Visual marketing – as the term probably suggests – is using visual content to help reinforce your brand identity and message, across your marketing efforts.

There are lots of ways to go about this, and lately I’ve noticed a huge rise in small business owners using Canva to create blog headers, and graphics for their social media platforms. It really is great way to add visual identity to your brand message.

However, the approach many small business owners are taking could actually be doing unintentional harm to their brand and message.

The Canva approach

Canva offers lots of pre-existing design elements for you to choose between. Many of them are free, the rest are really cheap. It’s a process that’s gives you design freedom without you needing to spend time learning how to use difficult (and expensive) software. It also handily circumvents that challengeing moment of staring at a blank page and wondering where on earth to begin.

In short: it’s easy and it’s fun.

The downside is that everyone else is using the same elements and the same approach. The result? Visual content that is not necessarily linked to your brand, but to the Canva brand.

Time and again, across various social media channels, I’ve seen business owners create visual content. The responses from their friends and followers often follow some variation of the below comments:

“Love your visual. You created it using Canva right?”

“Ah..I see you’ve discovered Canva! It’s great, isn’t it?”

“Awesome graphic. I love Canva too! It’s so easy to use.”

How is Canva diluting your brand?

To me, the immediate thought that springs to mind is that this just proves how visually literate you all are. Canva has an identifiable design aesthetic, and most people seem to be able to identify it.

The point of visual marketing is to create imagery that connects back to your brand. In the same way that you want your blog’s voice to be consistent and reflective of your brand, your visuals need to fulfil the same role. If you’re creating visual marketing that is readily identifiable as ‘Canva’ rather than you, you’re wasting that opportunity to connect visually with your readers and followers.

I’m not for one second advocating not using Canva, or creating your own materials. But make sure you’re adding value to your brand while doing so, not diluting your brand.

How to use Canva to promote YOUR brand (not theirs)

Brand identity is generally built using some basic foundational elements. Keep these consistent, and your visual marketing materials will be a much closer reflection of your brand and business.

1. Keep fonts consistent.

Fonts are really important.

It may seem like a little thing, but picking fonts is one of the key ingredients in your design and brand identity. Stick to the fonts already used on your marketing materials and website.

If you’re not sure what they are, go back and ask the designer which fonts they used. You may not have access to the same ones, but some research on Google fonts or Font Squirrel, and you’ll be able to find an equivalent that closely matches.

For example, if your website is using handwritten fonts, and has a crafty feel, then creating (popular and trendy) retro-themed marketing material isn’t going to match your brand or reinforce your identity.

2. Colours

Stick to your brand’s colour palette.

Use the colours in your logo and the colours on your website. You can create tints of those colours to increase your options. This tool can help you create some darker and lighter tints of your existing brand colours.

If you feel like you need more colours, spend some time one day using a colour palette mixer to create your own custom palette. Try to end up with a maximum of 6 colours, together with some tints.

Once you’ve decided on these colours, save them down somewhere and use them as your reference. And then stick to them!

Keep in mind, that fewer colours often work better in designs, so you might be best just sticking to the 2 or 3 colours in your logo and website.

3. Gather your own design materials

Canva is great and has a wide range of pre-existing elements for you to use, but you don’t have to be restricted by what is on offer. You can also upload your own design elements.

We’ve got a Pinterest board of Freebies that we’ve been collecting from various place on the internet, that is updated regularly. It’s a board of illustrations, icons and fonts. Follow ours, or start your own.

Start your own library of brand-relevant illustrations and photos. Be strategic in what you collect, keeping your brand, your industry and your audience in mind.

4. Keep your range narrow

It’s tempting, when faced with a smorgasboard of options such as offered on Canva, to want to try and use everything. My best advice is to resist that temptation.

Think about your brand, and its identity. Get your fonts decided, pick your colours and then set up some templates. Think about how you can keep them consistent, and then try to work within those guidelines and constrictions. It might feel less ‘creative’, but it will make your brand message much stronger.

Canva has created a really clever, easy-to-use tool, to help you take charge of your own visual marketing. Use it to your advantage, and reinforce your brand identity.

