Our new social media specialist is using Canva to create posts and forgoing the work created by the design team. I believe if designers are available they should be doing the work of designers—we typically handle these in InDesign. Have not encountered this workflow before so I’m looking to see how others are generating social images these days.

why not both?

designers are often very precious about their visuals, taking a while to put them together. but many pieces of social content can and should be quick turnarounds.

also, they may think they’re doing the designers a favor, taking the workload off of them.

Social Media Managers need to have the ability to create content that they can post quickly, in the event that there is a trending topic or current event that is positive for and relevant to the business. Sometimes you need to create something on the fly, and you just don’t have the time to create a design brief and talk through the content you need from the designers because although they can create something beautiful and on brand, it takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r and then the moment on social is lost.

I feel like y’all need to have a conversation and set expectations as to how the brand should be portrayed on social: are there specific images, colors, fonts the SMM is using that are not compliant with the brand book? Or maybe it’s a matter of setting expectations of how many posts the SMM needs to produce and post? It’s better to have quality than quantity...

Well... does it look like shit or not?

I wish I could create posts in canva and not have to go to the design team for some things hahaha.
The design team takes FOREVER to do things sometimes taking a week to approve a simple image. Sometimes things need to go out in a timely fashion and don’t need to be perfect

Stop being so precious.

Why aren’t the designers using Canva? Ours do. If creating designs isn’t in the role description of your social media manager and they don’t have a design background you have every right to ask them to follow your company/ team’s process.

Some of the responses here are shedding a lot of insight on the reason why brands take their social business either in-house or to smaller specialized social agencies or content studios.

If I were you, I’d create a bunch of templates for them to use in Canva, so they can have quick turn and you can have more control with design. I’d also have a team dedicated to create unique content calendars for planned content month to month. Best of both worlds.

As an aside though, what’s most important is performance and getting stuff done. I know this is sacrilegious in our world, but things don’t have to be perfect. If it performs and gets results, then that’s all that matters at the end of the day. Often times, we waste time on things that don’t give us that much more if anything additional in the way of results. And why? I personally have been trying hard to spend time on the things that matter and avoiding the rabbit holes of the things that don’t.

I wouldn’t worry about it unless there’s a problem with the layouts/art being off brand or not representative of your company’s best work.
By them using Canva it frees the designers up to work in more challenging, and possibly more profitable, work.
It sounds like you may be more worried from a territorial aspect. Perhaps it would be good for the 2 of you to chat. Maybe there’s a reason they’re by-passing the designers...maybe it’s coming from a different budget or it’s just the way they did it at a previous agency. Talk to them. Good luck.

Create and define a set of brand guidelines for social. If not defined, a sm manager will do what they want and it’s hard to point back do.

Ran into the time issue and found a compromise with Canva. Designer worked to create a series of templates that met brand standards, and now the social team can easily hop into canva and adjust text and pictures for what’s needed on the fly.

Do you really care who creates the daily throwaway content out on the socials?

I’m going to cut straight to the chase here. If anyone in the agency, social media specialist or president, changes something made by a creative team and doesn’t even have the decency to tell you, they’re fired. Immediately. To edit something I’ve written without asking or telling me you need to is the equivalent of me coming home from work to find you in bed with my wife. Take this fool to the woodshed, then find a new job. That’s my two cents worth, not that I really have an opinion on this...

You should definitely get agency resources handling these assets. It can be designer or AD but you should also have a CW dedicated to these. They don’t need to be “social media specialists” - they need to be smart and understand what drives performance. Craft should still be put into these, even if for the most direct CTA driven asset.

I’m obviously speculating, but there’s probably a legit performance-driven reason for it. Also, maybe it’s just more efficient to make the post him/herself than waiting on a designer to find the bandwidth?

Every rising junior/senior or college grad I have met in the field of social/marketing uses canva and they all tell me it sets them apart as they are looking for internships or jobs.

The complaints here operationally are warranted but good luck holding on...

Idk why they would create extra work for themselves. They aren’t a designer and obviously Canva has limited capabilities.

^ correct.

Agree with pro-canva posts. It’s a production tool. Set up guidelines and templates and review before it goes out, like any basic production asset.

Last month I reached out to an AD to help design some social media posts and was turned down because they didn’t have bandwidth. At the same time I was receiving pressure to post from both my boss and one of the managing partners. So, I used my next resource and created a post in Canva. It really did perform and it was positively passed around in a group text I’m in with creatives (until I mentioned I created it in Canva and the group then went cold). I don’t think this is the same post but I think this happens more than we think and wanted to provide some insight to the other side of things. A lot of us social managers are just trying to navigate agencies that either don’t care about putting resources behind social, don’t understand the fluidity of it, or really care but have clashing processes that can’t keep up because of siloed departments.