Graphic Images attract more traffic to your posts, articles, reviews, and tweets as apposed to plain text! The research tells us that this is a fact. The eye is attracted by colour and movement and as an online marketer, then graphic images and video has to be part of your marketing strategy otherwise you will miss out on all that traffic!

Canva provides the ability for someone with or without any design experience to create stylish graphic images in minutes for any web-based platform whether it be a website or any of the social media platforms.

So, this series of tutorials will walk you through the simple Getting Started with Canva steps including

• Creating your Free Canva account.
• Creating your Logo in Canva
• Creating a Featured Image for a post
• Creating Blog page graphics
• Creating Call to Action buttons

Create a Free Canva Account

1. Choose to sign up with Facebook, Google, or your email.

2. If you chose Facebook or Google, log into your account to authorize access.

3. If you chose to sign up with email, fill up all the fields.

4. Then click Get started.

5. From the options select what you are planning to use Canva for.

6. Complete the onboarding process.

7. You'll receive an email asking you to confirm your account. Follow instructions.

You will be presented with your own Canva Dashboard where you will be able to access everything including your account and profile details, design templates, and your own design library.

To get started, familiarise yourself with the drag and drop interface where all of your designs will be created. Just click a template from your dashboard or click the blue 'Create a design' button to choose a template and the drag and drop interface will open. This is where the design process takes place.

You will notice that to your left of the design interface is the menu panel where you have access to all the elements available to you with a free account.

You will have the opportunity to use the elements of Canva Pro for up to 30 days from signup at which point you will need to upgrade to Canva Pro to continue using those elements.

Now on to the next Tutorial on the next page - Creating your Logo in Canva.