Revolutionizing TPT Sales Using Canva with Teresa Kwant
Apr 29, 2024
Lauren Fulton - The Rebranded Teacher
Unlock the potential of Canva to elevate your educational resource game on Teachers Pay Teachers, as Teresa Kwant, a TPT expert, joins me to share invaluable design insights. Imagine transforming your teaching materials with the click of a button—Teresa unveils the secrets to doing just that while ensuring your content is flat, secure, and ready to sell. As we navigate Canva's licensing landscape, you'll also discover how to harness the power of its brand kit to maintain a consistent and professional look across all your creations. Whether you're considering the shift from PowerPoint or simply refining your Canva prowess, this episode is teeming with strategies to boost your TPT business.
Step into the future of content creation with Canva's Magic Studio's AI tools, where Magic Write and Magic Video await to revolutionize how you craft your products. I'll walk you through my own experience with Magic Video, demonstrating how you can produce captivating product videos that could skyrocket your conversion rates. We'll also tackle the art of tailoring video previews to your audience, ensuring they're the perfect length to engage and convert. Teresa and I offer practical tips for a seamless transition to Canva, positioning you to take full advantage of this intuitive platform. Tune in for a wealth of knowledge that will not only inspire but also equip you with the tools to thrive as a creator on Teachers Pay Teachers.
Unlock the potential of Canva to elevate your educational resource game on Teachers Pay Teachers, as Teresa Kwant, a TPT expert, joins me to share invaluable design insights. Imagine transforming your teaching materials with the click of a button—Teresa unveils the secrets to doing just that while ensuring your content is flat, secure, and ready to sell. As we navigate Canva's licensing landscape, you'll also discover how to harness the power of its brand kit to maintain a consistent and professional look across all your creations. Whether you're considering the shift from PowerPoint or simply refining your Canva prowess, this episode is teeming with strategies to boost your TPT business.
Step into the future of content creation with Canva's Magic Studio's AI tools, where Magic Write and Magic Video await to revolutionize how you craft your products. I'll walk you through my own experience with Magic Video, demonstrating how you can produce captivating product videos that could skyrocket your conversion rates. We'll also tackle the art of tailoring video previews to your audience, ensuring they're the perfect length to engage and convert. Teresa and I offer practical tips for a seamless transition to Canva, positioning you to take full advantage of this intuitive platform. Tune in for a wealth of knowledge that will not only inspire but also equip you with the tools to thrive as a creator on Teachers Pay Teachers.
Welcome to the Rebranded Teacher Podcast. My name is Lauren Fulton. I'm a full-time teacher, author and seller on Teachers, pay Teachers and I help other teacher entrepreneurs grow their TPT businesses in a way that's purposeful and sustainable. So if you're looking for actionable, step-by-step ways to grow your business, you're in the right place. Let's get started it.
Speaker 2:
This week we have special guest Teresa Quant. I am so excited for you guys to meet Teresa. She's been a longtime successful seller on Teachers Pay Teachers and she is going to be sharing lots of Canva tips with us this week, including answering the very highly debated question of whether or not you can create resources on CanBuy. She is absolutely incredible and a wealth of information. Let's go ahead and meet Teresa.
Speaker 1:
Hey Teresa, how are you?
Speaker 3:
So good. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I'm so glad to have you here. So you are going to be one of our speakers at Teacher Seller Summit. We're so excited to have you and to learn a lot from you. So tell everyone a little bit about yourself and everything that you do, because I know that you wear a lot of hats.
Speaker 3:
Yes, so I started as a TPT seller over 10 years ago. It's been 11, 12 years. Sometimes I lose track. But I was teaching sixth grade and I stumbled across TPT and I started selling my resources and after about five years in the classroom, I decided to do TPT full time and I've been doing that now for many years and I love it and I decided that I wanted to be able to help other teachers learn how to create and sell their resources too. It is such a big passion of mine and it's changed my life so much that I want to help other educators figure out how to do it too.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. I love that. So one of the things that you're going to be talking about in fact, the main thing that you're going to be talking about at Teacher Seller Summit is using Canva and all the different ways that you can use Canva. So we're going to do a little teaser today on the podcast and kind of introduce everyone to that. So I want to start you off with a really big question. I know it's hotly debated. It's not hotly debated by me I'm pretty neutral on whatever anyone wants to do. But as to whether or not you can use Canva to create TPT resources, can you talk to us a little bit about that?
Speaker 3:
Yes. So for a very long time the answer was no. But yes, it was no, you couldn't use the pro content.
