10 Unexpected Ways to Use Canva to Boost Your Online Business

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Presenting attractive, on-brand visuals is one of the most critical parts of building a trustworthy, design-centric brand. But let's face it; we're not all gifted with the technical skills to create gorgeous assets from scratch. 

Thankfully, you don't have to hire a professional to take care of the design aspect of the business. There's Canva!

Canva is an intuitive, user-friendly graphic design program that lets users create captivating graphics. It has custom tools and templates for various purposes, such as creating ebook visuals, infographics, and social media content.

But beyond the extensive library of free and premium stock images, Canva visuals have multiple uses. How to take full advantage of Canva to grow your business? In this guide, we're outlining tips to use Canva in unexpected ways:

10 Unexpected Ways to Use Canva in Business

Social Media Icons

Canva'ss icon maker offers a selection of icons to represent people, places, and objects. You can create social media icons with just a few clicks on Canva. 

To create social media icons on Canva, go to “Shapes,” scroll down to “Social media icons,” and choose the design. Canva has icons for major platforms, including Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. The icons are free to use, and the size is adjustable to 40×40. 

Blog Quotes

While blogging platforms like WordPress and Showit have tools for creating text quotes, you can use Canva to create even more attractive image quotes. Image quotes are more versatile than conventional text quotes, which can be posted on various social media platforms. 

To create a customised image quote, choose a phrase or sentence you want to highlight. There's no specific template for quotes, but there are dozens of pre-made designs to choose from in the image library.

Choose what you like, copy-paste the text quote, and start editing the image. Use your brand font style and colour scheme to boost branding. Save your edits and download the image as .PNG. Now you can upload the image quotes on any blog or social media post. 

Digital and Print Brochures

Gone are the days when you have to hire a printing service to design and produce brochures for your products. With Canva, you can create digital and print brochures of any kind. Canva has a collection of premium and free designs to choose from. All you have to do is take care of the copy and customise it with your branding elements like font style, colour scheme, and logo. 

You can use the brochures to promote your business online and offline. You can create handouts to promote your business anywhere. You can also design premium brochures and sell these to other companies. 

Photo Collages

You can use a collection of personal photos to promote your business. Using Canva, you can create photo collages, which you can use as marketing materials. You can print the collages on brochures or as handouts for business events. You can post the collages on your website or social media. You can also feature collages on infographics, blog posts, newsletters, and even email messages.

Presentation

In Canva's “Documents” section, you can check out customisable presentation templates for any presentation. The sizes are available in a standard size to 16:9 widescreen. These templates come with coordinating layouts to match the designs. Click the corner of the presentation to check out the matching design.

Use your branding visuals to customise the presentation and maintain the branding elements across all slides for consistency. 

Create Meeting Agendas  

One of Canva's best but little-known features enables you to create business-friendly documents, specifically – meeting agendas!

From Canva's “Document” section, go to the “Letterhead” library, and you'll be presented with dozens of versatile business templates. You can customise these templates to create attractive, on-brand meeting agendas. From here, you can customise the templates to make them stand out even more and save the edits.

Download the image as a .PNG file, save it on your PC, and upload it to a Word document. Using the image you created on Canva, you can create documents for any meeting and leave positive first impressions among clients. 

Timeline

Canva's timeline creator lets you display the passage of time and highlight important events in a visually-appealing design. Canva's timeline design is similar to a vertical infographic design, and you can copy and paste the text to create and track historical events, sequences of events, or statements in a specific order. 

The Timeline editor is at the bottom of the “Show” pages tab. You can choose a design from this section and edit it with the copy. You can also switch between thumbnail and timeline views. 

QR Codes

Did you know that you can use Canva to generate QR codes? While some websites or services offer QR code generation, some are cumbersome and outdated. On Canva, you can generate QR codes automatically and integrate the QR code into your design. Start by creating a Hovercode account.

On the dashboard, go to Apps > Create something new > QR Code. Key in the page link you want to create QR code for, then click “Generate Code.” The generated QR code will then be added to your design. 

You can also create customisable QR codes called “Dynamic QR codes.” These QR codes can be personalised with your branding elements, such as your business logo, colour scheme, font style, border, etc. 

To create a Dynamic code, go to the homepage side panel, then choose “Discover Apps.” To use a template, select “Use in Existing Design. If you want to create a new design, choose “Use in New Design.”. Connect your Canva account to your Hovercode account, customise the design, and then save and download. 

Create Product Mockups

Do you still use Photoshop to create product mockups? With Canva, there's no need to use complicated software programs or hire a professional to do this. 

Product mockups present a preview of a product the way you want clients to see them. These visual assets help present ideas visually, which are useful for attracting clients, investors, or stakeholders.

To create a product mockup, go to “Smartmockups” from the homepage side panel of Canva. Upload the product photos and click “Select” to automatically apply the pictures or design to the template. 

Click “Adjust Image” to alter the image size, alignment, or orientation. Save your edits when done, and start sharing the product mockup. 

Create Downloadable Products to Sell

While everyone can use Canva, not a lot of content creators have the talent for creating unique designs. You can turn your design skills into a moneymaker by designing and selling ready-to-download content documents. 

You can create a cheat sheet, checklist, one-pagers, and other digital downloadables to sell. You can also accept brands and businesses to create unique, on-brand pieces of content. Just choose what kinds of documents you want to create, design them to elevate their visual style and make them as unique as possible, and then save the documents to sell. You can offer your services or sell products in bundles to boost sales. 

Whether creating eye-catching social media graphics, professional presentations, or stunning visual content for personal or business purposes, the Canva app is an excellent choice for unleashing your creativity and producing high-quality designs without the need for extensive design skills.

With the list above, we hope to have fired up your imagination and start creating amazing content to boost your revenues using Canva.

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