Create Better Presentations with Canva
Sitting through a presentation can be excruciatingly dull. Whether it is an in-person program or a webinar, it seems like the insurance industry has taken “Death by PowerPoint” to a whole new level. An excellent presentation can communicate more in a short period than a bullet-packed PowerPoint presentation.
We live in a visual world. If you want to improve your communication, it’s important to step back and examine how you put your presentations together. It is likely your sales presentations need a makeover.
In this issue of TechTips, I want to highlight a tool – Canva Presentations – that may help you improve the look and feel of your presentations. The last time I wrote about Canva was October 2014. The company continues to enhance their service. I rely on it extensively to create images that I use in articles and on my website.
Canva has recently enhanced the platform to include the ability to create presentations. It’s simple to create a new presentation:
1) Log into Canva and click on the Presentation template. If you don’t see it, click on More… and you’ll find it under Popular Design Types. There are a number of visually compelling templates to choose from.
2) Browse through the predefined templates and click on any multi-page layouts to preview them. Some templates contain up to 10 pages.
3) Select which layout you’d like to use in your presentation design by clicking it or dragging and dropping it into your design.
4) Once you’ve completed your design, you can click the presentation button on the bottom right-hand corner of your screen to activate the full-screen presentation mode.
Canva allows you to embed a YouTube video directly into your presentation. Once you come to the slide with the embedded video, you can just click and have it start playing. You can also embed a web page within your presentation.
If you have not used Canva, I would highly recommend you give it a try. It is quick, easy to use, and inexpensive. It’ll make your images look like they have been created by a graphic designer.
There are a number of alternatives to using PowerPoint as your presentation tool. Canva is simply one of them that is worth exploring. In a future issue I’ll highlight some of the other options.
What tools do you use to create compelling presentations? Let me know in the Comments below.
Another great site to create presentations is Prezi.com, with both free and paid account options are available.
I agree, Prezi is a great option to consider.