QUICKLY CREATE SOCIAL VIDEOS FROM YOUR BLOG POSTS WITH LUMEN5

After putting all that effort into writing a great blog post, would it be nice if you could publish a video based on that same content? Video can dramatically increase reach and exposure, generating 1,200% more shares than text and images combined, so being able to easily and easily create good quality videos is critical. But, how can you fit these videos into your team's busy schedule?

In my next series of posts, I will use several different tools (Lumen5, Content Samurai, Adobe Spark) to create a video based on a blog post I published in the past. For each tool, I will document the time, process, and cost associated with it, as well as showcase the videos themselves.

The first tool I will use is Lumen5, which uses AI and a simple interface to enable you to quickly build videos with minimal effort. Let's get to it.

FIRST BUILD A STORYBOARD

Regardless of which tool you end up using, the first thing to do is define the key points you want the video to cover. This will be essential for the more manual tools and will help refine the content for the automatic ones.

A NOTE ABOUT TIMING

Getting the video timing right can be hard - you want the total length to be somewhere between 1 and 1.5 minutes, but you need to also give the viewers time to read and digest each key point. So, if you break your video down into scenes, each one needs to be a minimum of 5 seconds. For a one minute video that is 12 scenes, and just 18 scenes for 1.5-minute videos. That also includes intro and outro scenes.

FOCUS ON THE KEY POINTS

With such a small number of scenes available, you need to stop your content down to the essentials. The easiest way to do this is to build an outline of your post using the headlines, subheadings, and bullets. Grab any facts or quotes that you feel are essential to support your points.

BUILD A STORY

Now, group the content together and start to build a story flow. Start with the problem and support it with stats, examples, and quotes. Then explain how to deal with it, again with supports. Remove anything that is not essential to that story. Then see how many scenes it takes up. Try to stop it down again to fit within 12 or 18 scenes. Ensure that each scene has at least 1-2 short sentences worth of text, preferably less than 25 words total.

THINK ABOUT STYLE

Once you have your storyboard, it is time to decide on what it might look like. Will you follow your company's brand guidelines, maybe borrowing from the official PowerPoint deck template styles? Or perhaps, it will be very visual, using b-roll or stock photos. It could even be simple overlays on videos of you reading the outline out loud.

Obviously, the current style depends on the tool you use, but having an idea ahead of time will make it go much faster.

MY EXAMPLE BLOG POST CONVERSION

I will be trying to convert to the previous post I wrote called The End of Organic Reach and What To Do About it. Here is the storyboard I created for it, where each blank line separates the scenes. I have 18 scenes so my video will be 1.5 minutes long.

USING LUMEN5 TO CREATE MY VIDEOS

Lumen5 is a popular tool, mainly because of its simplicity. You can hook up the RSS feed for your blog and it will automatically import posts and build videos from them using its AI. You can also paste in a link instead of a feed or even paste in your plain storyboard.

OPTION 1 - AUTOMATIC CREATION VIA RSS

When I opened up Lumen5, I had already created an Instant Video for me for this particular blog post. (Long ago, I had set it up to pull in our blog's RSS feed.) Clicking on the video opened up the editor, with scene text and backgrounds already set up based on its AI. All I needed to do was add some free music and make any final tweaks. I left it as for now so you could see what it created.

I think that the video Lumen5 created automatically is just ok. It did a good job of finding some key points to put in there, although they do not exactly match my outline. The images it chose are a little strange - I do not think that they really match or are very appealing. However, it is nice that they add to Ken Burns effect to the images so that everything feels like it is moving.

This is the better than nothing option, but not that great. Of course, with some tweaking, it might be a bit better.

Time to create: 1 minute

How much I like it: 1/5

OPTION 2 - PULL IN A BLOG POST VIA URL

Going back to the main screen, I put in the blog URL and now I get the editor with just the title scene created:

I have an interface is pretty simple and so is the process.

INSERTING TEXT

Click on the left to create a new scene with that text. If the text is long, Lumen5 will split it into 2 scenes, but you can hit backspace to put them both on one. Do not bother adjusting the text position and attributes until you have chosen the media. Note: you can only have one text block per scene.

