Using Canva in Podiatry Marketing

You're listening to Podiatry Marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald.

Welcome back to Podiatry Marketing. I'm your host, Jim McDannald. Joined by me as always, Tyson Franklin. Tyson, how are things going today?

I'm great today, Jim. It's, yeah, starting to warm up here in Cairns where it's not summer yet, but it's not too far away. And you just feel the the air and the temperature changing. And I love it. The hotter it gets, the the more I enjoy it.

Well, I'm wearing my my my tropical shirt today to to celebrate with you as it's November here in Canada. It's getting colder by the day, but that's just the way it goes. So

I could only imagine. You dump me in Canada right now and I wouldn't know it hit me.

So before we kinda like lose everybody with the weather, what's new? What's going on? What's the topic for today? The topic du jour?

To the topic du jour or whatever you said. Du jour. I can't say it. Which is why I only speak English. It is today's topic is the benefits of using Canva in podiatry or in your podiatry marketing.

It's it's a tool. It's an app. It's one of those things that it's a free graphic design platform that pretty much allows you to easily create your own creative and visual designs. And the best thing about it is it's really really easy to use. And I came across it a few years ago.

I've been using it probably about four or five years now.

Yeah. I think that's a it's definitely a very interesting tool. I think, you know, most people growing up or that have some awareness about graphic designer when it talks about Photoshop. But Photoshop is one of those programs that, number one, it can be expensive. And number two, there's a very steep learning curve.

But I've looked into Canva and some of the, not only the things you can design in there, but also if you're working with a graphic designer, having them create templates for you can make it very, very simple, quick and easy ways to have very sharp looking graphics. Different types of banners and images can be created in Canva. I'm really excited to to hear more about it and hear how you think some of the people in our audience might be able to utilize it in their practice.

What's funny is like you said, some of those other programs like Photoshop used to just seem so complicated, and you almost needed a a graphic design degree to understand how they actually worked, which was very off putting. So people used to just create really crappy visual presentations of whatever it is that they were doing. So then 02/2012, a group of young people in Perth came up with Canva. They are now all billionaires. So I wish in 02/2012, Jim, you and I had come up with this idea.

So but we didn't. And and it's just amazing. So the whole idea of it is they've come up with this app, and they've got all these free templates. So if somebody's never used Canva, go to Canva, canva.com, and there is a free version. They just go and register for it and or sign up and start using it.

And it's it's intuitive learning. So there is tons of different templates there, and they list out all the different things you can use them for. So I've got a couple here. You can use them for, like, social media posts. So if you were doing a Facebook post, Instagram, LinkedIn, if even if you're putting something on a TikTok, different presentations.

So you can do Zoom backgrounds or other video presentations, like, for YouTube and Facebook. But you can go as far as just doing invitations. You can do posters on there. Infographics. I did an infographic a while back, and I plan on doing more.

And if if people don't know what an infographic is, it's where you'll have it's usually quite slightly longer than a normal post, and it might have three, four, five, six little photos there and a cup and a few words next to it. The whole idea is to sort of tell a short story with a picture and a few words, and that's pretty much the infographic. So it's information with graphics, which sort of makes sense. And then other visual content and other forms. So anything that you potentially could use in marketing for business cards, flies, doing a newsletter, that they've got templates for everything.

And that is in the free version. So you don't have to pay for it. You can do a lot with the free version even though I'll I'll talk about the paid version a little bit later.

No. That's awesome. I think you bring up a really good point. Having all those, brand colors, your logo, all those things can make it pretty easy to take those templates and just copy paste a lot of that stuff or just drag and drop a lot of things that in other types of software like talked about Photoshop and other more design centric or more kind of pro level apps not only cost more money but just have that learning curve that most podiatrists don't have time for. I think I've utilized Canva like you said they already have that kind of the right dimensions.

Know, I think one thing that sometimes when we either are maybe for writing a blog post for a clinic or we're trying to create something we want to have, you know, maybe it looks it's one dimension in Facebook. It's another dimension Instagram. It's another dimension in Twitter. And I think that's what Canva also does really well is that you don't have to go search the Internet like is it a hundred and know, 1,200 pixels by whatever. All those kind of like standard social media or those standard business card or flyer dimensions are already templatized.