Speaker 3:
You could only use the free content. And any free content you use you could sell in a resource as long as it was flattened in a PDF. But about a year ago Canva started to change their tune and if you have a pro account, as long as it's flattened kind of like how the clip artists expect us to do it on TPT then it is okay to use it in a resource to sell. Now I have that verified from an email from last year in May when I emailed Canva and asked them this specific question. That doesn't mean they could change it Like they could change it and change the rules, but they told me that last year that, yes, as long as it is flattened in a PDF and protected that I could. I always encourage other sellers to reach out to Canva themselves to get that verification, because I'm not a lawyer and I'm not telling you what is and isn't correct. But that's just my experience of working with Canva and asking them if I can use it.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and I think some of the confusion too, came from a few years ago and it may have been in this last year where you're talking about.
Speaker 2:
You know, I remember reading Canva's terms of use a few years ago and it seemed really murky. But when I've read it within the last I would say six months ago was the last time that I looked at it it seemed very clear to me what you could and couldn't do. I think back when this debate first started, I think maybe some of the employees at Canva weren't exactly sure what the terms of use meant for teacher sellers or for teacher authors. So, yeah, I love that you reached out to them personally and then you're saying like, hey, reach out to them, do your own due diligence. It really seems clear to me from their terms of use that exactly what you're saying is right, like as long as you're flattening and securing it, just like you would any other clip art that you've purchased from someone that it's okay. So what can we use Canva for? Potentially, use this for TPT resources. Again, verify that on your own, but potentially use this for TPT resources.
Speaker 3:
What else can we use Canva for? So I use it every single day. So I have created resources in Canva. I've used it to create templates that I give template links to people in my teacher author brilliance club. I've used it to create preview videos for my products. I've used it to film, record and edit different courses that I have created. I've used it to film, record and edit different courses that I have created. I've used it to create all my social media images. I've used it to create covers and previews for my resources. Honestly, there is so much to it and they add to it all the time.
Speaker 2:
So what would you say would be the advantages to using Canva over something like PowerPoint, which would, of course, be the most common?
Speaker 3:
So I love PowerPoint and I'm a huge proponent of using that, and that's probably where I do the main part of my product creation is in PowerPoint, because there's just a lot on there and it's easy to flatten everything and all of that. However, with Canva I'm able to put they have something called a brand kit and I can put all my colors on there. I can put all of my fonts, all of my logos and everything's in one place, and so when I'm creating for social media and images for that, I can use the templates they have or whip them up on my own and it can all look very consistent and branded. Where in PowerPoint I would have to start completely from scratch, where with Canva they've already kind of started that for me and I just mold it to be my own.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I found that Canva. To me, canva is a lot handier to use, particularly for things that are simpler, like if I'm going to be trying to move things over like the tiniest little amount, or if I'm going to be importing clip art and creating graphs or things like that in Excel, then it's easier for me to use PowerPoint. But and there are some things that I really like about PowerPoint too where there's some fonts that I can bold in PowerPoint that I can't bold in Canva, like you know, imported fonts. As far as, like, just creating something very quickly, I can create it much quicker in Canva if it's a pretty simple resource. So I'm the same as you.
Speaker 2:
Like I use for all of my workbooks and slides and everything like that that I use inside of my membership. I create all of those in Canva. I like that I can create a template and send that to people and they can use it for free, like there are so many great ways to use it. But I think also some people are a little bit worried about starting Canva when they're used to PowerPoint. If you were to talk to those people and they're like, oh, I'm pretty stuck on PowerPoint, what would be like the selling point, because I know in my mind like what the selling point was for me, but like what would you say would be some of the selling points to try Canva out for this.
Speaker 3:
So one of my very favorite things on Canva is the magic resize tool, where I can create something square, because that is a great size to use on Instagram and Facebook, but if I want it to be a pin or something for a blog post, I can quickly just hit magic resize and it makes it the exact size for me and I don't have to spend all this time resizing everything. That is by far one of my favorite tools in Canva.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, absolutely. And social media was the trigger for me that I started using Canva for social media because of the templates and everything that were already on there for social media. Like you said before, I didn't have to start from scratch, so templates for me, that was kind of what pulled me in and then I stayed for all of the other things and now I use it like every day. Like you said, let's talk about Canva's AI tool. I know that you're going to be talking about this in your session. Can you tell us a little bit about Canvas AI tool, what it is and what you can use it for? Because you know, AI is kind of like the buzzword right now. Everybody wants to use it.
Speaker 3:
Of course. So it's actually many AI tools. They call it Magic Studio and it's just their version of AI. So they have a magic tool called Magic Write, which would be similar to ChatGPT, where you can give it a prompt and it will spit something out for you. They have Magic Video, which I'm going to show as well. It is so awesome. You can literally give it a small prompt and it will create a video for you. You do have to edit it a little bit sometimes, but the Magic Video saves a lot of time.
Speaker 3:
They have magic edit tools for when you're editing a photo, so magic grab is one of my favorite ones that they have. Or magic expand, where you can expand a photo so that it fits the whole screen. Yeah, they have magic presentations, where you can give it a prompt and it will create a presentation for you. There is a lot to the magic studio, but that is definitely something I would encourage people to look into. It saves a lot of time and it's constantly evolving, like AI is, so it's not going to be perfect, but it is a good jumpstart when you're working on a project.
