Create #AnimatedAbstracts and gifs in PowerPoint (+2 examples)
Did you know…if you have well-designed presentation slides, then all you need to do is select a few key slides and export them as a gif in PowerPoint?!
Why would you do this? To make an #AnimatedAbstract, of course!
First, let me show you just how easy it is to make a gif in PowerPoint 👇
Don’t want to watch the video? Here is how to make a GIF in PowerPoint:
Design your content using PowerPoint (i.e., just create/design slides). You can change the slide dimensions if you want to, but I personally don’t bother with that.
Click “File”
Click “Export”
Click “Create an animated gif”
Specify how many seconds you want it to spend per slide
Choose your gif quality
Save!
That’s it! It’s SO easy and SO fast.
(Check to see if your version of PPT has this feature)
But you might be wondering why this is something you should know how to do and how you can actually use this feature. That’s why I made another video to explain why an academic, scientist, or evaluator would want to learn how to make gifs in PowerPoint. It all points to the value of creating an #AnimatedAbstract.
Here is the blog post version of the video. Plus, this blog post includes bonus material: 2 examples + tips on storytelling.
Before we get started, you should know I have free training!
Why should you make an #AnimatedAbstract?
What do you do when you have a new article published, publicly available report finished, or conference presentation/webinar coming up?
If you’re like most academics or researchers, then you probably (a) do nothing or (b) post about it on your academic website, department/lab website.
The idea behind this strategy is basically that you hope the internet gods point people toward your website. But how effective is that? When I look at this strategy, it feels excruciatingly passive (and, therefore, ineffective).
Luckily, academics are becoming super savvy about using social media to let the world know about their work. Some professionals are taking proactive steps, such as:
Sending an email through a professional list-serv
Posting the link on social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc)
Submitting a press release
While these are steps in the right direction, there is sometimes one key element missing when this information is shared.
Can you guess what that is?
It’s visuals! (of course it is)
If you want to use social media to share your publication/report or presentation/webinar then having an eye-catching and well-designed visual to accompany the link will help you be more effective.
That’s why visual abstracts have become popular in recent years. I think you should absolutely work on creating visual abstracts and it’s a fantastic next step when promoting your conference presentation, science talk, webinar, journal publication, or evaluation report.
What I want to encourage you to do, however, is to take things one step further and create an animated abstract. If you’re already making a visual abstract, then it won’t take long to turn it into an #AnimatedAbstract.
And I’ll share some of my Twitter stats with you to highlight why those few extra minutes are sooooo worth it.
My informal ad-hoc experiment: How much better is an #AnimatedAbstract compared to a visual abstract?
Earlier this summer, I hosted a free weeklong brownbag training event to help academics and scientists learn how to create interactive webinars.
I made a visual abstract to go along with my tweets about the event and then decided to create an animated version, too. I tweeted both versions at different times and didn’t think much of it after that.
At least, until I started making this post. Then I realized, I should take a look at my Twitter stats to see if the animated (gif) version did, actually, do better.
Curious to see what I learned?
This is a GIF made in Powerpoint, that shows another GIF I made in Powerpoint. So meta!
I first looked at overall impressions. This is how many times people saw the tweet float across their timeline. People saw the static image (visual abstract) 1,165 times. That’s…okay I guess?
Yup, this is a gif of slides made in PowerPoint!
But compare that to the impressions for the gif (animated abstract): 5,197! WHOA! That’s almost 4,000 more impressions with the gif version compared to the static version!
But the goal isn’t just getting eyes on your post. The goal is to get people to engage with your post.
So, I looked at engagements next. Here’s what I found.
People engaged with the static image 51 times. That’s super low, in my opinion. This metric includes things like looking at my profile, just opening up the image more, and clicks. So to me, that’s low.
Compare that to the 343 engagements with the gif version! WHOA! That’s almost 300 more engagements.
Again, the image is exactly the same and it’s the same link. The actual text is slightly different, but the key difference here is that one is a visual abstract and one is an animated abstract.
But still. It’s link clicks that matter the most, because my goal was to get people to register for the brownbag. So I looked specifically at those stats.
And this is when I just about fell outta my chair.
People clicked the link only 13 times with the static image.
Yikes that’s low.
The gif version, though, got 107 clicks!!
Holy coffee! That’s almost 100 more clicks on my link and the main difference was taking a couple minutes to animate it and share it as a gif instead of a static image.
Let’s review these numbers again, I mean. Wow. I’m honestly still shocked by how much better the gif did compared to the static image. I honestly wasn’t expecting this big of a difference.
Wowsers.
I calculated the percentage of clicks / total impressions and check this out:
PNG version: 13 clicks / 1,165 impressions = 1.11%
GIF version: 107 clicks / 5,197 impressions = 2.06%
And yes I know this isn’t a real experiment or a real study. YES, I am aware that there are other factors that could have impacted this. And yes I am aware this is just an example on Twitter and not other social platforms. But this is such a huge difference that I’m personally convinced of the unique effectiveness of an animated abstract vs. a standard visual abstract.
