Workflow: From PPT Pitch Deck to LinkedIn Carousel to Animated Video

Have you ever designed something in PowerPoint for a client—like a pitch deck—and then thought this would actually make a great LinkedIn post or video? In today’s video, I’m showing you how I took one client pitch deck and turned it into a LinkedIn carousel and then into an animated video using tools you probably already have. Let’s start with the carousel. This is what I uploaded to LinkedIn: a seven-page PDF that users can click or swipe through. It’s a super engaging format, and you can even open it in full screen and arrow through it. This particular carousel got great engagement, so the next question was, can we repurpose this content further? I thought maybe turn it into a video and even ultimately an ad for LinkedIn. This all started in PowerPoint, which honestly, a lot of clients still love to use. You might know this, but maybe not—so you can change the page size in PowerPoint. For example, I use an 11 by 11-inch square format, and you find that under File > Page Setup on a Mac. This allowed me to convert my original PowerPoint, which was designed at widescreen. In PowerPoint, you can add transitions—that’s animations between pages—and you can also animate elements right inside PowerPoint. And PowerPoint gives you the option to export as an MP4 video. But I’ll be honest, while this really works, I find that PowerPoint is a little clunky. I look for something a little faster or more flexible, especially because I’m used to doing something like this in Adobe Animate. However, that’s pretty time-consuming, so I wanted to try something faster. So my next stop was Adobe Express. I assumed I could upload a PowerPoint directly, but that’s not an option. So I uploaded the PDF version instead. And while the interface looked really similar to Canva—and so did the animation tools—this version at this date got pretty buggy pretty quickly. Some slides imported with lots of locked layers and clipping masks. When I rendered and exported the video, the animations and transitions that I had included didn’t appear—I just got black screens of five seconds with none of the animation. So even after troubleshooting, trying to take my PDF into Illustrator, ungrouping, releasing masks, and cleaning up backgrounds so that they weren’t squares in PowerPoint but actual background fills, the exports just were not reliable enough. So I decided, let’s move on to the next tool. Then I tried Canva, and I was actually really impressed. First, you can upload PowerPoint files directly, and Canva kept almost everything intact—the backgrounds, the text, the layout, things came over really well. The interface allows you to grab each element and animate them individually with one-click options. You can also animate the entire page, which works great on simpler slides. There’s the option to add slide transitions—dissolves, slides, wipes—the kind of stuff that would take a lot longer to do in Adobe Animate with one click. One of the things I also loved about working in Canva is that you can easily add royalty-free music right to your timeline, and there are simple features that you need for free. Fade is always the thing that drives me crazy in YouTube—they don’t give you the option—but in Canva, you can fade in and fade out your music easily. With the paid Canva subscription, you can even sync the beats to your animation, which is really great. When you’re done, you can share and then download, which is essentially exporting your presentation as an MP4 video. You can do it at 1080×1080 pixels, which is square and perfect for social. My only issue was that the exported video looked a little soft—it wasn’t as crisp as what previewed in my browser. Here was my quick fix: I uploaded the MP4 to a free online video upscaler. This one had no watermark, no payment required, and it cleaned everything up beautifully. It’s open source, and the link is below. That final video from the upscaler is what I uploaded to LinkedIn. Remember, LinkedIn videos autoplay silently in the feed, which means that motion graphics really grab attention. So this is a great option for posting. What started as a PowerPoint pitch deck became a LinkedIn carousel and then an animated video—all with just a few simple steps and tools. This workflow is a great example of how to repurpose content across formats and platforms without starting from scratch each time. I hope this peek into my process helps you find faster and smarter ways to bring your designs to life. Please leave your questions and comments below, and of course, give some thought to what brought you joy today. Today, my children’s laughter brought me lots of joy. Here’s the next video that I think you’ll love—take a look.