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In my final year of high school, I used to swap weekly letters with one of my best friends. These letter were epic, they would run to about 10 A4 double-sided pages. I have no idea what on earth we had to say to each other that took up so much time, energy and English language (unfortunately, in the intervening years, I’ve lost all those letters). I also can’t remember the real motivation behind why we did it, but I suspect it was a simple as the fact that we both just liked writing.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, and I find myself sitting in bar, genuinely and honestly telling other people about how much I don’t enjoy writing. That it’s not something I’m good at, or inclined to do.

This is the story that I’ve been telling myself for a couple of years now. It’s the story about how as a person involved in producing visual content, that stringing words together isn’t something I enjoy doing.

It’s a pretty unconvincing story to my own ears, and now I’m telling this story to other people?

Why is business blogging so damn hard?

Writing blog posts for my business is often the last thing I want to be doing, any time of any day. I’ve even created a fun anxiety response in myself whenever I think about having to sit down and write something.

The hilarious irony in all of this, is that writing is actually something that I’ve always done. I won’t embarrass myself by linking to any of them, but there are a number of blogs sprinkled around the internet which are filled with my writing. I’ve got piles of handwritten journals, diaries, attempted short stories, all sorts of stuff. I’m not claiming any of it is any good, or that I’m a great writer.

And yet, somewhere in the last few years, I started believing that I don’t like writing. And so I’ve stopped writing at all.

The problem, however, isn’t that I don’t like writing. What I don’t like doing is ‘content marketing’.

‘Content Marketing’ vs ‘Writing’

We are told that our job when writing our blogs is to be authoritative, and knowledgeable in our niche. To write for our audience while sharing information, showing our expertise, giving useful information and yet remaining personable and (ideally) a little bit funny. All while remaining authentic.

Couldn’t be easier, right?

Is it just me, or does the whole concept of content marketing feel contrived? There are so many boxes to be ticked, rules to be followed, gurus to emulate. We’re awash in endless blog posts talking about the same things, with similar themes being rehashed over and over.

It’s overwhelming and underwhelming all at the same time. The honest truth is that I have not been able to find a way to be authentic, not while obeying all these ‘rules’.

So I shut down, shut up, and just stopped.

Is it a choice between ‘writing’ and ‘content marketing’.  I’ve got no idea. Am I making a distinction that even exists?

I have been trying really hard to get on board the content marketing train, and while I manage to occasionally rustle something up, it’s nowhere near as consistent as it should be.

I sometimes wonder if it is worth doing, but the fact is that I do notice an upswing in enquiries and interaction when I do post something.

This is not a personal blog

I am aware of the difference between a business blog and personal blog, and so I know that this isn’t really the space to naval gaze and indulge myself too much.

I mean, this whole piece is breaking a fundamental rule, isn’t it? Look at all the pronouns about ‘me’ and ‘I’…there’s nothing in here for ‘you’.

I do think it’s worth exploring though. I know that I’m not alone in struggling with content marketing. We dress it up as not knowing how to write headlines, or struggling with what to write about, or focusing on the length of our sentences, breaking our paragraphs into digestible chunks, using great subtitles and getting the keyword density just right…(quick, take a  breath).

Isn’t the fundamental block possibly something else?

Is it the inability to find our voice? The story that we tell ourselves about how we’re no good at this, or that we don’t even enjoy this, hiding behind a million excuses instead of working out what our truth really is?

My truth is that I’m an introspective over-thinker who (paradoxically?) likes to waffle on. This post is by far the most ‘authentic’ piece I’ve written on this website, and it’s little more than a long-winded introspective piece of waffle. Content marketing? Not so much.

To show that I haven’t completed missed the point of the zillions of articles I’ve been reading over the past couple of years, I am going to do a follow up post to this one. I have been making some progress in this area, and so I thought it might be worth sharing some of the techniques I’ve been using.  Because this blog isn’t just about me, it’s about sharing what I know and what I learn, because I am keeping – you – my audience, in mind. Just like I’ve been told to.

I’d love to know what you think. Do you struggle with business blogging? Have you ever sat down to work out why? And if you’ve come up with any solutions, would you like to share?

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