So it takes away that stress of trying to have to figure out how big something is. If and also, like you said, just kind of copy and paste something across multiple sizes. Maybe there's small adjustments that have to be done, but it's a it's a tool that saves people a lot of time I would say, along with being very easy to use.

Especially the sizing. Like you said, you all of a sudden, you're thinking of doing a Facebook post or it could be something on Instagram, and every platform seems to be a little bit different. You know that when you're in Canva and you click, okay. I'm doing a Facebook post. So you click on Facebook templates.

What's in front of you is gonna be perfect for Facebook. Now you sort of touched on fonts and branding. So and this is the difference between having the the free version and going to the paid version. And I I used the free version for probably a year and a half, maybe two years before I switched over to the paid version. So, actually, I think it started in 02/2012.

I think I started using this maybe about eight years ago, so it's it's been a fair while. And because I was using it prior to selling my clinic, which was over six years ago. So, yeah, maybe it was a little bit longer. The difference with the paid version and it's like anything. Anything you pay for is always gonna be better than the free version.

And sometimes, yeah, some some tight asses will sort of go, oh, I know the free version is good enough for me. That's all I'm ever gonna need. And, yes, that may be you can probably get away with just using the free version. But once you understand what the paid version does and how much more professional it makes you look, then yeah, you might part you might let the you open up your wallet, let the moths out and actually part with some money.

But I think that's I think it's a good point though. Think it and Canva is a very inexpensive software solution. I think I don't know. I haven't seen it, but it's somewhere around $20 US per month maybe compared to something like Photoshop, which can be $50 to $100 a month. It's a steal of a deal to be honest with all the kind of functionality that you have.

And be able to say like you said, save in images, in fonts, save in logos, and it's such a drag and drop solution that you know a couple hundred bucks for the entire year is well worth it?

Well, in Australia, it's a hundred and $65 a year Australian. Okay. Which mean in American dollars, it's probably free. Can see how bad that dollar is.

It's about a hundred bucks. A hundred American, maybe?

Yeah. Probably about a hundred dollars American. But I know the last time, because the Australian dollar fluctuates a little bit, I think it was, like, a hundred and 20 or a hundred and $40 a year. But the amount I use it every pretty much nearly every day, I'm using Canva for something. It it just I use it constantly.

And so all my podcast show titles that I do for, like, the podiatry legends podcast are all done using Canva. All my webinar graphics when I'm doing a webinar, any if people have seen any of my download milestones where, you know, 600 episodes, 900 episodes, you got someone wielding a sword around, that's all basically through Canva. All my YouTube thumbnails are all done through Canva. So I I pretty much use it for everything. And pretty much when it and the other good part with Canva too, it already has a fairly extensive photo gallery.

So I used to prior to Canva I can't remember what it was called. There used to be a place called Dollar Photo where you used to be able to get stock images for a dollar each, which was quite good. And then Dollar Photo sold out to Adobe Photobrob, I called it, not stock, Photo Rob. And all of sudden, it went to, like, $11 a photo if you wanted a decent image of something. When I came across Canva, all of sudden, they had a pretty good set of stock photos there that you could use for different things.

And there were a lot of photos to choose from. But what I noticed is in the corner, it used to have this little crown, I think it was.

A watermark? Or this oh, crown. For a

oh, I just had a crown there, which meant you couldn't access that one unless you had the professional edition. You were paying for it. There you go. And that's when I went, you know what? I'm just gonna do it because I'm using it all the time.

So I paid my, you know, hundred and $65. So, well, if I don't like this, I don't have to renew it, and I've been renewing it for the last six years at least. But to give people a bit of a rundown, the benefits of the paid version, we've got some things here. It unlocks, like, 600,000 or something different stock images, videos, and templates. It's just ridiculous the amount of images that are there.

