E103: Fresh Ways to Save Time Using Canva

03/13/23 • 10 min

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Still think Canva is just for creating nice graphics? Think again. Canva has continued to update their product so that it has a unique offering of branding tools, website, video, and document creation, automation, and of course, graphic design. In Episode 103 of Just One Simple Thing, we’ll look at some of the best time-saving tools for content creators inside Canva.
Hey friends! Welcome back to our Time-Saving Tools series. So far, we’ve looked at the AI program ChatGPT in Episode 101 and Gmail in Episode 102. In in this episode, we’ll dive into our favorite program for quickly creating high-quality graphics ... Canva.
Canva has become the go-to tool for content creators to generate the graphics they need for social media, websites, and products. But the more recent additions to Canva branch out from downloadable graphics to include websites, documents, presentation tools, and a long list of app integrations.
So let’s look into some of the best features that will save you time.
We’ll start with Brand Kits. Your brand kit includes your brand colors, fonts, and logos. When you create a brand kit in Canva, they become available to you throughout the platform.
Another easy one is Templates. Canva comes loaded with thousands of templates you can use to get started on your design. But you can also create custom templates.
Another really cool feature is Bulk Create. This auto-generates multiple graphics from a template and a spreadsheet.
We could go on forever about all the fun graphic elements and tools for creating the graphics, but since we are focused mainly on saving time, let’s move away from graphics creation to some of the newer tools.
Like Canva websites. Canva recently rolled out this feature that allows you to publish your design as a website. You can start with a Canva website template, or create your own. It’s super easy to build by dragging and dropping elements just like you do in a graphic, changing background colors, sizing images, and laying it out exactly how you want it. It is great when you need a quick landing page for a product or event, an information portal or a client portal.
Another new-ish feature is Presentations ... Canva’s answer to Power Point and Keynote.
There’s another feature where you can invite people to join you live while you are presenting without using any other software (like Zoom or Teams) and you can go back and forth between your presentation and other tabs on your desktop.
So those are some of my favorite time-saving features in Canva. And these are just the tip of the iceberg. Next time you are creating a graphic, scroll down to the bottom of the far left toolbar and click on Apps. There are tons of things there to explore.
ACTION STEP
Head over to Canva and try just one new thing you haven’t done before. And let me know how it’s working out for you. You can follow me @doanewthing on FB and IG. I’d love to see what you are up to.
In the next episode, we’ll wrap up the Time Saving Tools series with tips for using Trello ... my favorite project management tool. I’ll see you then, and I hope you’ll bring a friend.
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Previous Episode

E102: Time-Saving Tips to Manage Your Gmail

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How many emails do you get every day? It seems like I spend half my day in my email inbox. Thankfully, Gmail has some features that can actually save us time. Listen in to Episode 102 of Just One Simple Thing as I share my favorites.
Welcome back to part 2 of our Time Saving Tools series! As I was preparing for this series, I did a poll on my Instagram stories asking which tools you’d like to learn more about. And would you believe ... Gmail was dead last! Y’all are sleeping on Gmail. It has some built-in and add-on features that can save you tons of time.
Let’s talk about a few of my favorites.
1. Schedule Send- Allows you to pick a time in the future that your email will be sent. Very handy!
2. Snooze- I can schedule them all to pop back to the top of my inbox later in the evening when I know I’ll be able to read and respond.
3. Undo/Unsend-You may have noticed Gmail’s Undo option flash by when you hit send, but the default only gives you five seconds to undo. Sorry, but at my age, my reflexes are not that fast! However, you can go to the settings and change the default to 30 seconds, which is more doable (or undoable!) for most of us.
4. Templates-If you have emails with similar content that you send routinely, you can create a template of that email, then call up the template, adjust a few details, then send it off, instead of trying to re-type the whole thing.
5. Snippets –Similar to Templates, Snippets allows you to quickly add commonly used text into an email.
Our last two tips involve using folders and filtering to manage your inbox. If you listened to Episode 93 in the January Reset series, you know that I am not a big fan of having a lot of folders. However, there are a few things that are better kept all together and that’s where labels, folders, and filters come in.
6. Simple filters
The first screen is where you tell it what you want to filter, either based on a from or to address, a word or phrase in the email, the size, etc. On the second screen, you select what you want to do with the filtered email. You can add a label, reply with a template, skip the inbox, and several other things.
7. Filters with Alias email
In a paid Gmail account, you can add up to 30 aliases for your main email address. Google recognizes the alias as the same email address and will put it in your inbox, unless you have a filter that says to put it somewhere else.
However,if you have the free account, you can create aliases without any extra charges. Just add a plus sign to the first part of the email address, then a word after the plus ... like [email protected]
So those are my favorite Gmail time-saving tips, but if you search around, you will find tons of other ideas to automate and streamline your inbox.
ACTION STEP
Pick just one of these tips and try it out. Share your favorite tip on social media and tag me @doanewthing so I can be inspired by how you are using it.
I hope you are enjoying this time-saving tools series. Do you have a friend who needs to save some time too? Be sure to share these episodes with her, so you both have more time for work AND play!
RESOURCES
Visit the episode page on my website for links to examples and tutorials

Next Episode

E104: My Favorite Trello Tips and Boards

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If you ask me how I keep things organized, my answer would be one word. Trello. Join me for Episode 104 of Just One Simple Thing where you’ll learn how I use Trello to helpme and my clients save time and stay on track.
If you aren’t very familiar with Trello, it’s a visual organizer. Information is put on Cards, which are organized in Lists, and saved on Boards. You can assign people and due dates to cards, create checklists on a card, and It’s super easy to move cards around between Lists and Boards.
Now that you have a visual, let’s talk about a few time-saving tips. One of my favorites are Labels. These are little colored bars at the top of each card. You can set each color to represent whatever you want it to, and toggle between just a small colored dash, and a longer bar with the text of the label.
It's helpful if your colors mean the same thing across all your boards. For me, the black label always means the task is completely done. Red usually means something is on hold, or waiting for info, or otherwise stuck. Green might mean the VA has done it and it’s ready for me to check.
My other favorite time saver is Automation. I mainly use Rules and Board Buttons. For Rules, you set up a trigger that then starts one or more actions. Board buttons are similar, except the trigger is a button that Trello puts at the top of your board and the automation will start whenever you click the button.
Let’s wrap this up talking about a few of my favorite boards that keep my business rolling. My Weekly Plan board works with my To-Do List to keep me on track every week. I also have a Social Media board. Another favorite is the Do A New Thing Hub. This is where all the important info about my business belongs.
There’s also the Do A New Thing Team board, where I have all the projects and ongoing tasks that the VA’s are working on, so I can assign things to them, monitor the progress, and make sure they are not waiting on anything from me.
On the Clients board, I have a list for each of my one-on-one coaching clients. The first card in each list has their contact information, and a checklist of all the elements of their coaching package, so I can check them off as we do each one. Then there is a card on the list for each of our coaching sessions with my notes from the session.
And one of my recent additions .... The Strategy Six Pack. This is part of my Simple Strategy Solution that keeps me on track with my most important strategic plans, and also functions as an idea capture system.
ACTION STEP
If you are already using Trello, try one of these tips to make it even more efficient and let me know how it goes. If you aren’t using Trello yet, head to my free Facebook group Plan & Pray with Do A New Thing and grab one of the Trello template boards I’ve linked there and get started.
RESOURCES

Build A Better Quarter Workshop - learn to use the Strategy Six Pack
Using Trello Labels

Trello Automation

Back Office Assessment by Shannon Baker