Last week, I discussed four reasons that I think Canva Pro is worth paying for, but I didn’t share my new favorite feature of this amazing tool - animations! This feature has only recently been added to Canva, and is available when you go to download or use your design.
As you know, when you post on social media, or with anything you do in marketing, one of the first things you have to do is grab attention, “stop the scroll,” and make people take notice. Images can be a little boring and often look like ads. We all have a little “ad blindness” and tend to ignore posts that look like ads. You have to fight against that in order for your content to get noticed.
A good way to do this is with video, of course, but creating a video every time you want to post content on social media can be time-consuming. The next best thing to do is to include any kind of animation or moving element, and Canva Pro can help with that with just one click! Canva Pro’s animation feature enables you to design the coolest little moving images. It literally takes about 30 seconds, and then you have an animated graphic (aka “GIF”), just like that!
Ways You Can Use Animated Graphics
- Use animated graphics as social media posts. Now, if you use them as social media posts on Facebook or Instagram, you have to download them as mp4s, which is a video format. It's a tiny, little video that gets uploaded to Facebook or Instagram. You can use animated graphics on Twitter as GIFs.
- Use animated graphics to create engaging presentations. If you're doing a video or presentation in Promo.com, Adobe Spark, or PowerPoint, you can use these animated graphics instead of a photo to add interest.
- Download the animated graphic as a GIF and upload it onto Giphy. You can have your own GIFs on Giphy so that other people can use them. This would be great for a city, a school, a popular brand, or any organization with a mascot. Within seconds, you could easily create an animated GIF branded to your city, school, or organization, upload into your Giphy account, and make it available to anybody who wants to use it.
How to Create the Animation
- Design your image as normal.
- On the top right, click the dropdown arrow under the Download button.
- Click the "More" options, then Animations
- Choose either gif or mp4, depending on how you will use it.
Post like a pro!
Not only is creating animated graphics with Canva Pro quick and easy, it will also make you look like you really know what you’re doing when it comes to producing attention-grabbing content that stops the scroll and gets you noticed! This feature will add interest and variety to your social media posts.
You can...do it!
Elizabeth Collins
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Picasso