It increases your storage rate. So I think it's five gigabyte on the free one. It's one terabyte on the paid one. So anything that you create, you can basically save it there. It has this tool called background remover.

So when you mentioned before that you can drop photos into into Canva, which you can very easily, if anyone ever looks at any of the artwork that I've created, you'll see got all the background, and you got the person there, it's pretty much just the outline of the person. And I and I can put two or three people over the top of each other. So what you do is you just put the photo in there, press background remover, and it etches it all out for you. I used to pay separately for another program called photo etcher that would etch it all out for me, but the the paid version of Canva does it for you. You can create just dedicated folders for different projects that you're doing.

You can actually create your not just create your social media post, but you can actually schedule your social media post to be released through Canva. So you don't necessarily have to have a separate scheduling program if you didn't wanna do that. And most importantly, and this is what you were talking about, it allows you to use your own brand font, colors, and logos. So you get a choice of colors that you can use for different things. But when you have the paid version, you put in all your your style guide, your color codes, and therefore, it matches everything that you're doing in your own business.

Yeah. That's huge. That's huge. Like, not having to remember all those different color codes and those things can save you a lot of time whether you're just searching, you know, wasting time searching it down or looking at your website or trying to figure out those color codes can take a while. I think there's another tool that I've used maybe it's, I'm not sure how useful it would be for people in podiatry practice, but they do also do have the ability to kind of put things on a screen, like an almost like a mock up, these kind of, I don't if you've used it in the free mock ups within Canva.

So if I wanna show, let's say, a podiatrist website on somebody's mobile phone, you can like superimpose a picture of their website like onto the phone. Like it's like someone's, you know, it's a kind of a stock image or somebody holding a phone. Oh yeah. But you can kind of do these smart mock ups where you show the actual website you want to show. So when I'm using it for my Podiatry Growth website, I can put somebody's website like on an iMac or somebody's website on an iPhone and it looks super professional and super sharp.

What's funny, I have actually used that before doing certain posts or when I've been doing presentations and I've had different things there. And I have used it, but I have not used it for so long. And you know what? It's funny. I couldn't remember where I had actually sit done that.

So it must have been on Canva. And that's what I mean. There's so much in there. Like, before jumping on here, I went and had a bit of a scroll through Canva just to look at some of the behind the scenes type information that's there. And it just blew me away on how much you can actually do and what they offer for a hundred and $65.

It was just I mean, it it was so cheap. And there's another feature that's on the professional or the paid version that you don't get on the free, and that's resizing. So you might do up one design, and you go, oh, that's great. I did that for Facebook. I wanna resize it now for Instagram, and it will automatically do it for you.

Sometimes it's great. Sometimes you go, oh, I just need to move things a little bit. But in general, it's usually pretty good. So that can save you a lot of time. You do one design and go, I want it for these four different platforms.

And straight away, it will just do the changing for you. And you can also use Canva. If you wanted to create your own logo, you can, but I wouldn't. That's just that's just me. I think that brings

up a very interesting topic and probably this is something we could expand into a future episode. But where is that line between when you decide, oh, I'm just gonna go full Canva versus when should you talk to about a graphic designer? Or what what is the the right kind of relationship to establish with somebody? And then maybe they set up your templates. Or how do you go about how do you think about that as far as the relationship between utilizing this great software program, but also having the expertise in a graphic designer professional to maybe help you like get get started in the right way?

I love Canva and I love what it can do. I love that I've I'm pay I've got the paid version. I can put my own color colors in there, fonts, all that. But what's interesting is all my whole color scheme, the fonts that I use, and the basic thinking behind everything that I do all start with me first using a professional graphic designer. And my graphic designer is Leticia Moran.

That is my favorite go to person, and which I have recently introduced you to, Jim. And and the what I liked about using her prior to talking to her, anytime I got any sort of creative work done, I may have gone to a printer or some other place, said this is what I wanna do. Their graphic designer would put something together for me, and they would do it. Then the next time I wanted something done, it would be a different graphic designer working for that company, and they do something else. And these people wouldn't talk to each other.

