Social Media Visuals: Tips to great visuals with Zach Kitschke of Canva

May 29, 2014

Are you ready to ramp up your social media visuals?

Do you want to know more about how visuals can work for your platforms?

This week on the Social Media Social Hour, Zach Kitschke of Canva joins me to talk about social media visuals. Zach is the chief storyteller at Canva and is a contributor to the Huffington Post, Social Media Examiner, and more.

I also share a great tool that provides visual analytics for Twitter.

About the show:

Social Media Social Hour PodcastThe Social Media Social Hour is a podcast for marketers and entrepreneurs looking to get on the social media fast track. The podcast is an interview format, where each week I get up close and personal with top brands and influencers to talk social media, tech and online marketing. Each week I also share tools that I personally use to help me with social media management, sales, marketing, account management, and productivity.

In this episode, here’s what we’ll cover:

  • Tech Tool of the Week: Twitonomy
  • Zach Kitschke is the chief storyteller at Canva.
  • Zach also is a contributor to the Huffington Post, Social Media Examiner as well as other blogs.
  • Canva is an online platform that makes graphic designs.
  • Canva is a drag and drop tool that allows you to create designs for web and print, such as blog posts, presentations, flyers, social media graphics, etc.
  • Zach’s role as the chief storyteller involves getting the word out about Canva, sharing tips and tricks about visual social media and how designs can be used for businesses online.
  • One of the biggest things now on social media is the need for visual content on all types of social media channels, and Canva has created an easier way to do this.
  • One of the biggest user groups for Canva is social media marketers because they are a group that needs to create lots of visual content, have small budgets, and need to create good looking images that need to get out to the world quickly.
  • Recent members who have joined the Canva team from Apple is Guy Kawasaki, chief evangelist, as well as Peg Fitzpatrick who is now the head of Canva’s social strategy.
  • Guy is working with them full time and is doing what he can to get the word out about Canva through speaking, blogging, and content.
  • Some statistics on the power of visuals: 60% of social media is now made up of pictures, tweets with images get twice as much engagement and shares, and Facebook images perform better.
  • Content marketering is becoming popular in the business world.
  • Visual images make it a lot easier to digest and pull out key information rather than just having word content.
  • Other ways to use visuals or graphics to improve your social media marketing include using your brand, making sure graphics match your brands color pallete, and the consistent use of fonts or logos.
  • Tips for improving your brand would be to pick design elements that you can use from time and time again and only starting with 2-3 colors that are seen throughout your website.
  • Fantastic online resources for this: designspiration or colourlovers.
  • It is important to have a title font, a subtitle font, and a body font.
  • Thinking about what it is that your brand stands for is a key element.
  • For example, Canva has 6 or 7 pastel colors that are used and are seen throughout their website and other social media pages.
  • To sum it up, if you want to start doing a better job with visual marketing, make sure to always be consistent with a color pallete that matches the brand of your company, consistent with fonts, and to check out online resources to help start this process and help you match colors together.
  • Zach recommends using the same graphics on all social media channels to help with storytelling.
  • At Canva, they have a blog where they post tips on graphic design, marketing, and social media which they publish 3-4 posts a week and design a graphic for each post as well as a title graphic.
  • The title graphic that is in each post will then be resized and used on Pinterest because it brings traffic to your blog.
  • The correct size for Pinterest is 735X1102 pixels, which is a longer portrait format.
  • On Pinterest, the longer format has a much higher number of engagement and you’ll be much more likely to have people repin your content.
  • The title graphic used in each blog post will also be shared on Facebook and Google+.
  • The importance of reflecting the same post with the same graphic across all of your social media channels is a good way to tell a story.
  • Getting started on Canva is fairly straightforward and the first step is going to canva.com and signing up for an account.
  • Zach says when you first log in you’re giving a little tutorial on the basics of using Canva as well as design tips.
  • From there, you pick out a design template and get started.
  • Canva has a collaboration feature where you can share your design with family, coworkers, etc.
  • Zach’s advice for companies that cannot leverage images to do storytelling would be to not over complicate it and ever business has a story to tell and a tool like Canva allows you to put together your own graphics.
  • Zach also says it is important to think about what you do have access to to help promote your business.

Zach Kitschke Social Media Six pack:

  1. Did you ever find any of your teachers attractive? Zach says he is going to plead the fifth on this one.
  2. From a scale from 1-10, how good are you at parallel parking? Zach would give himself around a 9.
  3. Which shoe do you put on first? You’re right or left? Zach puts his left on first.
  4. Do you have any strange phobias? Snakes give Zach the creeps.
  5. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever done while driving? Zach has brushed his teeth while driving. 
  6. What was your childhood nickname? Zach never had any nicknames because his name was so short. 

Items Mentioned in the Show:

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