personal brand

Public Speaking Outfit for Anti-Bullying Activist

February 18, 2019 By Kat

New style makeover YouTube video up on the channel! This is Paula Orrego @starfire1408. She is an anti-bullying activist who is using her voice to change the narrative for future generations. 👏

In this episode of Transformed By Kat, follow along as we find a public speaking outfit for her!

#styledbykatkuan

If you have a presentation or special event coming up and need help finding an outfit, email me and we can discuss how we can work together to get you confident and ready for the event!

Kat Kuan – styledbykatkuan@gmail.com

Create Social Media Graphics with Canva

September 19, 2018 By Kat

The best tool I’ve discovered for creating social media graphics is Canva.

There’s no need to use Photoshop or other complicated tools.

It’s also FREE!

Canva has tons of templates and layouts that look fantastic and professional.

You just drag/drop your own photos, enter in your own text, and suddenly you have a magical and beautiful social media graphic – without any graphic design experience!

Major props to those who have graphic design experience, I don’t know how you make such beautiful things. The rest of us have to resort to finding tools like this to help us get by!

HOW TO USE CANVA

When you open Canva, you can create a new design.

Depending on what your use case is, you can pick if you’re creating an Instagram post, a Facebook ad, a LinkedIn cover photo, blog header image, infographic, flyer, or a multitude of other options.

It’ll lay out a canvas for you at the appropriate dimensions – so helpful because the variation of image dimensions for each social media platform drives me nuts.

CREATE A NEW DESIGN

I clicked on “Instagram post” so here’s a blank square canvas for me to work with. I can choose from various Canva layouts. There’s a lot of great options for free, while some options cost money.

Once you select a layout, it gets added to your canvas. Then you can start editing the text, photos, and drag/drop to move elements around – change the color / font / etc…

You can upload your own images and drag them onto the canvas. Below is a history of images I’ve uploaded for my past graphics.

You can also search for photos or illustrations that Canva provides. Some are free and some are paid.

Once you finish your design, you can download it in the format you want and use it wherever you need.

ALL YOUR DESIGNS

Canva also keeps a collection of all your past designs. That’s handy when I want to use a similar format / font from something I created before. Make a copy of a design and then edit from there.

EXAMPLE

This is a recent graphic I created for a YouTube video thumbnail.

Side note: I like how preparing my own graphic for the thumbnail makes the video look a lot better (top two video thumbnails), as compared to a random still frame taken from the YouTube video (rest of thumbnails).

To promote the video on my Instagram page, I couldn’t use the above thumbnail because some of the text would get cut off. Hence I copied all the elements over and created a new square Instagram graphic. Download the image and then post it!

By now, you’re probably getting the idea that there’s many use cases for these graphics. If you’re building your own brand, it’s important to have strong visuals. I’m still working on making a cohesive visual brand for myself, but Canva is allowing me to experiment with different styles in an easy way.

For more examples of what I’ve created with Canva, check out my Instagram @kat.kuan.

PREMIUM VERSION

There’s also a paid premium version, which I haven’t tried yet. If you work on a team, then multiple users can collaborate together. You can setup a brand color scheme, logos, fonts, etc.. so that these preset defaults are easily accessible when you’re creating your graphics.

Overall, I highly recommend this tool for beginners. It makes you feel powerful *arm flex* and capable of doing graphic design!

Now go make your social media accounts pretty with Canva!

How to Start a Podcast

July 12, 2018 By Kat

Podcasts are all the rage these days. They’re audio-only and great for listening to while you’re commuting or on the go.

Some podcasts have a special guest they interview for each episode. Other podcasts are more documentary style – such as Gary Vee’s The Audio Experience. His episodes are recordings of his speeches, meetings, and day-to-day life as CEO of VaynerMedia.

WHY I STARTED A PODCAST

I wanted to do a podcast as an outlet for me to share my experiences as a new author and business owner. I want to speak as honestly as I can about the entrepreneurial journey.

Another reason I wanted to experiment with this format was because audio episodes are a lot faster to create compared to YouTube videos. I keep the episodes short – around several minutes to maybe 10 minutes max.

THE EASY ROUTE

To get the podcast up and running, I wanted the easiest option for a beginner.

Luckily, the process is straightforward and free with the Anchor app.

They take care of all the complicated details like hosting the podcast and setting up a RSS feed (which would normally cost money). Now all I need to do is just hit buttons within the app. 😛

Anchor works on desktop (for more detailed features), but I mostly use the mobile app (Google Play, App Store).

GET STARTED WITH THE ANCHOR APP

1. Setup an account with your email address.

2. Pick a podcast name, description, and upload a cover art image.

3. Start recording a podcast episode. You can record individual segments that get compiled into an episode, or just record one segment.

4. When the episode is ready, you can set the episode name, upload an image for that episode (or it will use your default cover art image).

5. Then hit publish!

You can publish exclusively for the Anchor platform, or you can publish it everywhere, which includes other popular podcast platforms. This is one of other great advantages of Anchor because it pushes your podcast out to other services like Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, PocketCasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and more.

For example, my podcast can be found on iTunes!

Note: Beyond rearranging individual segments, I don’t think there’s an option to edit the audio files to clip out or trim sections. But I don’t mind because my episodes don’t need to be super polished. The creation process goes a lot faster too when you don’t need to edit the audio files.

Another Note: If you want more polished audio files, you could record the audio with a voice notes app on your phone. Then use editing software to edit the audio file. Then upload it into an Anchor episode.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCE

For more advanced options on how to start a podcast, check out Gary Vee’s article, written by his audio engineer, so he knows his stuff. This is the article I used to start and how I discovered Anchor.

If you decide to create a podcast, let me know in the comments below. Would love to give it a listen!

To check out my podcast in action, visit What Kat Found Out or search for it on your favorite podcast player. 🙂