 Welcome to The Journey. Today we're going to show you how to create images for your social media platforms. One of the easiest ways to improve consistency with branding is through looking at all your social media platforms and making sure that they line up with your voice, with your brand. And I was thinking a lot about Instagram the other day and which brands I follow and actually how consistent are they. And I came across Jesse Cam. If you can afford this clothing, you're doing something right in your world. But as you notice on the Instagram, the consistency with the colors, the toning, the vibe from this California surf nature-esque vibe there. Very natural, like in nature. It's got great style and great fashion, of course. Yeah. And actually, so have you ever heard of this brand? I have not. So this, oh my God, this is perfect. Because like I've stared at this, purchased this, you've never looked at it. Would you, would you notice that pops out as consistent? It's really the imagery that they use. It looks like they're trying to create just like a fun, just kind of extreme because they're surfing, but also kind of serene too. Definitely beach ocean vibes there for sure. Yeah. Very made in California. And the surfboards. Yeah. Absolutely. With the sunset and the beach, the surfboards. Even this one, this is my favorite, the overalls and the girls on the bike and the skate. Taking from someone who's never come across this brand and instantly there's that imagery that, hey, this is consistent and there's authenticity here because of that. All right. So if you scroll down, I think the one that catches my eye is the woman. I think that's Jesse actually surfing. I always click that open. That's so rad. Yo, babes, I'm going to ride these good vibes all the way to Fashion Week. This is original content. This is great. This is it. Yeah. So, which is a good point because you, of course, there's stock photos out there that you can grab and throw up on your Instagram, but what we recommend is what can you create, what can you do that's original like this? I mean, Jesse Kim, as Nealey pointed out when he first came across this brand, oh, this is very made in California. Surf vibes, beach vibes. And it's so true to see even the owner out there getting pitted on a surfboard, which lines up with the whole, the whole Instagram itself. There's, in that, again, goes back to the authenticity there. And I don't think that you really need to go like super high quality, high professional with some of these photos. Sometimes your brand's voice is just being authentic and getting some pictures of you. Like, I know if you scroll down a little bit, there's one of her, it doesn't look like super professional, but still surfing. It's just that content there that shows who she is. Absolutely. And then even just with, you know, you think of a clothing brand, oh, I'm going to do photos of clothes all the time, right? Whether it's your customers wearing them or you're wearing them or you're just having displayed with like a simple white background. But there's more to your brand than just the actual product. So even like this post, well, the surfing one was a good example, but even this post here, you know, with all the fires that's happening in Australia and just giving this point of this is a really eye catching photo and just, hey, we're overcome with sadness for our friends in Australia and then they're donating 25% of every sale. So I think that's important too. Like, while the image caught my eye, the caption is essential too. The writing is essential as well. There's so much that goes into your actual feed as well as, you know, the profile photo. So in this case, it's a little abstract for Jesse Cam. Whereas if you hop over to modern surfboards, they have their logo here. So think about that for your brand. What do you want to do? Do you want to represent your brand logo? Also brings up cover photos thinking about Facebook. That's where you can also do a logo paired with maybe something more abstract like you saw with the Instagram profile photo of Jesse Cam. So if I were a surfboard brand profile picture, I would do the logo cover photo. I'd probably do a surfing photo because it's such like great space to do that. And there's lots of things you can do with the actual like cover itself. It doesn't have to just be a photo. It's prime real estate to you add in other information that really shows your brand. We're actually you're going to do a demo of sure and creating a Facebook header, a Twitter header and kind of see what we come up with. So inside of Canva under templates, just search cover. You can start just with Facebook covers and we'll kind of go from there. Sweet. Now you can go and choose one of these templates that makes sense for your brand. Paradise awaits. That's it. Especially we're going to Are there any waves there? We can update it. Okay. So I think with the thing not to get hung up with when choosing one of these templates is don't get hung up on the imagery and some of the verbiage itself. Find one that really fits your brand because we can change that pretty easily and we'll show you here. So is that the one? Yes. All right. I love these colors. Do you use this template? Got it. All right. So inside here, if you ever change your mind, templates will pop right up on the left hand side. So you can quickly change it. It's like go ahead and click any of them. I may be selective here. We're going to undo it. So this is That's cool. All right. That's kind of cool. Wait. I want to go with this one now. This is the one? Yeah. That's the one actually. Hold on. Yeah. That's the one. Okay. That's the one. All right. So we've changed our mind. We've picked a different template. So now it's time. Let's kind of adjust a little bit. I think we can really go with some type of beach vibe in some of these letters. Is pink your color though for your brand? I'm thinking. Yeah. This is not real. I was picturing more of the blues. That's why I was drawn to the first cover image because there's a variety of blues. So Go ahead and click the background. Okay. And then click the pink in the top left. Uh-huh. This is so user friendly. I know. All right. Shout out, Canva. Hey. Go ahead and choose that little rainbow wheel color at the very top left. I'll let you go ahead and just choose what color makes your screen. Well, I like some of these that are already there. Okay. Or you can pick them. Yeah. Those won't show up for everyone. I use Canva pretty religiously. So I have pretty set templates. As you know, if you've ever watched any of these videos, Canva shout out. But go ahead and choose what color makes sense. Okay. So I like this blue for the background. Cool. And then we want to probably change the pink background as well, right? Well, it kind of matches my shirt. All right. Let's keep it. Let's keep it. All right. So this template has overlays of these letters. Let's do a couple of them with waves since that really is you and your fake real brand. So