Digital upskilling

There are four things we will touch on when it comes to content creation: Canva, other helpful tools, iPhone content and stock images.

Canva

If you haven’t heard of Canva, Canva is a design platform that was made specifically with small businesses in mind. If you have no experience, it’s not a problem. Canva has a massive selection of pre-made templates for any social media posts that take minutes to edit and are aesthetically pleasing.

Just remember, stick to your brand tone and colours when creating, even with templates!

So we have Instagram posts, Facebook posts, Instagram stories, others, another style of Instagram story, WhatsApp status, Instagram reels, Facebook covers and Tiktok videos.

Canva is great for searching templates based on specific activities, such as an event or a sale.

Other tools

There are also other content creating tools. Some of these are paid, some of them are not.

• HitFilm – Video Creation.
• BuzzSumo – Content research for content discovery, to find influencers, and to monitor what’s happening online.
• Buffer – Plan and schedule.
• Burst – library of free images with commercial use licenses.
• Grammarly – checks your grammar, spelling, and tone.
• Riddle – Online quiz maker. Find out what products/services work for your clients.

Make content with your phone

Creating original content doesn’t have to be hard. You can actually organise and produce much of what you need with your iPhone.

Here are the three tips to help capture content on your phone:

1. Aim for versatility: Don’t look for a picture perfect moment. Take lots of photos and the perfect one will appear.
2. Use gridlines: Gridlines operate under a photography, the ‘Rule of Thirds’. This is the idea that images should be broken into thirds, horizontally and vertically, equaling nine parts in total. Place your primary subject within this grid and your photo will be more balanced, level and natural looking.
3. Edit your photos: Tweaking a photo’s saturation, brightness and contrast can have a huge effect on the end result and the perceived professionalism of your content.

Stock Images

Stock Images have both their pros and cons when it comes to utilising them for content. If you do go down the stock image route, please just remember these;

Pros

• You can save the time and money of hiring a photographer.
• They are versatile enough for many uses.
• They are easily editable to fit your business needs.
• The subscription sites give you access to various high-quality images.

Cons

• You could unintentionally violate the license.
• The aesthetics may be too obviously intended for broad use and feel inauthentic to your target audience.
• The same images you use may show up in marketing from other businesses.

Watch our short video to learn more about simple design tools.