Design and Print Business cards on Canva + unboxing

Design and Print Business cards on Canva + unboxing

It was time for a new business card and I was running a Canva + Creativity course for my students so I thought I’d show them (and you) my Canva design process, how to order prints in Canva and then, how long it takes to arrive + the unboxing!

There are 2 videos in this set: the design and ordering and then the unboxing.
Enjoy!

designing and ordering prints

I ordered on the 5th of April and they arrived on the 11th of April. I didn’t request express post or pay for it but it has an express label on it. There were also 2 days of public holiday over Easter. 

They can and look exactly like the preview. 

In the button below is the Canva design I used if you’d like to use it too and below there’s the unboxing vid: 

unboxing

Got any questions? 
Have you printed using Canva before? 

more from the blog

Facebook for your Business

Facebook for your Business

Hello, today I’m going to be talking about Facebook for business. 

If you are a lightworker, a very heart centered person, sensitive and empathetic, if you really feel the feelings, and you really don’t like tech much, it may actually be helpful for you to be on Facebook. 

If there is such a massive departure of all the good people leaving social media, then Facebook becomes a less positive space. Now I know, it’s not our responsibility to make Facebook good. There are things that I don’t like about Facebook but it is a place where you can show up and connect with people. If you choose not to be on facebook it’s a lost opportunity, not just for you in your business, but for the people that you serve, because they are looking for you. If they happen to be on Facebook, and it’s easy for them to find you.

It’s kind of thwarting their opportunity to grow and thrive and flourish and transform, if you are simply holding back because of a mental aversion. If you can kind of get past this then you’re going to be able to help people more. 

 

Before I was running a business, I was not on Facebook and it’s not really something I’m massively in love with, for so many reasons. However, I wouldn’t really have a business if it weren’t for Facebook. I’ve grown my business over six years and part of that has been through using Facebook for my business. 

I have been through the ups and downs of wanting to release Facebook and choosing to stay. So I understand all the different feelings around Facebook and its suitability for me and my business.

I’m just going to talk from a place of having realized that this is good for me and good for my business, good for my clients, for me to show up there. If you don’t have a social media platform yet, and you’re trying to decide which one. I would say Facebook is an okay place to start. 

There’s another blog I have about which social media to choose which social media platform. So I would recommend checking that out if you’re not really sure.

If you’ve decided, yes, Facebook’s for me, I understand how it works, I have some connections here already, then the first thing you need to know is for business, it’s against Facebook’s terms and conditions for you to conduct business from your personal profile so they’ve created a business page option. 

LISTEN ON THE PODCAST

That’s the first thing to note is that there’s your personal profile, and there’s your business page. However, you can’t set up a business page without a personal profile, you can’t run ads without connecting it up through your personal profile. So don’t get confused about where you’re showing up. 

 You know, if you use Facebook, just for friends and family, it’s going to work much better for you to have a Facebook business page but if you’re really only on there for business, then it’s okay people will just find you.

 It can be really helpful to leverage your current contacts to help grow your business because word of mouth is such a widely successful way to build a business. I would say the two main pillars of business growth are your current network and referral sources and your content creation. 

 

Something that is so great about social media and Facebook is that you can connect on both those levels using Facebook as a tool. You need to go in the top corner, there’s usually a button or you can click Create, and you create a business page.

There are three things that I think you need when you’re setting up your Facebook business page. These are that you will want a banner at the top, you will need a profile picture and it’s really helpful to focus on your ‘about information’. 

 For the banner I like to use a tool called Canva. It’s a free tool, you just sign up with an email address. You just type in the search field, Facebook, then you’re going to see a lot of templates that they have. And I want you guys to make your banner using the template called ‘Facebook Cover’. 

 

The good thing about Canva is that it will help you because it’s got all these beautiful templates in there that you can simply choose one, that one that you find appealing, you can bring in your words, your colors, your images, and make it your own, then you can just download it as a JPEG and bring it into your Facebook business page. 

 

The second thing you need is your profile picture. So if you are an entrepreneur and working with you is the service, then I would think it’s great to have your picture. Sometimes people like to put their logo as their profile picture and that’s okay. However I think if people are working with you, they’re going to meet you eventually and it’s important that you get used to posting pictures and videos of yourself, it’s gonna just make your business go so well. 

