When I first started blogging, I had a problem. A confidence problem. I always wanted to make sure everything was absolutely perfect before hitting publish…and rightly so. The writing came easily for me. It was the visual aspect that would trip me up. I’d have multiple posts written in my queue that were just waiting for an on-point image to really make the post stand out. I’d spend hours upon hours on Canva, Pexels, and Lightroom trying to create the perfect image or graphic.
But it finally clicked for me in the past few months when I’ve been short on time (hello new mom life!). I realized that there is no perfect image for any blog or social media post. It’s about what you make of the post, and no image or graphic will please everyone’s visual interpretation.
One thing that drastically helped, though, was creating my own branding in Canva. I sat down and spent an afternoon creating my own logo, color palette, and font. Then I created a few graphics that I could use as templates whenever I was in a pinch. This has saved me TONS of time lately! Like, seriously, I have been given the gift of time with this trick.
Whenever I’m stumped on a visual I go to my template. Now, be careful not to overuse your templates. Don’t use them as an excuse to not dig deep into your creative brain; it’s not there to give you the easy way out. But DO use it as an assist to help inspire more creativity. Now that I have a solid place to start and don’t feel like I’m starting from scratch every. single. time, I feel like I have more opportunity to visualize within my branding toolkit and am able to create more creative posts.
Not only that but having a set color palette helps me identify images that will look better on my page. Knowing that I will be slapping my logo in the corner, or will be putting a purple overlay with text on top of the image, helps me narrow down the search much faster. And it gives me the visual eye to think “Hey! That would look great on my page!” when I randomly see something that fits into my theme. My design eye is more focused and I am more focused.
Check out my templates and share in the comments what has been a huge time-saver for you in the blogging and social media biz!
My Pinterest Template
My Facebook Template
My Twitter Template
