Videos are a great way to engage your audience, but they can get expensive and be very time consuming to produce. Here’s a quick — and relatively affordable — way to bulk up your video library: convert existing written material to video.
Do you have a how-to article already created? Maybe a first-person blog post or opinion piece? These are excellent candidates for translation to video. Some people prefer getting their information visually, which makes reusing content in a video particularly effective.
Start with a Script
An early hurdle to making a video is the script, and having content already created gets you most of the way there.
The key when translating written content to a script is choosing words that sound natural when spoken; we don’t always write with that in mind. Read the article out loud to find words that don’t sound right and swap them out for more conversational terms.
Think Visually
Since we are creating a video, something has to appear on screen. YouTube has made it okay to create simple visuals to go with the content. You want it to look professional, but you don’t have to create elaborate sets or use special effects.
- For how-to articles, you can use a combination of voice overs, text on screen, and screenshots.
- For first person articles, you can use a “talking head” approach — just capture the author talking through the points made in the content.
Sound Matters
While we’re trying to keep costs low when producing these kinds of videos, don’t skimp too much. You still want to adhere to your brand expectations and keep quality high. Good audio is an easy way to raise the overall quality of your production.
- Think about the voices that people will hear. The voices should be clear and easy to understand.
- Use good mics to capture the audio, and make sure the space is quiet.
- Fill spaces with background music. Stock audio doesn’t cost much but makes a big difference.
It Works
We’ve used this approach to create videos and have been very pleased with the results. We created an informative four-minute video that started as a written how-to — and reduced costs to half of what it would have been if we started from scratch.
If you’re ready to try converting your written content to video, Gowan can help. Contact us to start the conversation!