How to Create a Month's Worth of Reels Content in One Canva Design
Trying to create content for Instagram Reels as a small business owner seems impossible at times.
You can’t keep up with all the trends.
You can’t figure out how to make them look great.
You can’t find the time to actually create the content.
And when you feel lost in the content creation process it is even more difficult to try to show up consistently. And that is where content batching AND Canva can go hand in hand to solve all of your Instagram Reels content creation problems!
Here is a way for you to create an entire month worth of Instagram Reels content in one Canva design to save you time, energy, while increasing your engagement and sales for your small business.
STEP ONE: IDEATION
Go back through all of the Reels you have saved (or maybe you DM’d them to yourself or added them to your iPhone notes folder - hey, we don’t judge) and figure out what you liked about those Reels and why they resonated with you enough to want to come back to them.
Did you like the design?
Did you like the audio?
Did you like the content?
Did you like how the creator presented that information?
Whatever it is, use it as a guide to get you into ideation mode for your Instagram Reels. Then you can start jotting down some content ideas that you want to create for your small business. Take a pen and paper, or open up a blank document, and just write down as many ideas as you can possibly think of. Think of things that would provide value to your audience…
… and don’t worry about strategy or the end game here, just get the ideas flowing. They don’t have to be perfect, you just need to get them out of your brain!!
STEP TWO: POSTING STRATEGY
Now you want to think about how frequently you want to post Reels content throughout the month. While there is no perfect formula, and you have to test it out and play around, here are some general guidelines you can follow if you feel a bit stuck:
If you are brand new to posting Instagram Reels - aim to just create 1 per week (4 total)
If you have tested and played around with Reels a bit - aim to create 2-3 per week (8-12 total)
If you have been consistently creating Reels for the last few months - aim to create 3-4 per week (12-16 total)
When you break it down this way you now know what the end goal in mind is. And while social media content strategies can become complex, we want to keep it simple for you right now. We just want to get you started on a track of posting Reels consistently for your page before we start to dive deeper into strategy.
STEP THREE: OPEN CANVA
Now that you have a list of ideas, and you know how many Reels you need to create for the month, we can actually start to create content in Canva!!
FIRST - open up a new Canva design and select the “Instagram Reels” design type
SECOND - add pages to equal the number of Reels you need to create for the month
THIRD - now you can jump into designing the Reels themselves
While Canva has a lot of free templates, and you can find a lot of inspiration on Reels, if you want to make the design process even easier, we recommend diving into our Reels templates.
Unlike other Instagram Reels templates out there, these templates were designed by social media experts, with prompts and visuals customized specifically for small business owners to help them sell more and grow their engagement.
STEP FOUR: EXPORT
Now that you have taken an hour or so to actually create the content, here is the most important part and where a lot of people get stuck with creating Instagram Reels in Canva.
You have to export each page individually. Right now, Canva doesn’t make it super easy or intuitive to do this, we have a quick tutorial for you to watch:
VIDEO TUTORIAL: How to Export One Video from a Multiple Page Design in Canva
Once you have exported all of your designs you can upload them into your favorite scheduling software or add them into your drafts folder in Instagram, so all you have to do is create a caption, add your hashtags and post!!
want access to 1,500+ templates?
Join Your Template Club to get access to Canva templates designed to grow engagement and sales!
Manu Muraro is the founder of Your Social Team, an Instagram training membership and template shop that help social media managers and Instagram-savvy small business owners to grow engagement and sales using Instagram and content marketing, without the overwhelm. Born and raised in Brazil, Manu moved to the U.S. in 2000 right out of college to work for Cartoon Network, where she made an award winning career in creative and strategy. In 2021, Manu started Your Template Club, a Canva template subscription service to help social media professionals and Canva-savvy business owners to create content that performs on Instagram, add more Instagram features into their strategy, such as Instagram Lives and Reels, and save time.