Pragadeesh N
Author Archives: Pragadeesh N
Pragadeesh is a developer turned marketer, currently working as a content marketer at Animaker - a drag-and-drop video making tool that lets anyone create engaging animated videos using pre-made templates and ready-to-go assets with zero technical skills.
Looking to flip a video but can’t seem to find a tool that’s easy-to-use?
You don’t want to watch a tutorial…
… or go through several steps to do something as simple as this.
Isn’t it ironic that you have to pay and download a professional video editing software, and spend hours learning it when all you’re looking for is to flip your video?
We feel you.
That’s why we compiled this list of free, easy methods you can use to quickly flip your video in 2020.
All the methods listed here are simple but based on your computer setup or nature of work, you can pick a method that suits you the best:
Flip on Mac using Quicktime player
Flip on Windows using Windows Movie Maker
Animaker’s the quickest way to flip your video. Simply click a button to flip it horizontally and/or vertically.
The best part is it’s totally free and doesn’t slap an ugly watermark on your flipped videos.
Let me show you how:
It’s that simple.
Are you a mac user? Below, we show you how you can use a preinstalled mac app to do the same.
If you’re using Mac OS, you can use Quicktime player to flip your video. You probably already use it to play videos or record your screen. The following steps show you how to flip using Quicktime player:
And you’re done! Did you know that there’s another way to do this on Mac? We show you how in the following section.
You can use iMovie, a preinstalled Mac app, to flip your video. If you aren’t familiar with the tool, I’d suggest you use Quicktime Player instead.
To flip your video vertically, follow the below steps:
Here’s how to to flip your video horizontally:
As you can see, using iMovie isn’t the easiest way. You could opt to go with the first two methods if you’re not a user, or if you find it difficult to use.
Are you using Windows OS? Below, we show you how you can flip using a preinstalled Windows software.
Windows Movie Maker is primarily used to edit films and commercial videos. You’re better off using tools on your browser that are specifically built to address this one goal.
However, if you’re an existing user, follow these steps:
Is there any other way to flip a video quickly? What tool do you use? Please let us know in the comment section.
And if you’ve been looking for an easy way to quickly edit your videos for your social media channels, feel free to check out our online video editor. It is ridiculously simple and fast. Just a few clicks and you’re done. Say goodbye to clunky, bloated video editing software.
Downloaded an FLV video but unable to play it? To open and play it, you need to convert your FLV video to MP4 format.
MP4 format is compatible with nearly every device out there.
In this post we’ll show you quick, free ways to convert your FLV video to MP4, specifically, we’ll look at how to:
Convert Online using CloudConvert
Animaker’s FLV to MP4 converter lets you quickly convert your FLV video file to MP4 format online, for free.
Unlike other converters that are complex and require local installation, it’s a simple and lightweight app that works in your browser. Here are the steps:
1. Open Animaker’s FLV to MP4 converter and click the Start Converting button.
2. Now upload the MOV file you want to convert to MP4.
3. Once the video’s uploaded, click the Download button in the top right corner to download the video in MP4 format.
And you’re done! Apart from offering various video conversion tools, Animaker enables anyone to easily create live-action and animated videos from scratch.
Use CloudConvert to do the same. Here are the steps:
1. Launch CloudConvert’s FLV to MP4 converter, click the “Select File” button, and upload your FLV file.
2. Now click “Convert” to start converting the FLV video to MP4.
3. Once done, click the green button that says “Download” to download your video in MP4 format.
Let’s now look at how you can do this on a windows or mac computer.
Wondershare free video converter is a free desktop software that lets you convert your video to MP4 on both Windows and Mac. One downside of using it is that this free version adds a watermark to your converted video. Here are the steps:
1. Install the software on your mac or windows pc and launch it. Click the Add Files button to import your FLV video from your computer. Alternatively, you can simply drag and drop the FLV file.
2. Once the FLV video’s imported, the target format will be set to MP4 by default; click the “Convert” button to convert the FLV video to MP4.
Know an easy way that’s not been listed here? If so, let us know in the comments below.
And if you’ve been looking for an easy way to quickly edit your videos for social media, feel free to check out our online video editor. It is ridiculously simple and fast. Just a few clicks and you’re done. Say goodbye to clunky, bloated video editing software.
As an HR professional, you know how critical it is to make new employees learn about your company’s policies. It’s the key to maintaining a positive workplace culture you’ve carefully built over the years.
When employees don’t clearly understand and abide by the expectations you’ve set for them, things start to fall apart.
