Last Updated 5 months by Emily Standley-Allard
A little behind on the video craze? No worries! You don’t need to spend hours producing video content with expensive equipment when you have existing blog content and automated software. I easily repurpose my existing blog posts into videos with Lumen5 in less than five minutes and this post will show you how.
Lumen5 is an automated and intuitive tool that allows you to turn blog posts and other content into animated informative videos. You can then share those videos directly to your website and all your social media channels.
Once you sign up (for free!) for Lumen5, you can create videos from your blog posts, text or from scratch in under 5 minutes. Here’s how!
Step 1
Convert your blog post/text/script to video.
There are three ways to convert your existing content into video with Lumen5: a link, copy and paste text and starting from scratch.
Here’s a screenshot from the dashboard where I made a video about ‘How to Get Paid for Blog Sponsorships’ and then published it to YouTube!
How to Start and Grow Your Business On YouTube
The first option is to enter a link to an existing blog post or article. Lumen5 then fetches the content and starts populating your storyboard.
This is the most efficient way to create a video on the platform. Lumen5 AI bots essentially do all the work for you by automatically pulling text and images from your post or article.
Of course if you don’t like what the AI bots pull you can always change it up manually.
The second option is to copy and paste the text from whichever source you wish to create a video with. Lumen5 will use that content to help you create a video.
The third approach is to start from scratch. You can type your content in manually to create a video. Once you decide which approach you’d like to use, the following screens will appear to help you choose a video format and a theme.
Lumen5 automatically provides a foundation to create your video on. All you need to do is arrange your storyboard and edit.
You’ll see text from your blog post or the text you copied and pasted on the first screen on the left. A video storyboard is on the right. The blog post/article title populates a box in the first slide of the storyboard.
You can add to the storyboard by choosing text that summarizes your post. Simply click on sentences to add them to your storyboard.
If you’re building from scratch, or using the other two methods, you can add text manually by clicking the ‘+’ button and start typing your text. You can also rearrange sections of your storyboard by hovering over the box you want to move.
We recommend no more than 120 characters per box so that the text fits perfectly into the slide/scene of your video. Click within the box to edit the text and reduce characters if needed.
Lumen5 calculates the length of the slide, the positioning of the text, and which words to highlight in the video slide, automatically. You can of course override the suggestions and edit the video to your liking.
add image
For each video slide, you can choose a background from the expansive library of videos, photos, and icons. Lumen5 also includes any images from the article. Alternatively, you can upload your own media.
If you choose to upload your own images, they need to be at least 500 x 500 and in JPG, PNG, or GIF format. The maximum upload size is 15MB.
To change the background image of any of the storyboard slides, simply drag the image from the library to the slide. Keep in mind that the background will be slightly animated in the finished video. You can preview your video to preview image effects.
Add music
You can add music to your video using any of the millions of copyright-free audio files provided by Lumen5 or upload your own file (just ensure that you have the rights to use the audio for commercial purposes).
Clicking the ‘Mood’ drop-down menu gives you an array of music to match the mood or feel of your video. You can preview a track by clicking the ‘Play’ icon to the left of it.
Once you’ve made a choice (there are lots of options – granted they are not hip hop/pop TikTok mainstream but who cares?)
Click it to apply the track to your video. Of course, adding music to your video isn’t a must. You can leave this section blank if you wish.
Brand your video
You can add brand identity to your video by setting colors, adding a logo and choosing/uploading your preferred font.
Choose your text and background colors to match your brand colors.
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Add and position your logo
You have the option of uploading a logo or adding a watermark (which can be a simple version of your logo or something else) to your video.
Select or upload your preferred font
You can select or upload fonts to match your brand fonts.
Set the total length of your video
As you edit and format your video, Lumen5 calculates the total length of the video. You can adjust this by choosing a Fast, Normal or Slow transition speed.
You can also select a Landscape, Square or Vertical video format.
The final slide
The last slide of your storyboard is labelled ‘Outro Scene’. You can add a logo to this slide or leave it at the default ‘Share this video’ text.
Step 3
Publish your video
You can preview your video during the editing process to ensure that everything looks as it should. Once you’re happy with it, click ‘Finish’ and Lumen5 will render a final version in 10 minutes or less.
You’ll receive an email once your video is finished.
Once your video is rendered, you can immediately download it to your computer to publish on your other social channels and website.
It’s as easy as that. To make things sweeter, you can edit your video after it is rendered.
There are tons of features and options at your disposal to help you create a professional and engaging video for your business.
Get in there, play around, have fun and share your awesome content with the world.
Join me at the Brave at Business Summit for a limited time only!
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Thank you so much for explaining how Lumen5 works. I signed up for the free version so I could try it out.. but I never knew where to begin.. or figured out exactly how it all works.
Now that I have an idea of what to do with it.. I am going to give it a try 🙂
That’s awesome! Glad it helped. Thanks for commenting:)