that you might want to do. It might be that you had a, let's say you're creating a new kids collection and you are inspired by photos from a recent holiday that you went on, you could upload a couple of those photos and it will give you a colour palette to get started on. I just think it's again, another thing that you could take ages to go through the Pantone book or to go through other things and come up with, and of course, if you're creating collections, you want to put a little bit more effort and uploading a photo and getting your colour palette within two seconds. But I think it's a great place to start and it can give you ideas of the colours that go together, the colours that work well together, and it will give you the hex number straight away.
I just think it's fascinating. Those are the three things that you may not know that Canva does. The first is magic write. It's like AI copy that you can put in. The second is the text-to-image. You can come up with all sorts of wonderful text ideas and it will spit out an image using ai. And then the third is the colour palette generator. Now, colour palette generators are not new it has been around for ages. You can do the same thing on Pinterest, but I just think it's awesome to be able to do it on the platform that you're already creating graphics on. That is it for today's quick tip episode. Again, I'm not sponsored by Canva. If anyone is reading who works at Canva, please get in touch because I do talk about you enough that I would happily go into sponsorship deals with you. But for everyone else, you can find the show notes, including links to anything I've mentioned over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/293. Thank you so much for reading.
