A Production Team of One: How to Produce Great Videos on a Budget

video Aug 16, 2017

When you’re a solo entrepreneur or you’re working on boosting your personal brand, making videos is going to be the responsibility of one person…you. You might not have created videos before, but it’s a great element to implement into your digital strategy and an effective way to communicate with your audiences.

If you’re working with a squeezed budget then video creation can seem daunting, but the good news is that you don’t have to break the bank to make quality vids. With a few free tools and tips, you can learn how to take some shortcuts and build your skills.

Why make a Video?

Video content is super popular and an incredibly versatile way to spend your marketing budget. 80% of internet traffic is estimated to be video traffic by 2020. Younger demographics are increasingly used to expecting good video content and have grown up with video and vlogging as a go-to content medium for their requirements.

  • Videos can easily be embedded across platforms and used to promote your services.
  • This content is attention-grabbing and offers something different, visually stimulating and helps to make social ads more eye-catching and compelling.
  • Caters to audiences that are more visually-driven and prefer video to text.
  • Video content is easy to be repurposed and made into gifs, infographics and FAQ blog posts.

Content Ideation

Research your target audiences and try to find out about the types of videos and formats they enjoy. Look at trending topics and your most-asked queries to try to provide value for your audiences with your video posts.

Create storyboards to loosely plan your content, so you know the rough structure. Coming up with consistently great content ideas is tough, but by doing your research and repurposing some of your successful content in the past, you can come up with an array of quality, informative and entertaining posts.

YouTube for Business App can be downloaded as an app on your phone and will help you storyboard, plan, execute, and upload your entire video making you look like a pro!

Free Video-making Tools

There are plenty of ways that you can create video content through in-house tools in Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and live video capabilities are well worth trying if you want instant interaction with your audience. But if you want to make something beforehand and then post it on platforms, then there are loads of free tools you can use.

  • Quik by GoPro lets you easily edit your photos or footage together into a short video. This is great if you want to come up with some short instructional product videos or let people know about an event etc.
  • If you want to clearly communicate some info or split up a complex concept into bite size info then Lumen 5 is an effective way to turn your posts or articles into videos. You can import your post and then pick the bits of text you want to use, adding audio and inserting other ideas.
  • There are also plenty of sites to help with free image and video content if you don’t want to shoot your own. Videvo provides free HD footage and Pond5 has plenty of historic footage for you to choose from.

Audio and Teleprompters

Music that you use in videos will be subject to copyright usually, but there are lots of sites that help you to find stock audio that’s free and simple to use. This can make your video a bit more professional and create a different atmosphere through sound.

Tools like Looperman and YouTube Audio Library are fantastic, rich resources for people looking to give a different dimension to their video.

You can also use great teleprompter apps to help you remember your lines if you’re doing an instructional video. This will make your video look more professional if you can speak uninterrupted. Paste in your text to Teleprompter Video Creator and away you go – it’s perfect if you’re putting together a live video or want to start vlogging.

Editing Options

You might want to use different editing software to the tool you’ve used to shoot your video. Using a desktop editor can help you to create something more professional or you might want to use an app on your phone to shoot and edit in one – it’s up to you:

  • Resolve is a really good option if you want to edit on your desktop and spend a lot of time working on your video. It has lots of features and once you’ve learnt how to use it, you can make something impressive.
  • Power Director is useful for when you want to shoot your footage using your phone and edit it with it too. It makes it simple for you to drop in new audio and footage, instead of having to import everything into different apps on different platforms etc.

Things to Remember

So, there are lots of ways to create your videos, but making sure that you follow a few other simple rules will help you to ensure that they’re polished and optimized.

  • Captions are super important – not everyone has the sound on your video playing. They might be on public transport or have disabled that function. Someone could be deaf or hard of hearing too, so making your videos inclusive by using captions is a must-do.
  • Make sure your thumbnail is eye-catching and makes sense for the video you’re creating. Use free stock images or photos you’ve taken.
  • You need to ensure that your videos are responsive for people viewing on mobile if you’re adding it to your site or blog. Use Embed Responsively to do this.
  • When you’re uploading to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, you’ve got to make sure your video is suited to this platform.

Creating your own videos can be a really fun way to market yourself and your business. It’s a content format that people really enjoy and it’s eye-catching and compelling – an effective way to build your brand and can be done on a small budget.

Want to learn more about creating videos? Unlock access to our expert MasterClasses, planners, tools and an entire community of active learners like you by becoming a member of our H2H Human Marketing Club.