And it’s not just me. Others are starting to create #AnimatedAbstracts too and I have 2 examples from others to share with you next. Because, I have one more question to answer: How can an academic/scientist make an engaging gif that has this type of impact?
The answer is twofold: (a) presentation design skills and (b) a community to workshop your ideas with. To make this point, I will share two examples with you.
Hopefully, you’re enjoying this blog post so far, if so, you’ll love my FREE training.
#AnimatedAbstract example 1
First, let me explain where these 2 case studies came from. Just in case you’re new to my blog and don’t know this, I run an online professional development course that includes a private Slack community where people can post questions and get feedback about their presentation slides and script (It’s called Blast Off to Stellar Slides!).
The thing about effective presentation skills is that it’s the gateway to being a visual thinker and an effective designer in other contexts. For example, knowing the core principles of slide design helps you design visually engaging scientific/academic posters and infographics.
The same applies to creating gifs about your work.
Even if you have to make some small tweaks (changing the slide size, adding in some additional text), if you already have great slides then you don’t need to worry about the design aspect.
That’s why we’ve had a few BOSS members share their draft gifs in our community for feedback. It’s a fun project to work on together. With permission, here is one of those gifs.
Dr. Bree Boppre shared this draft in our community:
DRAFT
After receiving feedback, here is the final version:
FINAL
Dr. Boppre then shared this gif on twitter.
Here is what Dr. Boppre wanted to share about creating gifs to talk about her work and workshopping this with the community:
When I first created the GIF for my study, I fell into the habit of presenting in the traditional research paper style: intro>methods>results>conclusions. Echo pushed me to consider this as a story to grab the audience’s attention with the most important points first. This tip completely changed the structure of the GIF to be more engaging. Thanks to BOSS, I also incorporated more visuals to display the study design and results. Overall, I’m very happy with the end product! An important policy stakeholder saw the GIF on social media and reached out to us for more information about the study. Success!
Whoa. Did you catch that? Thanks to this gif, a policy stakeholder contacted the study authors for more information!
Success, indeed!!
#AnimatedAbstract example 2
Another BOSS member, Ronie Walters (a final year PhD student), also shared a draft gif with our community:
DRAFT
After receiving feedback from the community, here is the final version. Look at the difference!
FINAL
Ronie shared this gif on Twitter.
Here is what Ronie wanted to share about creating gifs to talk about her work and workshopping this with the community:
As a remote PhD student I rely on twitter as a “watercooler” option for keeping up to date with the latest research in my field. When this systematic review was published I channeled my inner Echo and tried to think how to tell an engaging story and give people the information they would need to know if it was relevant for them. Gif’s are a great way to do this in twitter! The feedback from the BOSS community really helped me refine my ideas and the final version is so much better as a result.
Awesome, Ronie!
Hopefully you enjoyed seeing the before/after. I wanted to share the before and after with you so you could see that making a great research/science gif involves drafts, feedback, and revisions to get it right. Sometimes we need to just present information in the standard academic way to get it out of our system. But after that is done, don’t stop. Keep going to find the story.
Notice the key elements that make both Bree’s & Ronie’s final versions compelling gifs:
They tell a better story that is easy to follow along with.
The key takeaway points are clearer.
The animations and design make them engaging, easy to understand, and easy to follow.
I highly recommend that you create a gif to promote your upcoming presentation, publication, or even just general science/research communication!
If you’re wondering “how do I even begin learning how to create great gifs like this?” All of the above are skills involved with effective presenting as well. That’s why I recommend you start by learning presentation design skills. It’s more broadly applicable than learning “great gif skills.” And, presentation design skills will not only help you make better presentations (no more #DeathByPowerpoint!), but will also help you make engaging visual communication products such as gifs, posters, infographics, and more. And again, just in case you missed it, if you have great slides then you already have a great gif ready to go—you just need to export select slides as a gif!
Top 3 tips for creating engaging #AnimatedAbstracts:
Just to boil this down into some actionable and concrete tips:
1. Tell a story by making it a conversation. Speak all the words you’re showing in your gif, as it’s happening. If it doesn’t feel conversational or easy to follow, people will likely disengage.
2. Use animations to walk people through all the information you share in the gif.
3. Use graphic and information design principles to keep it visually engaging and easy to read and understand.
If this post inspires you to create a research/science gif, be sure to tag me and let me know! I love seeing examples of these!
If you’re ready to improve your presentation design skills, start with my FREE training!
with joy,
Echo Rivera, PhD
p.s. Thank you Bree & Ronie for your helpful reviews and edits on the first draft of this post!