 

So even if it feels a bit uncomfortable at first, I know for me it felt uncomfortable at first, hopefully you will get used to it over time. What I see is that people get used to it over time. So if it feels really wrong, right now I feel you, I have been there.

 

The third thing you will need to fill in the about sectionion, it’s helpful if you can just fill in as much information as you can write as much as you can about your business, how you help people, what your values are, fill the about section as much as possible. 

     

And then your business page is ready to go.

There are so many reasons why I think the Facebook pages are important. One of them is that their SEO is great. If anyone ever typed in your name, it’s going to show up in the Google search as your Facebook listing, which can be really helpful if someone’s trying to share your information with someone else.

 

It’s helpful to run ads. I really like running low cost ads to help my business grow. As a business owner, it is just a normal expense to spend a little bit of money on ads. Even if you don’t love Facebook, and you mostly show up on Instagram, the running of ads on Instagram and Facebook is controlled through your Facebook account. 

 

Usually, you can run ads on Instagram from inside the app but it doesn’t give you many options. It’s quite limited. So I like having all the businesses I work with set up with a Facebook page. If we’re running ads, it just makes it so much easier. And it gives people something to share. 

 

It also gives you a place where you can practice creating content. Like I said before, one of the important pillars of growing your business is creating regular content. On Facebook, there are lots of different kinds of content you can share. You can share an image, you can share text, you can share live videos, or pre recorded videos. They have now stories on Facebook, and I think they even have reels on Facebook. Stories and reels are things that have come over from Instagram. 

 

If you are at the beginning, don’t worry too much about all of those options. Just focus on writing some blog style mini article type posts, so text only posts, and posting some pictures or videos of you with captions that just explain what you’re talking about. 

 

If you just made a couple of bits of content every week, you can then share them to your personal profile. It also helps you to  practice talking about your passions, how you serve people and what your business is all about. 

 

You don’t have to post every day. But the more you post, the better you get.. I just like to stay in practice and help the content creation muscle get stronger. So the more you do it, the better you’ll be at it and I really encourage you to create content as much as you can. Don’t deplete yourself but do keep trying. 

 

It’s very important that you can write the content for your posts so that later on if you decide you want a website, you’ll be practiced at writing content about you, about how you serve people and about the challenges your clients face and the way you help them move through that.

 

Alright, think that’s enough about Facebook for today, but if you have other questions, please let me know and I’d love to answer those either in a comment or as another video. I hope you have a beautiful day and I’ll see you soon. Bye

 

“I pay my respects and acknowledge the people of the Yuin Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work. I also pay respect to all Elders — past, present and future.”

Do you just want to talk to me about your business and website?

I’d love to chat. You can book a free chat and we can discuss website set up and all of the other things I mentioned here. We can even set it all up of ryou and save you the headace. 

Go ahead and book a free chat here: 

Video content

Video content

Video is a great way for people to get to know you while you do other things like laze on the beach or make dinner for your kids or even sleep.

But maybe you don’t feel like getting dressed up, doing your face and getting yourself onto video. Can you still use video for your business? 

I don’t want to spend ages convincing you a video is a good idea. 

If you are here you clearly want to start making videos for the marketing of your business. 

If you do not want to show your face don’t stop reading now because it is entirely possible for you to create videos in lots of different ways.

There is no denying how good it is if you can bring yourself to do videos of your own face especially if you are service-based. But if you can’t do that for whatever reason I do not want you to navigate away and not make a video for your business because it seems too hard.

There are loads of ways to get around not showing your face and all the ways of creating video give you some benefits.

I know that people always like to hear what I do personally so I will start with that and then I will also share a couple of other ways that I think you can create video if you want.

My current 2 favourite video processes are:

60-second (or less)

10-minute or so videos

I like to create short videos and publish them on Instagram. I try to make these 60 seconds long or less.

I create these on my phone and record them directly so they go onto my camera roll. Then I pop onto Instagram and share them in my feed with a small caption.

I love this method because I can experiment with ideas without investing too much energy in the process. I also find that people like to see me and they like to hear from me. These feel light yet intimate.

