How to Create Eye Catching Slide Presentations with Canva (Video Tutorial)
Hello there peeps
Kim here dropping in with a new blog post. You guys already know that Canva is one of my favorite DIY design tools.
In fact, every product that I’ve created in my online shop to product mock ups that I’ve added to landing pages, I used Canva to create them.
So imagine my surprise when an email landed in my inbox from the folks over at Canva stating that they’ve added a brand new feature that will help you present and Share slide presentations with your audience from within your Canva dashboard.
This is what I’m going to be discussing in this blog post as well as how to create killer presentations with Canva for your business.
Slide Presentation Template from Canva
Prepping for your Slide Presentation
In my time as an online creator and blogger, I’ve had to create tons of slide presentations.
If you’re creating a slide deck for the first time, here are a few tips that I would recommend that may help you prep easier:
- Determine what the topic of your slide presentation will be. Take some time to brainstorm things like "hot topics" in your industry or even questions that your audience has asked repeatedly that they are struggling with. The thing to remember is the power of ONE. Focus on ONE thing that you can help your peeps with.
- Create a strong headline and title for your slide presentation. As with blog posts and etc, you want to make sure that your presentation will grab people’s attention.
- Create an outline for your presentation. Instead of trying to learn things together like crazy it’s best to whip up a quick outline of things that you want to cover in your presentation.This will help you organize your thoughts better and easier for you to create the slide deck as you already know what content you were planning to cover. Are use Google docs for this and would recommend that you check it out.
Things that you can add to your outline include:
- Title of presentation
- Section headers and titles
- Key points for your slide presentation
- Content that you want to cover
15 Things to Include in your Slide Presentations
If you’re trying to figure out what information you should add to your slide presentation, here’s a running checklist:
1. Compelling title of your slide presentation - Here again, think about something that will get people “excited” to view your presentation.
2. An About You/Us slide - With this type of slide, I usually give a little bit of background “personable” information about myself. Like random facts about me, some of the previous companies that I’ve started or other past accomplishments.
3. Your background story - This can include things like your past accomplishments, people that you've worked for and more.
4. Places you’ve been featured - If you’ve been featured in different publications (blogs, websites, or articles) this is a great slide to add that information to.
5. Your logo - branding is key with any presentation that you create. Use this as an opportunity to add your logo to all of your designs.
6. And a gender/overview of what you will discuss - This is where you can give a quick rundown of what you will discuss in your presentation. These are basically the main talking points from your outline and supporting content.
7. Engaging photos - Boring slide presentations = a snoozefest. To spice up your presentations, add engaging photos and visuals to your slides. Here again, Pexels and Pixabay are great resources that you can use to get engaging visuals from.
8. Section headers/Title slides - Use these to break up your main topic and introduce subtopics of your presentation.
9. Relevant statistics and information to back up your topic if necessary - To support your main topic, if there are some supporting statistics and information that you can add, take this as an opportunity to do so.
10. A photo of yourself to personalize your slide deck - I always try to add at least one photo of myself to my slide deck. It really helps personalize your slide presentations and endears your audience to you.
11. Call to Action (Download a freebie, Schedule a Site Audit, etc) - It doesn't matter if you are selling a product, or if you are giving away something for free, you should always add some sort of call to action to your slides.
For example, if you are trying to grow your email list, then call peeps to “Download a freebie”. Or if you are trying to get folks into a sales funnel to upsell them on a product, then maybe adding a “Contact Us” for a free “Website Audit” is great.
12. Contact Information - This should include links to your active social media accounts, website URL, and your email address.
13. Product/Service Mockups - Adding these to slides is a great idea if you’re selling etc, product mockup images and links to your sales page. They will help your attendees envision themselves using the product or benefitting from your service.
14. Q&A prompt - Your Q&A slide will give folks an opportunity to ask probing questions related to your presentation.
15. Thank You Slide - Thank your attendees for taking the time to view your slide presentation. You can also use this as another opportunity to connect with you on social media.
Types of Slide Presentations To Choose From in Canva
Creating beautiful slide presentations with Canva has never been easier. They have an extensive collection of templates to choose from some of which that include:
Creative Presentations
These are perfect for peeps that want a spicier and festive look to their presentations. For example, if you are creating a course, or an online workshop of sorts, then this is probably the kind of template that you may want to use.
Creative Slide Presentation in Canva
Education Based Presentations
If you are an educator, Canva has plenty of awesome education centered and focused slide presentation templates that you can use to wow your students.