They wouldn't share artwork because I didn't realize that when you went to a printer or something like that, you do not own the even though you've paid for the graphic design, you do not own it. They own it. They own the rights to that. And you can get them to release it. And if they're nice people, they they usually will.

But I kept noticing that things just weren't always looking exactly the same. So then I I bumped into Leticia, my graphic designer. And somebody else who had been using it for years put her in touch with me. I sat down with her, and we went through everything that I was doing, everything I wanted to do, and she created what she called a style guide, which was all my fonts, the colors, the color codes. So from that point onwards, anytime I wanted anything done professionally printed in any way, I said, this is what I want done, and I said, and here is my style guide.

And from that point onwards, nothing ever got buggered up. And I think your your logo and your brand is so important that you should be paying a professional to get that nut nutted out and nailed, then you can take that information and then put that into Canva and then start messing around with your own stuff. And even Leticia says she has no problems at all with people using Canva because it is such a good program.

Yeah. I can I can't agree more? I think that's a great approach is kinda getting things solidified with a professional to get started. And then you can kind of remix it from there and kind of like stay within those guidelines or stay within those lines of what your brand is and what it isn't. But having an outside resource and a professional to help you get started I think is a huge value add for sure.

Well, it's no difference in using a professional to do your website. So if you've done your own website, of course, you're gonna think it looks great. And people that ask, oh, what do you think? They're gonna be polite. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. It looks good. But so to me, you should be using a professional for your website. And then you do your own tinkering in the background afterwards if if that's what you choose there. And that's how I look at Canva is a program that offers so much.

I think if you really want the mess get the best out of it, you really need a professional to give you some background information first on your business and have that all locked in, then you can use it in as many places as you want.

Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I think that's a that that's sage sage advice there.

So I think that if if people aren't convinced by now to use Canva, even just start to tinkering around with it, use the free version, then they're never going to use it.

No. I think I think you I mean, at the very least, you know, they could try the free version. Right? Even if you have no graphics experience whatsoever, you're just curious as far as like what's the kind of up and coming software that can, know, maybe there's a little bit of a social media post or some way just to kind of get started with it. But I think, you know, you're right.

If they don't if they don't see the value or, know, they didn't listen to this, they don't hear the value that it kind of expounded upon today, I'm yeah, they're probably not going to, but I think you can't go wrong with the free version just to get your feet wet a little bit and see what it's all about. Whether it's somebody in your office, maybe it's a marketing person or assistant who's helping you do this on Canva. It's a very user friendly software, especially that free version. There's not really reason not to kind of give it a go.

Yeah. And it wasn't too long ago that when I was doing creating the the visual for, say, a webinar when I was promoting it. And I was just doing it myself, yet still using Canva, but I wasn't actually clicking on the webinar templates. I was just doing it through something else. I think it it still looked pretty good.

And then not too long ago, I said, oh, webinar templates. My odds are gonna look amuse myself. And I clicked on that, and my god, it took what I was doing, which I thought looked okay, to bloody hell, this looks, like, 20 times better. So it made me realize that, okay. They've got all these different templates there for a reason that are visually going to look good.

So why why beat myself up and try and create my own templates sometimes when they're just there? And the other part too, I don't know if this happens with the free version, but in the paid version, usually, Canva, it's every two or three days sending me an email with updated templates that say, hey. Have a look at these. These are some of the things that people have created. So I think it's a no brainer.

Every podiatrist should be using Canva. And not being paid by Canva, which we probably should reach out to. Hey. Do you wanna we'd love you to sponsor the show.

Yeah. We we don't neither one of us have any kind of financial arrangements with Canva, so this is definitely

Yeah. Maybe might

after Yeah. Maybe we'll.

Okay, Jim. I think I think this topic has been covered.

Alright, Tyson. Well, thanks a lot for that information about Canva. If anybody has questions about how to get started or any kind of graphic design basics, definitely reach out to us. It's been a fun one and we'll talk on the next one, Tyson.

Okay. Bye. Bye now.

Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDaniel. Subscribe and learn more at Podiatry Marketing. That's the website address, podiatry.marketing.