The step-by-step guide to creating your own videos from scratch

Videos are being used more and more in marketing. With shorter attention spans, they help get your message across in a short space of time. It really is time for you to start using videos in your marketing. If you need any more convincing, here are some very persuasive statistics.

In 2016, over 8 billion videos or 100 million hours of video were watched on Facebook every day. (TechCrunch)
55% of people consume videos thoroughly, which is the highest amount of all types of content. (Hubspot)
92% of mobile video viewers share videos with others. (Vituets.com)

This trend is only going to gather momentum, so you need to start using videos today!

Now, at this point, you’re probably thinking that you can’t afford to create your own videos in that much volume. I say you can! Anyone with a smartphone can create their own videos – people are always keen to see the person behind the business and get behind-the-scenes exclusives. And for this, your smartphone is your best friend.

Outside of videos you create using your phone, you really should try Facebook Live. Look back at the first stat above. Don’t you want some of that exposure?

Don’t like being in front of the camera?

There’s a brilliant tool to help you make your own videos. It’s called Lumen5, and below is a step-by-step guide for you to follow.

Thinking you don’t have the time? My first video took 10 minutes to create! That’s right, only 10 minutes.

Getting started

When you log into Lumen5, you’ll be taken to your dashboard. Click ‘Create’ in the top right-hand corner and you’ll arrive at a screen like this:

Here’s the easy bit. Copy and paste the link for the blog post you’re going to use and then click create. At this point, Lumen5 will get busy with pulling the text from your blog post.

Crafting your storyboard

Creating a video using Lumen5 is essentially like building slides in a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. Now, don’t be scared! It’s a lot easier than it sounds. Here’s what your screen will look like once all the text from your blog post has been pulled in.

Now, there’s going to be a lot of text in your blog post, so you need to be picky about what you’ll use. If you have sub-headings, that’s a good place to start. Click on a sub-heading, and it will automatically be added as a new slide to your storyboard. Just like this:

Once you’ve added all the slides you want, your storyboard will look like this:

Now, here’s the great thing. You can click on each one of the boxes in your storyboard and add more text. There’s a character limit, and you’ll be warned when you’re close to reaching it. Once you’re happy, click ‘continue’ in the top right-hand corner.

Time to make it pretty

The next step is to add images or video clips to the slides in your storyboard. The great thing about Lumen5 is that it already comes with loads of images and videos you can use. You can, however, upload your own images too.

Take your time with each slide to get it looking how you want. Search for what you want and when you’ve found it, click and drag it to the relevant slide.

Now, there are a few menus to the right of each slide. Here’s what they help you to do:

Preview – you can see what that individual slide will look like when animated.
Text – you can decide whether the text on that slide is a title, a quote or normal text. You can even decide not to have any text at all.
Text position – this is where the text will appear on the slide when the video is finished. I’d avoid putting it at the bottom of the slide.
Highlight – this feature lets you highlight the key message in the text on your slide. You can pick the colour too (more on that later.)
Black bar off – this is a great new feature. When turned on, it inserts a black bar behind your text so that it can be seen more clearly when used with images.

Wired for sound

The next step is to add some music to your video. Here’s where you pick:

Choose something that you feel is appropriate for your business and the message in the video. Now, there’s no option to add your own music, as with images. But there is a huge choice and they are all cleared for copyright, so it really is worth choosing one of these pieces of music.

Are you on brand?

You want people to associate the video with your company, so need to add some of your branding to it. The branding tab lets you do all this.

Firstly, you can add a watermark to your video. This will appear on every slide. I use my logo. So, make sure the slider for watermark is switched to on and upload your logo.

The next thing to sort out is the highlight colour. This is where you make key words or messages stand out by using a different colour. I added the hex value for the green I use. You can do the same. If you’re not sure what yours is, use a tool like ColorCop which will help you grab the hex value. Copy it and paste it into Lumen5 in the highlight drop-down menu.

Another new addition is a choice of fonts. Click the drop-down menu and pick one that closest to your font.

Lastly, add an outro logo and message. These will appear on the last slide of your video. It’s a great way of reinforcing your brand. The outro message should be a call to action. At the moment, Lumen5 doesn’t support buttons to be able to link to content, so I ask people to share the video.

Top tip: if you want to add a link to the full blog post, shorten the link in Bitly. Edit it, so it’s something memorable. Then add this to a slide before your outro message.

Get ready to publish!

We’re almost there. Once you’re happy with how all your slides look, click ‘continue’ in the top right-hand corner. Here’s what you’ll see next:

Some of the options here are only available if you pay a subscription. I’ve found the free version works well for me. The thing you’ll need to remember is that at the very end of your video, there will be a black screen telling people you used Lumen5 to create the video. If you don’t mind this (and I don’t because it’s a way for me to share a great resource) then the free version will work fine for you. If you’d like a different size format, this will open up when you pay as well.

Here’s the screen where you can watch your whole video through to the end, with music included. It’s a great time to check everything’s as you expected. When you’re ready, click ‘publish’ and work on creating your video will start. This is what your screen will look like:

When your video is ready, here’s what you’ll see on your screen.

If you have to go off and do something else, don’t worry about keeping the site open. They guys at Lumen5 will email you when your video is ready.

Ready to share!

Once your video is ready, here’s what you’ll see on your screen:

At this point, I watch the video all the way through again, just to make sure it looks like I was expecting it to. Also, once you’ve had a break from working on it, you’re more likely to spot any typos, so it really is a good idea to watch it again.

If you do spot anything, just click on ‘edit video’ and you’ll be taken back to where you can make changes. If everything’s OK, then click on ‘publish’ and the video will start to download. I prefer to download it, rather than share it straight to Facebook. This gives me the flexibility on when to share it, and to upload it to my YouTube channel.

So, there you have it! Remember, it only took me only 10 minutes to create my first video. It’s so simple, you can do it too. Go to Lumen5 today and start creating your masterpiece!