go ahead and choose photos on the left hand side. Okay. And then just search, sir. Should I surf it or search it? You should both it. Okay. I'm seeing surfer, shorebreak, surfboard. Oh, that looks like Jesse right here. All right. So what you want to do is click on one of the images. And since this is an overlay, it'll overlay. Oh, you could do each letter individually. That's pretty cool. Okay. And I want to get rid of that because I wanted to pop and like really show the color behind some of these surf. Yeah, that's fine. Naly. I'm just going to take over. Take over my brand. This is it. But yeah, go ahead and pick some colors, pick some colors, pick some images. I wasn't sold on Canva until this moment. Like I've, I see the benefits, but for me actually taking the time to use it. I was like, I don't know if this is for me. Now I'm sold. I'm sold. This is it. This is it. This is all it took. Okay. So I go over the C with the image and why did that not work? Because you didn't go over the C of the image. Oh, okay. Also, note that some of you will have to pay for from some of the stock photos. So this will just go to your credit card, right? Yeah, absolutely. So let's not do that. All right. So that one's free. Put it over the C. If you want to get rid of the filter that's there, click on the C. Click filter the top left. And then click none. None. Oh, so you get the color of that? Yeah, that's what really drops. Okay. I want to do the just, I like the palm trees in one of them. That's fine. So let's just do the Y another. And, okay. Let's do this one. Well, yeah, I did that. We have this. Great mindsync of like that's right. All right, we'll do this on the A. And then go filter again. And then get rid of that gray filter that has with the template. Now this is great. You have the Facebook header and brain consistency is pretty important, right? Yes. So if you want this across your other social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter, there's different sizes to this. It's not one size fits all. This might look great on Facebook, but it might be cut off on Twitter and vice versa. So on Canva, you can go ahead and choose resize. And kind of see the options. So I obviously use this a lot. So it shows recent Twitter header. And you can see that a Twitter header is 1500 pixels wide by 500 pixels tall or height. So I can go and choose that. I can copy and resize, click that button right there. Then I have one directly for Twitter. And it made it a little bit longer than the Facebook one. And then vice versa. If I have any other cover photos or sizes that I might want as a brand, because again, that consistency is important to really be the same across the board. So if someone finds you on Instagram, are they going to have the same experience with your brand on Twitter? Or are they going to be like, well, what is this brand really? I'm an example. Let's see it. Okay. So I was checking out global surf industries and I found them on Twitter. First of all, speaking of headers, do you think they size that with Canva? Maybe. I don't know. I'm not a doctor. So looks good. The image is there. Also, you notice their logo here on Twitter. So being curious about consistency and branding, since we talk about all the time, I naturally hopped over to their Facebook page. So here's their Facebook. Again, they have their logos, their profile photo. And the same slogan there. Love is better when you surf. Different image. Different image, but exactly. Same slogan. Now let's see if they have all three. Bada bing bada boom. Same logo on the Instagram. And what do you notice in the bio? Same slogan. Life is better when you surf. So consistency across each of the platforms. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Now all this consistency is super important. And these social media profiles have different dimensions with their headers, their logos, their images, the little posts that share, the little image that shares when you share a link. There's a couple of different ways you can essentially resize them. So with your actual blog posts, you usually have a featured image and that's the one that pops up when you share that profile. I know if you're using WordPress, there are popular plugins like Yoast SEO that'll actually help you set up and add different images per the different platforms like Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn. So when you share, it's going to pull from that image first. And again, they have different dimensions. We'll have descriptions down below with some of that information on what it is. But again, Canva is your friend. You can go ahead and resize to be whatever fits your dimension for whatever post it is. So if it's going to be a Twitter post. Screw you, I made it. Sure. I'm learning. It's probably easier to be leaning right over. I'll let you drive. All right. So you're going to do Twitter posts. Get in the fastener seat. All right. What? Twitter posts right there. Copy and resize. And then when you would use this and upload it to your website, if you're using WordPress, there's other ways to do it, but it's a little bit more complex. Well, that way it's going to show this post on Twitter. And then if you have one that's going to show on Facebook, you can set it up. So it's going to show the Facebook dimension sizes. So it all looks exactly like you wanted to. All right. Now I have all my images. They're resized for the appropriate platforms. Now what do I do? Yeah. So this is going to be kind of a little out of the left field when it comes to social media profile, like profile photos and headers and all these different things. But there are some things like metadata that you'll also want to take into account. These are things like alt tags and titles and descriptions for your images. This more so applies for websites. It's basically how Google sees those images. So when it crawls it, it can't see this beautiful vacay photo and only sees a bunch of random lines of code. That alt text definitely helps understand like, cool, what is this photo all about to where if someone's searching online, they might find it. Can I guess? Sure. What would be good? Sure. So thinking about this image and to capture the right audience as well as what we're capturing as a brand in this, surf, surfer, beach, palm trees, waves. Yeah. And it's like that alt text, you're just trying to describe that image. And then by doing that, how would that help the image? I guess that's where I'm a little confused. Yeah. So that's on the website itself primarily. Instagram does have an alt tag option now. After you post, you can go back in and actually add alt tags to your images. Sweet. I'm glad that that's an option. That's really cool. I did not know that. All right. That's our app. You just learned how to create images for your social media platforms. Be sure to like this video. Add your comments below. Subscribe to our channel and ring that bell to get these episodes first. This is The Journey. We'll see you next time.