While you understand how crucial it is to convey your policies and procedures, the same cannot be said for your new employees. And we don’t blame them.
When you’re super excited to join the company you’ve been meaning to work for and get to know your new team members, it goes without saying that the seemingly boring company policy documents will be taken lightly. Or far worse, completely ignored.
This is why it’s not uncommon at all for employees to not understand a company’s policies clearly.
How do you not intimidate your new employees with a wall of text while also ensuring that they get your company’s policies? What’s the solution? Well, you need a type of interactive content that holds their attention and makes learning fun & easier. Specifically, you need videos.
With videos, you clearly convey all your policies and procedures by keeping things interactive and, well, obviously way less boring than plain text, duh.
But here’s the thing: the thought of creating a video seems daunting to you. We know the frustration – we’ve been there too. After having used numerous tools in the market, we can say that even the most tech-savvy person out there will find it hard to use these tools.
Since Animaker is a DIY tool exclusively built for non-designers and marketers with no video making experience, any member on your HR team can use it to create videos specific to your department.
But your team doesn’t have to start from scratch. We’ve already thought up the kind of videos you’d need to create and have built templates for almost every use case. All you have to do is pick a template, swap the text in the template with your own and hit Download, it’s THAT simple.
Today, we’re sharing 7 employee management video templates you can use to clearly communicate your company’s policies and procedures with your employees and make sure it’s understood. Every. Single. Time.
Click on the Edit this Template button to start editing a template. Simply customize the text, colors, and font to make the videos match your brand perfectly.
Use this template to let them know about a wide range of leave options and workplace flexibilities your company offers, and about your workplace etiquette.
Letting them in on some positive information about each team member would go a long way in helping them strike meaningful relationships with them. Use this template to tell them a little something interesting about members of the team they’re about to join.
Use this template to share policies regarding how your employees can keep themselves safe in the workplace.
This template helps you convey how you give out awards and recognitions to the employees that truly deserve them.
Use this template to give them a peek into how their performance would be assessed, when and how often these performance reviews are conducted, and how the deserving people would be rewarded.
Recreational activities improve your employees’ creativity and performance. Period. Besides, all work and no play makes for a dull business.
It’s imperative that you convey these policies clearly to your employees. This one has the potential to ruin your company culture and reputation, real quick.
We hope your team puts these templates to good use.
Can’t seem to find a template? Drop us a line at help@animaker.com and let us know what kind of HR-related video you’re looking to create. Our design team is working hard on publishing templates related to HR so your team doesn’t have to ever start from scratch if they want to create a video.
Since this pandemic ain’t over yet, we’d like to ask you a question: have you educated your staff and customers enough about how they can stay safe and keep themselves productive during these trying times? If not, you’d want to take a look at this article that lists 6 coronavirus templates your HR team will find useful.
Looking for a quick way on how to convert MOV to MP4? In this article, we’ll show you quick, free ways to change MOV format to MP4, specifically, we’ll look at how to:
Animaker’s MOV to MP4 converter lets you quickly convert your MOV file to MP4 format online for free. Unlike other video converters, the tool doesn’t require installation or advanced system requirements. It’s a lightweight app that works in your browser. Here are the steps:
1. Open Animaker’s MOV to MP4 converter and click the “START CONVERTING” button.
2. Now upload the MOV file you want to convert to MP4.
3. Once the video’s successfully uploaded, click the Download button in the top right corner to download the video in MP4 format.
And boom! You’re done. Apart from offering various video conversion tools, Animaker enables anyone to easily create live-action and animated videos from scratch.
CloudConvert’s MOV to MP4 converter makes it simple to convert your MOV files to MP4 online.
1. Launch CloudConvert’s MOV to MP4 converter, click the “Select File” button, and upload your MOV video.
2. Now click “Convert” to start converting the MOV video to MP4.
3. Once done, click the green button that says “Download” to download your video in MP4 format.
iMovie is a video editing software that comes preinstalled on Mac. Here are the steps:
1. Launch iMovie, click the File menu and select New Movie from the drop-down menu.
2. Click the Import Media button to import the MOV video you want to convert to MP4.
3. Once the file’s been imported, click on it, and click the File menu, select Share, then click File.
4. This will trigger a popup window; optionally, edit the export settings such as quality, resolution, etc., then click Next.
