My latest endeavor is learning a service called Canva.com. I don't know why I waited so long. It's such a great resource for creating branded content for your travel business. You don't need to have a creative bone in your body to make something more than adequate via Canva.
PS: I made the thumbnail for this article with Canva.
Price
Canva has a free level and a paid level that costs $12.99/month. The free version offers you a whole lot to be honest. The premium gives you access to a lot more templates, stock footage, plus you can post directly from the Canva app. We have the premium service at Jess, but you may find a lot of the extras not needed especially when you combine them with other free services like Unsplash/Pixabay for free pics, and Google Slides for free presentation software.
The premium Canva subscription allows you to add your logos, fonts and company colors, and has them at the ready for easy call up. For our brand that was really nice. You may find it superfluous.
Why care about Canva?
A custom travel planner can use Canva to create all sorts of travel planning stuff including:
Social Media Posts including video, thumbnail pics, and banners
Website Creation
Video Creation
Custom Presentations you can use for itinerary proposals
Logo creation for your business
Business card creation
Brochures and stationary
There's a ton more, but for the purpose of this article, I'll focus on the above.
Social Media
Literally every type of social media post is covered by Canva. Their extensive catalog of royalty free stock photos, video, music etc makes creating a post and then formatting it for each platform very easy. Everything is drag and drop.
Website Creation
Canva recently added the ability to create websites via a myriad of website templates, and I think they're super. Amazing that you can create a whole travel website this way. Maybe I wouldn't go this route permanently, because there's no way it will ever be as robust as an actual website builder like Wix or Wordpress, but for a quick explainer site or landing page, this is more than enough. You can publish the site via a Canva link or you can direct it to your specific domain.
Video Posts
Most people new to working with their brand are most intimidated by video posts. I understand, I own a video production company. So, I know what goes into making good video content, but Canva makes it dangerously easy. It's drag and drop a-la iMovie or Windows movie maker. Choose a template. Drop in some provided Canva stock video and music. Switch out the text and music, and voila, you've got something darn near usable. Even better if you upload your own content for more personalization.
Custom Presentations
There are so many killer presentation templates you could use for creating your Travel Itineraries. Customize one, and duplicate it over and over for future clients. Swap out the pics and text with a click. Google Slides and Traveljoy's proposal maker is free and probably integrates better with your workflow, but Canva's presentations are just as good as what you can get on Envato for Google Slides, and way better than Traveljoy's.
Logo Creation
Just like Placeit.net or Wix's logo creation, Canva has it too. I really liked what it came up with. I'm getting a little tired of the globes and plane icons. Do as I say not as I do though. Our logo has a plane.
Stationary
These days business cards and stationary are much less used, but every new business owner loves to futz with business card design. I know I do. I've probably handed out 6 business cards in the last year, but it didn't stop me from putting hours into making it.
For a very in depth video on using Canva see below.
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