Turn Blog Posts into Engaging Videos
Learn how to use Lumen 5 to make videos using content from any blog post or website!
Video is the king of content. According to a study conducted by Cisco, 82% of all consumer IP traffic will be video by 2021. So it’s safe to say, video definitely needs to be part of your marketing plan. Luckily, there are plenty of free & easy-to-use tools out there to help.
In this post, I’m going to give you a step-by-step guide to using one of my new and favorite platforms for creating videos — Lumen 5.
A Step-By-Step Guide to Using Lumen 5
Lumen 5 is a really cool platform that allows you to repurpose your blog posts and make engaging videos. All you need to do is copy and paste the URL of a blog post into the Lumen 5 video builder. Then, it will take the content of the blog post and make an editable storyboard. It will also automatically add visual media based on the subject matter. All you need to do is edit the storyboard, add music and your company logo — and you’re done!
Below, I will walk you through the video-making process so you can start making videos today!
Step 1: Create an account
Creating an account is easy. Just click the Sign up for free button, add your name, email and password — and you’re done!
Once your account is created and you sign in, you will see your dashboard. The next step is to click Create Video and you will be on your way to creating your first Lumen 5 video!
Step 2: Add a link to a blog post
So the coolest part about Lumen 5 is how easy they make it to generate a video from existing content. This starts with adding a link to the blog post (or website) you want to make a video about. As an example, I used a blog post I wrote recently about the importance of video marketing.
btw: I’ve added a link to the video marketing article at the end of this post.
I also added the video I made with Lumen 5 if you would rather watch that than read the article. 😏
Step 3: Build your storyboard
The next step is the most time consuming step — but still super easy. As you can see in the image below, the blog post has been pasted next to the storyboard builder. All you need to do is click the + button and manually write something or click a sentence from the blog post and it will automatically be added to the storyboard. This makes it incredibly easy to quickly create a storyboard from your blog content.
Here’s a tip!
Once you have finished adding content to your storyboard, there is one major tip that will help you create a good video — watch the preview! As you watch the preview, read the text aloud — pausing & emphasizing as if you were recording a voiceover. If you can’t get through the sentence before it switches over to the next frame, it’s too long.
btw: The first video I made had this problem. I didn’t even notice it was a problem until I played the video for my wife and she couldn’t keep up — hell, I couldn’t keep up and I wrote it! So watch the preview, read it aloud as if you’re narrating, and edit the frames with too many words.
Step 4: Add media to your storyboard
Once you have added all of your textual content to the storyboard, the next step is adding media. Lumen 5 automatically adds media to each frame based on keywords. So, without adding any new media, the storyboard is pretty much good to go. That said, I’m picky and tend to replace media with stuff I feel is a little more important and/or engaging. Another cool thing about Lumen 5 is you’re able to add original media — so if you have videos or images you have already created, you’re able to upload those to your storyboard. Or, you can use their library to search for relevant media.
btw: behind-the-scenes Lumen 5 is keeping track of the media you’re using and will automatically create a credits frame at the end of your video so you’re giving credit where credit is due. So…no need to worry about that! 😎
Step 5: Add music
Just like the media, Lumen 5 provides all the tunes too! Click the music tab and search through their options. They provide a lot of options, so whether you’re looking for a dramatic jingle or an uplifting beat…they’ve got you covered!
Step 6: Add your company logo
Another awesome feature is to brand your video with a company logo. This is a feature that’s usually something you need to pay for with other platforms but it’s pretty cool Lumen 5 lets you do this for free — at least for now. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is something you need to pay for in the future.
Step 7: Publish your video
The last and final set is to click continue and publish your video — you’re done! It will take ~5 minutes for a 2 minute video to render but they will send you an email when it’s complete so you don’t need to wait around. Also, all of your videos can be edited after the fact so no need to stress the editing process.
Watch the video I made using Lumen 5!
Here’s the finished product. As you will see in the video, this only took me 15 minutes to make!
If you want to see the blog post I used to make this video & learn more about video marketing, check out the post below!
Thanks for reading!
If you have any questions about Lumen 5 or have anything to add about video marketing, please leave a comment below!