Take this template set as an example:
Education Based Templates in Canva
Do you see how cute this is?
You can easily change the colors of the slide deck, add images to them and more to create a super cute presentation for students. Yeppers...it’s just that easy.
Business Presentations
Run a business and need a professional slide deck to present to business partners, investors and etc? No problemo.
Canva has a template that you can use. Here again, instead of scratching your head and starting from scratch trying to design the perfect slide deck, just grab a template, change colors, add photos, and that's it.
Here’s an example of a great set of slide presentations that you can use:
Business Presentation Template Canva
Designing Slide Presentations with Canva
So we’ve come to the front part.
It’s time to design an amazing slide presentation with Canva. I’ve also added a video tutorial that shows you step by step how to get it done.
Here’s a step by step guide to designing slide presentations with Canva:
#1: Sign up for an account with Canva
Canva sign up
#2: Choose a color scheme to brand your slide presentation with. This tool is helpful.
Color Palettes Tool
#3. After logging into your Canva, on the right side of your dashboard, it's time to choose a presentation. You can do this in one of three ways: One by typing in “Presentation” into the search bar underneath “Design Anything”.
Presentation search
Or you can click on “Presentation” underneath the “Recommended” section.
Choosing a presentation
#4: After clicking on the “Presentation”, Canva will generate a list of templates in the left side of your dashboard that you can use.
Presentations templates in Canva
#5: Next, find a slide presentation template that you want to use. Canva has a ton of them to choose from.
After you find the slide presentation that you want to use, click on it to add it to your workspace.
After you click on the presentation that you want to use, you will get a prompt that says “Apply all X pages”. So for example, if your template has 16 pages, you will click the button that says “Apply All 16 pages”. See the screenshot below
Apply all pages to workspace
#6: Start branding your slide presentation. Using Colorpalettes.net will come in handy. Simply select a palette, and apply it to your slide presentation.
Now if you have a brand kit in Canva, you can simply apply colors from your Brand Kit to your slide presentation.
Branding slide decks in Canva
#7: Add content to your slide presentation. Try to keep each slot to no more than 100 words per slot to give people the opportunity to skim through slide decks for main points and takeaways.
Adding Content to Slide Deck
#8: Add your visuals/engagement photos to your slides. Here again Pexels and Pixabay have amazing free gorgeous images that you can use.
I also forgot to mention that Canva has a ton of free images that you can use as well to add to your slides.
#9: Check your slides for spelling and grammatical errors and etc.
#10: Once your presentation is good to go it's time to present your slide deck. To do this, in Canva click the “Present” button to go into presentation mode. Click the “Standard” view.
Presenting your slide deck
#11: Your slide presentation should now be showing up in your Canva dashboard. There are a few controls at the bottom of your slide presentation that you should be mindful of.
Here is what they look like:
These controls are used for:
Restarting your presentation from scratch
The little arrows on each slide (are to move your slide deck forward or backwards)
The last two little arrows (are to help you exit the screen)
Additional Things You Can Do with Canva’s Slide Presentation Feature
#1: Screen Record your presentation. Yep that's right. I typically use Screencast O'Matic to record my screens and Filmora to edit all of my videos. However, inside of Canva’s presentation tool, there is an option to record your screen.
Additional Slide Presentation Features in Canva
To do this, while in “Presentation” mode, simply click on the “Button” with the three little dots. Next, click on “Present and Record” to record your screen.
Present and record Canva Feature
#2: Create Animated Slide Presentations. This is pretty neat right. With most slide presentations if you want something “Animated” you will have to go slide by slide to animate something in them.
However, with Canva, all you have to do is select an “Animated” slide presentation, edit your templates and that's it.
#3: The ability to download your presentation as a “Powerpoint”. This.is.huge! If you are more comfortable with sharing Powerpoint presentations, then you can use this option.
#4: You can embed your slide presentation into your website. Canva has an “embed” feature that allows you to do this.
#5: You can download your slides as multiple formats. This includes “Graphic” files (PNG, JPG), PDF’s, GIF (animations) and more.
Wrapping Things Up
Guys, I don’t know about you but I am super excited that Canva has added this new feature to their design tool.
Instead of struggling to design presentations from scratch or even spending money on tools for screen recording, they have definitely created a one stop shop tool that anyone can use to create eye catching slide presentations with Canva.
Thanks so much for reading peeps!
Peas out...