They are the quickest and easiest way for me to create video and they also feed into my entire content creation strategy. I have another blog post about that which you can check out over here.

Basically I test the water with new ideas in my 60 second videos so if they are well received they may get turned into a longer blog or video. I usually don’t overthink these and I get important feedback from my people when they do well.

The other way I love to make videos is using Zoom. I begin a Zoom meeting with myself, click record then I just chat away to the screen in my own meeting with myself.

When I click “end meeting”, the recording gets downloaded onto my computer. I am then able to share it directly to YouTube which I also embed onto my blog.

The fun thing about these Zoom videos is that I can often use the audio download to create a podcast as well. I just love it when one piece of content can be used in lots of different places.

I also like to use this video on IGTV (if it is not a how-to demonstration style vid).

One other cool thing about these podcast episodes is that I can create a video from the episode using Headliner App really easily. I have another post about how to use Headliner App over here.

If you don’t want your face in the video.

If you don’t want your face to be in the video for whatever reason you can still use the Zoom methods and just don’t worry about how you look on video.

You can then use the audio component of the zoom recording and turn it into a podcast.

The podcast episode can be turned into a video using Headliner app. This means that people can experience your energy through your voice without you having to even get out of bed.

Literally some of my podcast episodes I made late at night in bed or early in the morning in bed. That’s how easy it is to use Anchor. I then turn those podcasts  into a video without having to show my face at all.

If you don’t want to deal with a podcast and Headliner App you can also use Canva to create videos with an audio recording you have created.

These audio recordings can be created on the voice memo app on an iPhone or a similar voice recording app on an Android phone. You can then upload those to canva and add a couple of little animations and a nice stock image and then you have basically the same thing as the Headliner app video without having to create a podcast and without having to show your face.

There is a part of me that does want to kick in and start telling you how important video including your face is so I do just want to touch on that lightly.

A lot of people who come to me for a free 30 minute chat have already ”met me”  through watching my videos.

People often tell me how nice it is to finally meet me in person and that I am exactly like my videos and how comforting that is for them. Usually they watch my videos while I am on the beach, making dinner, sleeping or doing other things in my business.

I find this duplication of myself really great.

It means that people who are referring their clients or friends to work with me have somewhere they can send those people to figure out whether they want to work with me or not.

The other thing that is good about video is: if you’re posting them on social media the algorithm which decides who sees what content will slightly favour a video over other kinds of posts.

That is the end of my convincing you about why video is good.

There are just so many places and ways you can share video.

Here’s a hard and fast list:

    • YouTube video
    • YouTube short
    • YouTube live
    • Instagram Reel
    • Instagram feed video (60s max)
    • IGTV (15 minute max)
    • Instagram Story
    • Instagram live
    • Facebook live
    • Facebook feed Facebook Story
    • LinkedIn
    • On your blog
    • Twitter
    • Tik Tok
    • Slideshow with you talking over the top
    • Plus all the ways I mentioned in this blog

    I think if you are not doing video you are missing a really potent opportunity so if you’re not ready to get your face on I would recommend trying one of these other methods for creating video content for your business.

    If you found this helpful and you like, you can make a small donation.

    “I pay my respects and acknowledge the people of the Yuin Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work. I also pay respect to all Elders — past, present and future.”

    Where to get pictures you can use on your website and social media

    Where to get pictures you can use on your website and social media

    Sometimes, the striking differences between an ok website and a great website are the images and the quality of the images. 

    Partly, that’s because images communicate messages through the realm of emotion. Emotion plays a large part in the decision making process for humans because, if we are able, taking information in through our eyes is a long trusted source of information for our survival. 

    The other factor that affects how good our websites look is the quality of the images. Low quality, low resolution or pixelated images really bring down the quality of a website, no matter how skilled the developer is. 

    There is a third factor and that is: are the images meaningful, purposeful and aligned with your brand and message. If the images are just plopped there and out of context, it can give the reader a dissonant feeling that reduces their trust in you. Not a great outcome. 

    But where can you get images? 

    My top 6 sources are: 

    Your own spaces and face

    Unsplash

    Canva

    Inspired Stock Shop

    Creative Market

    Wellness Stock Shop

    The first 3 are free options and the last 3 are paid options. 

