dental marketing Archives | Digital Dental Photography

As much as I love Photoshop and have been using it since version CS2, and even with the awesome Photographers Bundle of Photoshop + Lightroom for only $9.99 that Adobe has now made available indefinitely, I recognize that many people simply don’t want to learn how to use it. And while I am a huge proponent of all that Lightroom can do for organizing, editing, and presenting photos, for many doctors or team members, even that may be too daunting a challenge. It shouldn’t be, but it is. So what do you do? What even I’m doing a lot nowadays: www.Canva.com

Easy Way to Create Attractive Online Images

Here is a selection of images created with Canva just to give you an idea of what can be done (BTW – please remember that all of these images are ©Smiles by Payet and may NOT be used in any way without permission):

How Many Options Does Canva Offer?

Here’s a simplified list of the current pre-formatted (sizes only) options offered on Canva:

Twitter post (1024px x 512px)
Twitter cover image (1500px x 500px)
Facebook ad (1200px x 627px)
Facebook cover image (851px x 315px)
Google+ cover image (1240px x 700px)
Social media image (800px x 800px)
Blog image (800px x 1200px)
Pinterest (735px x 1232px)

And of course, you can always create and save a Custom set of dimensions for your own use.

How Much Does Canva Cost?

While it can’t compare to Photoshop in many ways, and even though the PS+LR package is ridiculously affordable, I have to admit – Canva is even MORE affordable, for the simple reason that it’s FREE! Yes, you read that correctly – FREE (ok, with a one small caveat).

To sign up for an account costs you absolutely nothing, and if you like, you can instantly create an account by signing in with either your Facebook or Twitter accounts. Supposedly, a Google+ sign-in is also on the way, but hasn’t arrived yet. They have a ton of easy-to-use and attractive backgrounds, icons, arrows, etc. and text options that are completely free, and you can upload your own images to use in your creations, too, and as long as you do that…FREE!

So let’s say you don’t have an image for your topic, and you happen to see that Canva has one you like…..are they ALL free? No, they’re not. But for all of their non-free images, each one only costs $1. Yup. ONE-FREAKING-DOLLAR-EACH. How sweet is that? So far, because I like using all my own photos, the only stuff I usually use from Canva is free. In fact, I put a $20 credit on my account 2 months ago because I did want a few images, but I haven’t even used 1/2 of my credit yet, and I’m approaching 50 images created in Canva.

How Easy Is It to Learn?

This is the best part of Canva compared to PS or LR: it’s all drag’n’drop. If you want to drag things around and line them up – when they line up you’ll see dashed lines connecting just which elements are lined up so you can see exactly. How about resizing? Just click on an image or text and the little corner/side handles appear for you to grab and resize as easily as you want. Text? Of course! Pick any color from the color picker. Outlines and shapes? Pick from a wide variety of pre-formatted ones that can be reformatted as you like. Upload your own images? Easy as can be. Layer text on top of images? Sure! Share directly to Twitter or Facebook, even with embedded links? Absolutely! (Still waiting for them to get a direct to Google+ sharing button). Download to your own computer? Couple of clicks and it’s done. Create one image and then create duplicates for similarly-themed images? Of course. The following screenshot will give you a few ideas:

Of course, if you are proficient at Photoshop, you’ll instantly recognize that Photoshop has capabilities far beyond Canva, and it’s not like this will suddenly turn you into a professional graphic designer. However, you don’t have to be! You can create pleasing, attractive images and infographics quickly and easily for your website, social media, and even print if you like, and it’s fast, easy, and affordable, and honestly, it’s far more important to have something pretty good that is regularly in front of potential patients, than it is to wait and spend on perfection.

This post is for one simple purpose – to say a HUGE THANK YOU to Colin Receveur, of Smart Box Web Marketing, for his amazing customer service and help, and to try and repay him at least a little for his “beyond-the-call-of-duty” assistance.

WordPress Websites are Easy; Plugins Can Cause Problems

I have been using self-hosted WordPress for both Dental Digital Photography and my Charlotte NC dentist office website, SmilesbyPayet.com. For the most part, it’s a very easy platform to install, learn, and use, and that’s why I recommend it. It doesn’t hurt that the platform itself is FREE, most plugins are free, and you can host it for less than $10/month in several places.

However, there are times when something can go wrong, and when you’re in control of your own websites, that means you also have to fix them……if you know how. With a little experience, Google, and all the support available around the Web, this usually isn’t a problem. This week, however, I ran into a problem that caused me some real headaches. I don’t know exactly how or when it happened, but something went wrong on my dental office website, which is really bad, because that’s how we get most of our new patients every month. The entire website wasn’t broken, but it looked like this:

Looking at the main content section in the middle, it’s obvious something was screwing up the fonts and formatting, and it looked WEIRD! And while I knew how to check for some problems, none of the ones that I knew worked! PANIC TIME! LOL But fortunately, not really — I knew there were some people on DentalTown.com who could probably help, if they were available, so I started a new thread there asking for assistance, and Colin Receveur answered – thank goodness!

Trouble-shooting WordPress

Basically, Colin offered for me to call him up, and he’d see if he could help. Given how important this was, I called immediately – at 8pm in the evening! Colin and I then spent the better part of NINETY MINUTES (90) on speakerphone and using Join.me to screenshare, while we (mostly HE, I just helped check how things looked on my end) went through the website, looking for errors. The culprit seemed to be a plugin, but we had a lot of difficulty narrowing it down to which one or ones it was. Thankfully, however, Colin knows WordPress pretty darn well, and he eventually isolated a single line of code that referenced a Stylesheet for the Shareaholic social sharing plugin, which was apparently the problem! WOW!

Expert WordPress Help for Dentists

Without going into all the technical details (many of which were over my head anyway), Colin fixed my website. Even more amazingly, he didn’t charge me for it, which is crazy, but apparently that’s the kind of guy he is. Being the kind of guy that I am, though, there is no way I can let that go without SOME attempt to thank/repay him for his generosity, knowledge, and assistance – hence this post. 🙂

If you are looking for someone to build a new website for your dental office, I personally recommend Colin. Given how much I already know, it is clear to me that he knows his stuff, and I am confident that you will be pleased with his work. If you do hire him, please come back and let me know your experience in the comments!