As a dedicated blogger (of nearly a decade) living in the world of video creation, learning about Lumen5 turned me into a kid on Christmas morning. The genius of Lumen5 is that it allows you to turn your blog posts into engaging videos, including access to a library of photos, videos, and audio tracks…and for free! The free plan offers a lower resolution video and “subtle Lumen5 logo in the credits” compared to the paid ($49/month), but it’s a heck of a deal for all that you get.

After creating your Lumen5 account, you’ll receive an email that gives you a specific Before & After example from The Huffington Post. You’ll notice that the original article only included 1 image, and the final Lumen5 video includes 9 photos or videos, background music, a final “slide” with HuffPo branding, and lasts 47 seconds. Now it’s time to sign in and create your first video. 

How to Turn a Blog Post into a Video using Lumen5

You can visit your Dashboard to either start creating a new video from scratch or use a Smart Template. You will need to provide Lumen5 with either your blog’s feed or a specific blog post URL to begin turning a blog post into a video using their tools. Your first time through, Lumen5 offers a tutorial to help you along your video creation journey.

Clicking sentences from your blog post adds them to your video. You can also add or type new text that’s not included in your blog post, by clicking on the + button. You can even break up longer sentences into two (or more) lines by placing your cursor where you want the split to be and hitting Enter. 

Lumen5 takes a 4 step approach to turning your blog post into a video:

• Choose your article
• Building your story (using the text of your blog post)
• Add media (either photos or videos. Or choose your own. Lumen5 will pull in the images included on the link provided.)
• Publish

As you create your Lumen5 video, you’ll see the current length of your video and a Preview button in the top right corner. While you can publish a video Lumen5 deems “too long”, it does try to encourage you to keep your video to under a minute.

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Lumen5 identifies an entire sentence at a time and includes that whole sentence when you click to add. You’ll see the total character count of that sentence shown in red if you are over the word count, like in the photo below. Once you’ve added a sentence, you can split it up into 2 or more sections, delete it, or rearrange. Lumen5 also recognizes the use of heading text in your blog post. 

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After you’ve finished adding your text to your video, click to continue by adding your media. Lumen5 will suggest some photos for you. You can search Lumen5’s database or upload your own. If you like a photo or video you find more than the suggested photo or video, simply drag and drop it into place.

You will preview each photo or video on the right. You can edit the text, adjust the highlight, change the text position, or delete the slide entirely. You can also adjust the font.

Once you reach the end of your video build, you have the opportunity to upload your logo and set the text for your final slide. You can also add one or more music tracks to your video, or upload your own.

Now you’re ready to click the Publish button. You can preview your full video, music included. It takes a few minutes for your Lumen5 video to publish. You’ll also receive an email once it’s ready. 

In an online world where more and more content it getting pushed to video, the Lumen5 tool is a perfect fit. You can upload your completed video to Facebook, YouTube, or any of your other video social media platforms. Even better, on November 9, 2017, Lumen5 announced that square-cropped videos are now available, which is perfect for Instagram. Just be sure to keep it at a minute or less.