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Designing blog images and pins should be an easy and fast task. While doing it in Photoshop isn’t rocket-science, it is still taking too long to adjust images to the right size, to play with fonts, colors and elements. In Canva, I can make a new pin within seconds just by populating an existing template with my imagery and text.

If you’re looking for ways to create beautiful pins fast and easy, Canva and the likes have become a favorite among digital marketers. With all the tasks related to producing, publishing and syndicating content, such tools cut the time we spend on visuals by offering pre-built, easy to customize templates.

Ever since I discovered Canva, some three years ago, I’ve been raving about it. It’s a major game changer for digital marketers and solo entrepreneurs at the same time. From designing flyers, to business cards, social media specific imagery and even book covers, this online based graphic design tool is free, fast and user-friendly.

I used to be a Photoshop girl. Back then, there weren’t many other alternatives for graphic design, and while Photoshop has a ton of features, it takes forever to design anything. Canva has many of the extra steps I’d take in Photoshop, pre-built. No more setting the image size pixels myself, all I have to do is choose from one of the pre-built Canva layouts (Facebook or YouTube covers for instance). And whenever I felt lost for inspiration, all I had to do was choose one of the templates Canva makes available in the left dashboard and start edit one of those.

Here’s how to create pins with Canva when you’re on a tight schedule

Writing the actual blog post is just the first step of the process. But the rest is just as important as it involves distributing your content across social media. Your post might be amazing, but if your representative imagery doesn’t reflect that, social media users are not going to be inspired to click on it.

When it comes to Pinterest the above is even more important. The entire platform is built around beautiful, inspiring imagery rather than text, which makes it important for content creators to focus on the aesthetics of their blog banners and pins. And while it does add to the hassle of creating content and syndicating it, having pins on Pinterest is well worth your time.

With Canva, you can have a beautiful new pin ready to go within seconds. I kid you not. When you have a template for your brand set in stone, you can go in and create a new pin within seconds. All you’ll need to do is add your text and image(s). That’s it.

Step 1

Go to canva.com and login to your account (or create a new one)

Step 2

In your homepage dashboard, select the standard “Pinterest Graphic” template (735 px by 1102 px), or click on the “Use custom dimensions” button (upper right corner). This will open a new window.

Step 3

In your new window you will have a white, empty canvas. You can choose to populate it with one of the pre-built Pin templates at the left of your canvas or create a new one from scratch.

Step 4

Editing text on Canva is super easy. Just take your mouse and click on the text you want to update. When you click the text you are actively selecting it and you get formatting options at the top of the page. From there you can choose your font, size, color, alignment and spacing (between letters and between lines). Add your text here and select your font and color.

You can add text either by navigating to the Text option at the left of your workspace, or type “T” in your canvas.

You can change an element’s color (or a font’s color), by selecting the desired element and clicking the color sample in the upper left corner on your worksheet.

Step 5

You can change template images just as easily. Oftentimes, templates include frames to make adding images a lot easier into an assigned slot. So either keep the same image if it serves your purpose (although I recommend using your own), or change it with a new image from your PC or from Canva’s image library.

You can choose from a series of effects to emphasize your brand image and personality. These are available when you select your image. They will appear on the upper left corner on your worksheet, as FILTERS. Click on that to access Canva image filters.

Step 6

If you’re happy with what you got, it’s time to publish your work. So go to your upper right corner and click Download. Since Canva’s design upgrade, you now have more features to publish your images. For instance you can connect your Facebook account and share your image directly with a Facebook group.

For our purpose, we are going to select Download again, and choose from one of the options available here (png, jpg or pdf).

Isn’t this easy-peasy? I’d love to see some of your Canva created pins and hear from you in the comments below if you have another online tool you love to use to design pins. And if you want someone to jump in and set your Canva Pinterest templates for you, hit me up with a message right here. I’m ready to create beautiful templates for your brand.

Need help starting with Pinterest?

There are so many fun ways to integrate Pinterest in your content marketing. If you need help planning your strategy for Pinterest, I can show you how to make this new marketing channel work for your brand. Contact me here and let’s talk.

Hi there! My name is Monica and I am a content marketing specialist who creates blog & Pinterest strategies to generate website traffic and leads.

To learn more about using Pinterest for your brand, read below: