While there is no doubt that content is still king when it comes to SEO and that it is a critical component of any inbound marketing strategy, I have to say that the medium that is having the biggest impact on my marketing efforts, as of recently, is imagery. In a world of 140 characters, it is hard to make your insights and message stand out, but if you add the right size compelling image that ties into the post message, you can stand out in a sea of hashtags.

Power of Images in Social Media

As more and more companies discover the importance of social media for marketing the waters become more saturated and it becomes harder to stand out against the competition. But, by incorporating images into your marketing efforts, social media or not, there is a greater chance that your potential customer will interact with you, and the proof is in the data:

• Social Media Examiner reported that Facebook posts with photos receive 53% more likes than posts without.
• A study by Stone Temple Consulting found that including an image in your tweets could increase the number of retweets it gets by 4 times or more.
• Buffer reported that Tweets with images received 18% more clicks and 89% more favorites.
• HubSpot found that blogs with compelling visual elements and graphics generated 94% more views than those without.

Which Brings Us to Canva

Even before I learned about Canva I know what kind of impact incorporating images into my marketing efforts would have. However, I am in no way a graphic designer or very friendly with Photoshop, and I didn’t want to solely use stock photography. So, I did my best to create unique images using, oddly enough, PowerPoint (don’t judge haha!). But this makeshift workaround was time consuming and did not always result in the most beautiful images. But, last year while at HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing Conference I had the amazing opportunity to hear Guy Kawasaki’s keynote, during which he introduced Canva! Not to sound overly dramatic, but it has made a huge positive impact on all my work.

So, what is Canva? Canva is a free tool that makes graphic design amazingly simple for those of us that were not born with the gift to create designs from scratch. This tool is perfect for people like me who have ideas in their head for ads, images, etc., but have never been able to accurately get them down/designed on paper. Canva has pre-sized layouts for almost anything you need, from Facebook cover photos, to Instagram posts, to Twitter images, to email headers, to blog graphics, and more. The great thing is that they are already sized correctly so that they will show up perfect in newsfeeds! They also have free icons and graphics that you can incorporate into your images, photo editing capabilities, and lots of inspirational examples to use as a starting point. And, if you want to use stock photography in your designs, they are extremely affordable at only $1 per image.

2 Key Benefits of Using Canva

I can without a doubt say that my marketing team has experienced two specific benefits because we started using Canva. The first is that we have seen a drastic increase in the number of interactions with our Tweets, LinkedIn posts, Facebook posts, and Google+ posts that include images compared to those that do not. As a result, we have also seen an increase in the number of visitors coming to our website via social media and the number of followers. The second benefit that we unexpectedly experienced was the impact that it had on us as a team. Those who were not graphic designers, such as the social media manager and copywriter, were now empowered to take their work to the next level without having to ask for an image from the design team all day long. At the same time, the graphic designers were now able to focus more of their attention and efforts on larger projects that would help move the company forward and challenge them, in a good way! Canva is definitely a tool that I recommend for all digital marketers.

Learn more about Canva now!

I do want to say that I am in no way receiving any financial benefit or benefit of any kind for promoting Canva, I am truly just a very big fan of this product!