    Your own spaces and face

    I think this is really the most ideal source. Images of your own workspace and your face are naturally embedded with your energy. It’s best if your clients can get a sense of your energy as much as possible to help them to differentiate you from all the other businesses out there. You can communicate your energy and uniqueness in a number of ways; your writing style and topics, your videos, your illustrations or drawings – and also through photos of you and your spaces. 

    You can get good images using just a modern smartphone if you are aware of the light. You need the right light or a bit of editing to get the images to look good. 

    You are looking for large files, for example 3-4000 px wide. 

    Another great option is: do you have a bestie with a decent camera? Someone you can have a laugh with, who you feel really comfortable around? 

    Images of you look best if you are happy and relaxed which is why sometimes, even if you pay a professional photographer, you may not feel good and so your photos won’t look good. 

    Also I love the blooper shots. I want all the pics from the day. And if you go with a professional photographer, (i) they will want to “improve” your images (ii) they won’t give you all the pics. You just have to choose X images for Y dollars. When it’s your friend, you get all the pics, for better or worse 🙂

    Obviously, if you have the money, and some good rapport with a professional photographer, you might like to go down that route, but that changes this to a “not free” option. 

    A lot of the images on my own website are from a photo play day with a bestie of mine who has a decent camera. 

    Side note: image size

    Large images on your website take longer to load which affects the users. It also affects your SEO.

    Images for a website banner only need to be 1920px wide, and for most large images on a website, 1080px wide is plenty. For 2 columns, 540px wide is great and so on, smaller pixels wide as you have more columns. 

    Unsplash

    Unsplash is a website where you can download good quality images for free. Why? Aspiring photographers upload photos there in the hope they will get exposure and increase their profile as photographers. And they let you use those photos without needing to credit or acknowledge Unsplash or the photographer, but of course you can if you like. 

    I prefer Unsplash to other free image sites because they are generally more personal and less polished than Shutterstock and others like that. They also have an ok representation of larger women and older women – but still a long way to go in terms of representing those groups. 

    I recommend you pop over and do a search – if your article is about “images for your website” you might search: photo or photographer. If your blog is about healing you can search for “healing”. But I find the range a bit limited at times. 

    If you are planning to use these images, I recommend you resize them so that they don’t slow down your website load times and SEO.

    Canva

    Canva is a free graphic design tool that I love and use nearly every day. They have a lot of free images available inside the tool. You can also go to this page https://www.canva.com/photos/ and find free images that you can use in Canva designs. 

    You will need an account with Canva to use them. 

    It is easy to sign up for Canva and you get a LOT on the free plan. Plus, if you are planning to use these images as a banner or on your website, it is best to resize them rather than use the image in its large, original size. 

    Inspired Stock Shop (ISS)

    This is my current favourite place for images that aren’t my face and space. Claire of ISS, has found a way to fill the gap I mentioned in the Unsplash library. She has gorgeous images that us spiritual babes love. She is also increasing the number of images of us plump goddesses and older wise women. Yay. The only thing is: you have to buy them. Or she has a membership option which works out pretty affordable if you have a project in mind. You also get access to the full library as soon as you join and you can start downloading as many pics as you like. 

    I am going to be recommending ISS a lot in the next while, because people always seem to need good quality images of real women for their websites and socials and I feel like I’ve finally struck gold. 

    ISS also has some great social media post templates, Canva templates for workbooks and more. Highly recommended. 
    I love them so much I am an affiliate. This is my link 🙂 

    Creative Market

    Until I found Inspired Stock Shop, Creative Market was my recommendation when people couldn’t find images in Unsplash or Canva. 

    Creative Market is the proper wormhole for fancy fonts, images, graphics and more. Be careful if you go in there. It’s amazing what you can buy from graphic designers to sparkle up your online presence. You might see some of my website elements if you venture deep enough 🙂

    Wellness Stock Shop

    This source of images is an Australian version of the Inspired Stock Shop. This option looks gerat too – especially since she in in Australia, although I am struggling to see many plump, older women so hopefully this will change soon.

    I’m probably going to have a crack at this membership once my ISS one runs out. 

    “I pay my respects and acknowledge the people of the Yuin Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work. I also pay respect to all Elders — past, present and future.”