Speaker 2:
I actually used one of their tools the other day. I was trying to create a video to go alongside one of my products and I gave it the prompt like this is what I want it to be, and it created the video for me and I thought it was really pretty good compared to a paid like specific or service that, oh, that's all that they do. It wasn't quite as good as that, but I thought it was really good for it to be included with everything that you're already paying for with Canva.
Speaker 3:
Right, and it was. It's something that, like, you can quickly throw on as like a video preview on TPT. I've used that too and been very impressed with how good it ended up being.
Speaker 2:
So you're saying that you can use, like it'll take your own images, like you can tell it to use your own images and turn it in. Okay, you can tell it to use your own images and turn it in, okay, see, I didn't even see that part. I just see the part where it was like it started, like it pulled its own images in and like put its own text on there.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, and that's it too. You can use your own images. It's limited to up to 10 images and or videos, so it is limited, but you could add to it if you had more that you wanted to add.
Speaker 2:
Okay, I'm going to play around with that. That's pretty neat. So what have you seen with you've used these for video previews? Have you seen this increased conversion rate on your products when you use these videos?
Speaker 3:
So what I've just noticed with video is that people nowadays just want to see video, and so I'm trying to add more video previews. Just as a buyer myself, I like that. I don't know if it has changed to more sales or not, because I don't feel like we have that data. On TV. We have video previews, but I don't know if someone watched the preview video and then bought one today. So I think it's just another way to enhance your product and help you stand out, but then you can then take those video previews, show them on social media, things like that.
Speaker 2:
So when you're creating the video previews and I hate to move over into this from talking about Canva, but I get a lot of questions about video previews it's not my specialty. I don't enjoy making them as a buyer, I don't watch them, so I think that that's something that's a little bit harder for me to kind of just jump in with. I didn't see an increase in conversion rates on the products when I created my video previews a while back, and so now I'm kind of hesitant to jump back in. So when you're creating video previews, how long are you making the video preview? Is it like the length of a reel, like 15 to 30 seconds, or are you making them more?
Speaker 3:
So it just kind of depends what the product is. I always tell people shoot for like 30 seconds and if it's longer, great. But I think 30 seconds is a great length. And it's funny that you say you don't watch video previews, because I always do, like either on Target or Amazon, like I'm not stopping on TPT as much anymore unless it's for clip art, but I do watch the video previews. So I just I think every buyer is going to be different and the more content you have out there, the more chances you have for someone to see your product and see it stand out. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:
I think, too, that that could have something to do with or not could probably has a lot to do with who your ideal customer is, because if your ideal customer is someone who's buying you know emergency sub plans, they may not necessarily want to see the video because they're purchasing in a hurry. But if your ideal customer is someone who really likes to thoughtfully make a purchase, especially when it comes to some of those bigger ticket items, then definitely they may want to watch the video. Yeah, I've, I've, literally I skipped past the videos. I can't stand them on Amazon. I don't know why. I really don't know why. I just look at the pictures and I don't read the product description or anything like that. And then you know, wonder why, when the product gets there, it's not exactly what I thought it was. But yeah, I love that. So anything else you want to share with us, anything else about Canva that you love, or you want to give us a little teaser of what you're going to be talking about in your session?
Speaker 3:
So I just knew over some tips and tricks that helped me with creation too. And I also want to just say some people are really scared to start Canva and it honestly, if you are proficient in PowerPoint, Canva will come very easily to. And the way they've set it out, set it up, I mean, I feel like they've made it very user friendly where you can learn it in a couple of days just by playing it around with yourself. Don't be scared of it, and know that they have that free version that you can use just to see how it works if you aren't ready to pay for it yet.
Speaker 2:
I love that, so I can't wait to watch your session and to learn more about some of the AI tools on Canva and all of that incredible stuff. You talked about some of the things that you do to help teacher authors. Can you tell listeners where they can connect with you and learn more about that?
Speaker 3:
Sure. So I am teacher author brilliant on Instagram and you can also find me at just teacher author brilliantcom. My TPT store is Teresa quant, but for TPT sellers you're going to be looking for teacher author.
Speaker 2:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, teresa, for being here. We can't wait to see you at teacher seller summit, and I appreciate you sharing some valuable information with us today. Thank you so much. Thanks, tia. Thanks so much for being here. You guys, if you want to learn more or connect more with Teresa, you can find links to do that down inside of the description. You can also find a link to join us for Teacher Seller Summit. You do not want to miss this summit. Tss is a virtual summit that gives you access to over 40 incredible entrepreneurs in the teacher entrepreneur space. We're going to do so many fun things together. We're going to connect through yoga forums, private messages and lots of roundtable discussions. I cannot wait. You do not want to miss this. You'll find the link to grab your ticket down inside the description. Cannot wait to see you guys there. In the meantime, I'm going to see you right back here next week.