You can also add your own scenes directly from clicking on your blog text by clicking the + in between scenes, which is nice for adding title slides or additional info.

ADJUST THE BACKGROUND MEDIA

Lumen5 will pick a background based on the text content, which is nice, but most times, I did not like what it picked. But, it is easy to go to the media tab and search for something else. They have lots of images, videos, and icons to insert, and the search is pretty good. However, the current content is again just ok.

It is not possible to see what you have already included in other scenes and it can also be hard to find images or videos that go with each other. You have the option to upload your own media, but that feels like it somehow defeats the purpose of a simple tool.

UPDATE THE TEXT ATTRIBUTES

Lumen5 has automatically positioned the text based on the image. You can choose other positions around the frame and also set it to a Title or Quote. You can also select some of the text and highlight it, which is a nice feature. If you change the background, you will need to redo the positioning, but the text type and highlighting will be preserved.

ADD THE CTA

You can upload an image or logo to the final slide and then add a short CTA. This is a very simple scene with no options, it is easy to just fill it out and move on.

FINALLY, ADD THE MUSIC

Lumen5 has a pretty large music library, categorized by mood and style. You can preview each piece and then select it as the option. I have not tested what happens for movies that are longer than the song, but likely that will not happen often.

The end result of this process is slightly better overall. The text flow makes more sense after editing it, and the images are better: However, I ended up feeling like the blog was copied was not the best set of content and wanted to start to add more of my own manual scenes. However, if I were going to do that, then I might as well just use my storyboard, which I did next.

Time to create: 19 minutes

How much I like it: 2/5

OPTION 3 - USE A STORYBOARD

Going back to the starting page, this time I selected "Copy & Past your content" and then pasted in my storyboard. The formatting I had used with blank lines in between the scenes worked well with Lumen5's system, enabling me to just click through each group of text and generate the scenes. Then I took a second pass through to merge any blocks that I did not want to have split up.

Next, I set about choosing the media. Sadly, I could not find some of the media I had chosen in the previous video and ended up having to choose new ones. I also decided to use the same background for the step title scenes, which worked well. A few of the video backgrounds were nice, but again I found it hard to match exactly what I was going to and to get a cohesive style.

I adjusted the text positions, added the music, and hit create. I ended up spending less time on this video because I was getting better at the tool and because I did not have to think about what to use for the text. However, I had already created the storyboard as a separate step, which took me 10 minutes.

This video is the best of the 3. The content flows make more sense, for sure. However, perhaps a blended approach could be even better, using the framework of the storyboard and supporting quotes from the blog post.

However, I still do not really like the images themselves. Perhaps the way to fix this is to preselect and upload your own styled media backgrounds and then use the Lumen5 library sparingly. That would come at an additional time, but it would make a series of videos seem more cohesive.

Time to create: 17 minutes (+ 10 minutes to create storyboard)

How much I like it: 3/5

FINAL THOUGHTS

If time is your main constraint, then using Lumen5's AI and library may be just what you need. With a few tweaks and some time choosing the right media, you can whip out a video in under 30 minutes It may make sense to preselect and upload some of your own mediated backgrounds, or at least write down the search terms and description of media you found and liked before.

If you want more control over how it looks or better styling, then this may not be the right tool for you at all.

Lumen5 is free for the most common features, with a $ 49 / month Pro tier available that removes the watermark and upgrades the quality to 720p.

Pros:

Very simple and easy to use UI that does not let you get bogged down in the details

AI does a good job of starting you off with content

Multiple options for getting content into the video - RSS, URL, or pasted text

Large library of video, photos, icons, and music to search through

Dynamic positioning of text based on media content

Fast overall creation time

Free option has few annoyances

Cons:

Media library is vast, but of ok quality

Hard to create a cohesive theme across scenes

Can not easily find or reuse previous media selections.

Can not minutely control layout and animations beyond basics

Need to pay if you want to remove the end cap or get premium videos

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