Canva has become the go-to design tool for creating customized social media content. With thousands of design templates, images, video clips, and other elements available, it’s easy to understand why it’s a one-stop shop for social media marketers.
The success of your social media content lies in its ability to get a response from your target audience, and video is one of the best ways to accomplish this. While visually appealing designs are essential, neglecting to incorporate video can reduce your engagement more than you may realize.
That being said, many have reservations about creating videos – and for understandable reasons. They may not want to plaster their face front and center, dance on cue, or they simply don’t have the time or knowledge to put together videos.
You may not realize that there are easy ways to create videos using Canva Pro, even if you don’t want to show your face. In this blog, we’re going to show five options to build engagement-worthy videos in Canva Pro that will feed the social media video algorithms and grab your audience’s attention. For even more revamped tools, be sure to check out Canva Video Editor to learn how to create videos that educate, inspire, and entertain diverse audiences within a few clicks.
#1: Add Animation to Still Designs
What turns a graphic into a video is movement. Once you add an animation element, your design changes to a .mp4 format in Canva and thus becomes a video. The animate feature in Canva Pro lets you turn existing still designs into fully animated videos or gifs.
To use this feature, create your design, then click on “animate,” located in the top toolbar. A navigation panel will appear on the left side of your screen. You have multiple animation options to choose from, such as pop, rise, breathe, fade, bounce, and so on. You also have the ability to set animations to the entire page, each element, and the text within the design. You can also group elements together if you want them to animate simultaneously. Each animation element can be edited by applying the animation on entry only, exit only, or both.
#2: Load a Video Clip to the Background
Another easy way to create a video in Canva is by simply adding a video clip to the background of your design. You can drop your own video in the background or select from Canva’s huge library of stock videos. This is a simple yet effective way to generate a video design that captivates the user’s attention. Furthermore, by formatting something from a simple text design to a video clip, you’ve now positioned yourself into the videos tab of social media, which is the most viewed and clicked area of all social platforms.
To create this design, first, upload or select your preferred video clip and drop it into the background. Next, size your video to fit your frame. Finally, choose which overlays, text or graphics to add in front of the video. In this example, we created a search box with text centered around storm preparation to complement the video of an impending storm in the background.
#3: Turn Multiple Slides into a Video
With Canva Pro, you can create multiple slides and turn them into a seamless frame-by-frame video using their drag-and-drop features. This is a great option for explainer videos, tutorials, telling a story, and so on. The first step is to create each individual still design in sequential order. You can add additional frames by clicking on the plus (+) button at the top right cover of your design.
Once all your slides are created, start adding animations to your text, elements, and page. From there, you can also add slide transitions. This feature makes the transitions from slide to slide more smoothly and more fluid. You have various transitions to choose from with this option, so be sure to test out a few. You can also drop in music from Canva Pro’s music library and trim the audio to match the length of your video. Once finished, preview the video using the play button at the top right corner. This will let you see how the video flows and determine what edits to make before you download it.
#4 Presentation Videos
If you’re looking to be the face and voice behind your video, Canva Pro has the tools available to do it. With a presentation video, you can incorporate your own camera recording and deliver your ideas at your own pace. Once your presentation slides are created, you can audio record yourself talking and include a talking head during your narration. Here’s how to do it in 3 steps:
- Design your presentation. Don’t forget to personalize the layout with various elements, images, videos, fonts, and so on. You can add as many slides as you need and add in animation.
- Head on to the recording studio. Access the “Present and record” option on the top-right side or click on the three-dot menu to select it among recommended actions. Select “Go to recording studio” and set up your camera and microphone. Start recording with your notes in Presenter’s View. You also have the option to pause and resume your recording.
- Download and share. Once finished, click on “End recording” and wait for it to upload. Share your talking presentation by using the generated link or download it in a .mp4 format.
#5 Bonus: Repurpose Your Video
If you spent all that time creating a video, give it some extra miles by repurposing it. Let’s say you created a 1080 x 1080 video format to use for your Instagram feed. Give that video new life and potentially a different audience by resizing the dimensions to 1080 x 1920 and posting it as a story or reel. If you created a longer presentation video, simply edit the presentation into 30-second segments and then resize it to fit your stories and reels. Now you’ll have bite-sized videos that you can post on your page all week.
CanvaPro gives you the ability to resize any existing design to fit the various social platforms. It’s important to note the size dimensions first, so you don’t risk your video being cropped or not uploading at all.
Final Thoughts
Nearly all social platforms have reconfigured how their content is presented to users. We now have the ability to go straight to “watch” “reels” or “video” tabs if we only want to see videos. Since video is the most viewed form of content, these platforms want to make it easier for them to access it. By creating these different videos in Canva, you’ll now have the ability to get your face and brand in the video mix, increasing your audience reach and engagement.
If you’re looking to utilize video in your strategy or need help creating a social media marketing plan to meet and exceed your goals, contact our team for a free consultation.