    Do you just want to talk to me about your business and website?

    I’d love to chat. You can book a free chat and we can discuss website set up and all of the other things I mentioned here. We can even set it all up of ryou and save you the headace. 

    Go ahead and book a free chat here: 

    Canva Print discount for Mother’s Day 2021 – expires May 10

    Canva Print discount for Mother’s Day 2021 – expires May 10

    Did you know I’m a Canva Certified Creative and an affiliate for Canva?

    And that they send me awesome discounts for my audience (that’s you 🙂 )
    They just emailed me with this offer:
    Get 20%off printing and free shipping until May 10th!
    Just use the code: 4EVERYMOM20
    Sure, you could make your mum a gorgeous prezzie, like: 
    • t-shirts
    • mugs
    • canvases
    • posters
    • stickers
    Or you can just get a discount on some new business cards or workbooks for your biz.
    You’re welcome 🙂

    Wanna see some things I’ve printed with Canva before? Here’s 2 show and tells:

    Do you need a hand with your Instagram?

    I can help you with many aspects of your Instagram through strategy sessions, content strategies, and customised tips. I also have an Instagram eCourse you can access via the button below. 

    If you’d like more personalised help, book a free chat instead and we can see how I might help you. 

    Want more help with your online business presence?

    Do you need a hand with all the different ways your business can show up online? Video, Facebook, website, Instagram, Facebook ads, email marketing. The list can be overwhelming. 

    Book a complimentary chat with me and let's see if I can help:

    How to share Facebook + Instagram videos in a MailChimp campaign

    How to share Facebook + Instagram videos in a MailChimp campaign

    Do you like to make video content on Instagram and Facebook?

    And then, of course, you’d love to share it with your newsletter subscribers in MailChimp…

    But MailChimp will only let you embed YouTube and Vimeo videos….so how do you do it???

    It IS possible with this manual workaround 🙂

    You will need this video to watch along and pause me to make it happen. Some vague instructions are outlined below the video. 

    Basic written instructions

     

    Basically, this process involves grabbing a screenshot of your social media video post, turning that into an email suitable sized image and linking the image in the email to the social media post. 

    Which sounds great as a one liner, but there are a few hurdles, like what size should the image be and how to get the correct URL for the social media video. 

    So let’s get to it. 

    1. Go to your social media video on Facebook or Instagram
    2. Take a screenshot of the video
    3. Find the URL of the video. If you’re in Instagram it’s relatively easy from the desktop to get the URL. You DO have to make sure you’re in the actual post page and NOT the preview. But if you’re on Facebook, it can be confusing. You need to find the permalink of the post which you can find by clicking on the time it was posted. This is displayed under the name of your page like the image above. Once you click on that link, you get the URL of the video. Not making sense? Check out the vid.
    4. Now it’s time to go into Canva and create an email freindly image. What do I mean email friendly? Well, if the image is too large, it won’t send well from MailChimp, so it’s better to resize it first. PLUS, this way you get to add a “Play” icon on top so it’s clear to click play and watch.
    5. Once inside Canva create a custom image, like 500x500px. 
    6. Then you can import your screenshot. 
    7. Drag the image into the design space. 
    8. Click “elements” on the left sidebar and search for “play” – you can choose a play icon you like. You can change the colour or whateer you like. 
    9. Now it’s time to download your design. Click download – png or jpg is great. 
    10. Go to MailChimp and start your email campaign. 
    11. Once you’re in design mode, drag “Image” over from the right sidebar  options.
    12. Pop your image in
    13. Link it to your video url/permalink
    14. Voila!

    Now you should have a link in your email from people to view your social media video! 

    How did you go? 

     

    Let me know if you have more questions and I’ll make another video to help you 🙂 

    “I pay my respects and acknowledge the people of the Yuin Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work. I also pay respect to all Elders — past, present and future.”

    Got more MailChimp questions?

    I now offer MailChimp mentoring so you can tame your MailChimp and really get the most out of it. It’s currently in Beta mode (test run) so I don’t have a fancy sales page for you 🙂

    However I do have this social media post.

    If you would like more information, you can email me. I’m also offerring this for MailerLite.