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Instagram is an amazing medium to promote your brand, service, or products.
However, with the literal millions of accounts out there, it takes a lot of work to make your feed up to snuff, stand out, and shine.
Luckily, Canva – the awesome online graphic design program – is here to lend you a hand. When deciding how to market yourself on Instagram, you’ll be able to choose from a multitude of Canva’s free templates!
In this article, we’ll explore:
- Using Canva to make impressive Instagram stories, posts, reels, and much more
- Ideas on how to use Canva templates to market and promote your brand, products, and services.
Let’s dive right in!
Instagram Stories
It’s vital that your Instagram stories are immediately eye-catching as people have a tendency to quickly swipe through them if they’re uninterested.
Fortunately, Canva has a dedicated template section to help you out!
Just enter “Instagram Story” in the search bar and you’ll be met with hundreds of vibrant and eye-catching designs. Which one you select depends entirely on what your created story’s trying to promote.
Be sure to place important information in the center in a style that’s larger than the surrounding text. This will encourage your followers to stop and look deeper.
For instance, if you’re having a sale, make sure that the word “sale”, the percentage off, or the promo duration are all written in big and bold strokes. This quickly relays the essential info while simultaneously getting viewers on the hook.
When done right, an excellent Instagram story will encourage users to click on your page to learn more!
If you plan on posting more than one story, ensure that they look cohesive by selecting the same template or using the same color theme and motifs. It’s important to customize the text and images on each story for a consistent feel.
Instagram stories are also a great place to gain engagement on other posts or reels as you can quickly integrate these into a story sequence!
Instagram Posts
Instagram posts are the bread and butter of the platform. These posts will appear permanently on your profile (unless you delete them of course), so you need to make sure that they look great both individually and as a whole.
Using Canva templates is an easy and excellent way to make polished and professional posts that work together to promote your brand.
Infographics
Infographics are great for stating the facts about your brand or product while keeping things lighthearted and appealing.
Try to keep your infographics brief and straight to the point as a wall of text may overwhelm your audience!
By using Canva, you get to choose one of its already perfectly-spaced templates. Then, simply swap out the elements for relevant ones from either Canva’s massive collection or your own graphics and images.
Hot tip: not all of the infographic templates will be optimized for Instagram posting, so be sure to double-check before you save and upload! Here’s a quick rundown of the right dimensions to use:
- Square posts: 1080 by 1080 pixels
- Portrait posts: 1080 by 1350 pixels
- Landscape posts: 1080 by 566 pixels.
Quotes
Adding quotes to your Instagram page can give your followers (and others passing by) a smile, some motivation, or a new point of view to consider. All of these may result in more engagement and more time thinking about your brand!
Simply searching “Instagram Quotes” will help you find plenty of different Canva templates that are all optimized for posting.
Choose a template with a simple border and a little empty space, as this will perfectly highlight your quote. Having powerful words in bold or in a different color (or even both!) is attractive as well.
Make sure that your quote’s background and font are consistent with the overall look of your page. It’s also worth a quick Google search to ensure that the origins of the quote align with the values of your brand!
No matter the style and design you choose, here’s something to remember: the perfect quote will be reasonably concise, as people’s attention spans are similarly short!
Product Features
Instagram is a great place to let potential customers know about all the amazing things that your product has to offer!
And because Canva’s blend of text and images is easy to work with, making a sleek graphic will be a breeze.
To begin, just look up “Product Templates” in Canva and you’re good to go! Make sure to include an image of your product and keep the feature description down to a few words.
For example, if you’re advertising a sports drink on your website, you might say something like: “Our drink will refresh and energize you with our unique and delicious blend of natural flavors, spring water, and essential electrolytes.”
However, on your Instagram post, you’d want to have the key points written as bullet points next to the drink or on graphic lines jutting out of it.
The text might look something like this:
- Natural flavors
- Essential electrolytes
- Built to refresh.
Experiment with what has the best visual look while also effectively conveying all the necessary information!
Testimonials and Reviews
Posting all the amazing things your past and current customers have had to say is also a great addition to your Instagram feed. However, don’t just post a screenshot of the review!
The boring white-on-black, simple text is great for search engines as their job is to simply inform, but the same will appear jarring on your carefully crafted page.
Instead, use one of Canva’s templates (do a quick search for “testimonials”) to show the praise you’ve received while still retaining your aesthetic.
It’s a great idea to provide a link to the original review or testimonial to demonstrate the transparency and authenticity of your brand and to encourage your customers to leave a review of their own!
Seasonal and Holiday Posts
Canva is the perfect place to give your content a quick makeover to fit the season before posting!
Simply put the season’s keywords into the search bar and find hundreds of templates that will suit your needs.
Alternatively, under the Instagram posts section of Canva templates, you can find scrolling filters that will likely have what you’re looking for. These filters cover everything from Christmas and Easter templates to Oktoberfest and Cyber Monday.
Instagram Highlight Covers
Your story highlights sit right at the top of your page, this means people will catch them even if they don’t end up clicking on them.
The display image defaults to the first story in the selection, but why not keep everything clean and visually stunning by creating your own highlight cover on Canva?
There are over a thousand templates available, so select one that matches the vibe of your brand and customize it to your heart’s content!
Keep in mind that the covers will be cropped into a circle and will appear pretty small on the average phone screen. Because of this, you’re better off selecting a simple, easy-to-see design such as a single word or a clean graphic.
Instagram Videos
Did you know that you can edit videos in Canva as well?
That’s right! You can upload your own videos and add moving text, edit timing, crop the clips, and much more!
Canva also offers loads of templates that are available under “Mobile Video” to get you started and provides stock footage to combine with your own text and video.
Instagram Reels
Instagram Reels is one of the platform’s latest added features, and it’s a super popular way of utilizing the social media site!
Canva provides tools and templates to keep your brand’s products up-to-date, including a looping feature (which encourages rewatches), transition effects, sound effects, and picture slideshow options.
Instagram Ads
You want your Instagram ads to be just as appealing as something that you’d post on your own page!
This way, not only will the ads fit seamlessly into the Instagram feed, but consumers will also be more likely to read and interact with them.
Canva has a dedicated template selection for Instagram ads, so you can design one while optimizing its aesthetic appeal, sizing, and proportion to make it as engaging as possible.
Instagram Puzzle Feed
A puzzle feed is when your posts visually connect and overlap with each other in your profile, thus giving an impressive, cohesive feel to your page.
Having an overarching plan for your feed shows the intention behind your posts and also makes your profile appear polished and professional.
While Canva has several templates to help you make your own puzzle feed, you can also create one on your own by using the same template for your posts and then manipulating the elements to match them up.
It takes some work and planning, but it’s definitely worth pulling off!
Instagram Carousel Posts
Carousel posts are when you have multiple images for the same post on Instagram.
When posting these, it’s important to have both cohesion for a professional look and variation so your followers don’t get bored and scroll away.
It’s a hard one to get just right, but using a Canva template will help you strike that perfect balance!
An Instagram carousel post could be as simple as using the same background colors and font while having different images and positions on each post. You can also try having alternating complementary colors or the same element on each slide.
Try adding something fun or important at the end of the carousel to encourage your followers to swipe all the way through and reward the ones who do!
In Conclusion
Canva templates are an amazing resource to make your Instagram page pop!
By effectively utilizing them, you can easily promote your brand and products in a modern and appealing way – boosting engagement and ultimately increasing sales.
Be sure to check out our Free Canva Instagram templates!