Creating a video can be very costly, yet video is a growing as an important part of a successful social media marketing campaign. To help you easily create inexpensive videos, we’ve put together a few free and handy tools available online. These can help you turn blog posts into videos to share on social media.
Free online tools to help create videos
- The very first thing you will need to do is to create a “storyboard.” Choose a post that contains timeless content. These are known as evergreen posts. Create a text file from the key points of your blog with a length of 10-15 words each. Each slide will be on the screen for 4 seconds, so you want to be sure your viewers have time to read everything you want them to.
- Enhance your slides with additional images. Royalty-free images, many of which have a Creative Commons license, are available at https://images.google.com, https://pixabay.com, and other sites. Make sure you include an attribution containing the name of the photographer and the website source of the image.
- You can now create your presentation on Google Slides. It’s free and works on many different operating systems. Just follow the directions for creating a new slide presentation and feel free to take advantage of a present theme or import a theme using the “click the theme” option.
Now you can start creating your slides and adding the text from your storyboard. (Start with a title slide.) You will copy and paste text from your storyboard into the slide layout that you can choose on the Google Slides site.
When you are done, click “file” in the menu bar and select “download as option,” then choose either Microsoft PowerPoint (pptx) or ODP Document (.odp) so that Google Slides will know how to convert your presentation into the file format you want to use.
- Once your slides are downloaded onto your computer, you can convert it to a video file using Online Convert. Simply select “convert to MP4” from the drop-down list and the program will upload your presentation file. Then select YouTube as the video preset, and finally, click the “convert file” button. Your slide presentation has now been converted into an MP4 video file.
- You can also add music to your video by using online video editing software like HitFilm Express, or if you have a Mac, “imovie” will work. Bensound and HookSounds are online software that will allow you to add royalty-free music that you feel fits the theme of your video. After you choose your music, open the video editor you chose and combine the audio and video files.
- You are now ready to create your video by clicking “create video.” You can save it as a video to burn into a disc, upload to the web, or email to whomever you like.
- Now upload your video to whatever social media platform(s) you use. It would especially useful on YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Once you familiarize yourself with the process, creating a video online will become easier and faster. It’s also a wonderfully creative way for you to market your brand.
If you need some coaching to learn how to create your own video, or if you would like it done for you, just give us a call. We have the staff, the know-how, and the creativity to help make your project succeed.
Source: Social Media Examiner
Group Matrix Blog – March 19, 2017 – by Sharon Bowles