5. Now choose where you want to save your video (saved in the Movies directory by default), then click Save.
Wondershare free video converter is a free desktop software that’s available on both Windows and Mac. One downside is that this free version adds a watermark to the converted video. Here are the steps:
1. Install the software on your mac or windows pc and launch it. Click the Add Files button to import your MOV video from your PC. Alternatively, you can simply drag and drop it.
2. Once the MOV video’s imported, the target format will be set to MP4 by default; click the “Convert” button to start converting.
You can use VLC if you already have it installed on your computer.
1. Install and open VLC on your Mac, then click the File menu and select Converter / Stream from the drop-down menu. If you’re using VLC on Windows, click the Media menu and select Convert / Save from the resulting drop-down list.
2. Now click the Open media button to import the MOV video file.
3. In the Choose Profile section, the target format should already be set to Video – H.264 + MP3 (MP4) by default.
4. Finally, click the Save as File button to choose a name and where you want to save the converted MP4 file, then hit Save to start converting.
Is there any other way to convert? What tool do you use? Please let us know in the comment section.
Are you a company that’s recently switched to working remotely? Are you in need of some top remote working tools to improve your remote team’s productivity?
While remote work is beneficial in many ways, it also presents its own unique challenges. Building meaningful relationships, managing your projects, and keeping your team accountable can be difficult while working remotely.
In this article, we’re sharing 20 best remote working tools your remote team can use to stay productive, connected, and on the same page at all times.
The Best Tool for Team Chat
Slack combines all the basic communication essentials into one simple-to-use platform. It provides real-time messaging, voice and video calling, archiving and search for teams.
Also, it gives you the ability to create different channels or groups and share files with your teammates. Moreover, you can integrate all your remote tools with slack to get notifications regarding them in one place.
The Best Tool for Video Calls and Screen Sharing
Zoom is the most reliable and robust video conferencing tool on the market. It’s perfect for both small and large remote teams alike; and offers a simple, stable platform that makes it easier to get your remote team together for a meeting.
The tool comes with HD quality audio and video, and gives you the ability to share and annotate your screen, schedule meetings, and join as a view-only attendee. Ideal for weekly team meetings, one-off calls with teammates, and remote presentations.
The Best Tool for Cloud Storage and File Sharing
Google Drive is an online cloud storage service that provides you with one secure place for all your digital files. It lets you store and share files such as word documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with multiple team members.
Also, it provides you with an intuitive interface that makes organizing and searching files incredibly easy and convenient.
The Best Tools for Project Management
If you’re looking for a simple project management tool or if you’re a small remote team, Trello is for you. With Trello, you just create boards, cards, and lists to manage your entire project.
With just a quick glance, you’d be able to see what tasks you and your team members are working on, and when the tasks are due.
Asana is a popular project management tool used by numerous remote teams. It lets you view projects in multiple ways. Apart from the “Boards” view, Asana offers two more views that remote teams would find useful – a “Lists” view which basically lists out a project’s tasks, and a “Calendar” view that lays out the tasks on a calendar.
Also, Asana provides you with premade project templates for managing all kinds of projects, from marketing, product to design, HR and more.
The Best Tool for Time Management
Toggl is a time tracking tool that allows you to track the real time you spend working on your projects. By tracking how long it takes you to complete your tasks, you’d be able to better optimize your time to get more done in less time.
Also, it syncs timers across your browser and all your desktop apps.
The Best Tool for Password Management
LastPass lets you manage your team passwords the safe and easy way. With LastPass, you can create super-strong passwords and give your team members access to these passwords.
With just a single click, your remote team would be able to log into all the apps they’ve been provided passwords for. How? Well, LastPass automatically loads the password for the app they want to log into.
This way, your team members don’t have to go through the pain of having to remember and enter a password every time they want to log into an app.
The Best E-signature Tool
DocuSign lets you easily collect and store e-signatures – digital marks that indicate agreement to documents or contracts. It saves your remote team the hassle of having to download, print, sign and then scan the document.
Not only is it a huge time-saver, but it’s also eco-friendly as it involves a paperless process.
The Best Time Converter
Setting up meetings or communicating effectively with your teammates gets tricky if your team is spread across different timezones and geographies. WorldTimeBuddy lets you enter multiple timezones and find times that work best for y’all.
The Best Tools for Communicating Visually and Quickly
Skitch lets you easily grab and annotate screenshots. Skitch provides you with some advanced options such as the ability to take timed screenshots and blur certain parts of the screenshot.
It’s ideal for giving feedback on images and getting your point across with fewer words.
Loom is a free screen and video recording tool that makes creating, annotating, and sharing screencasts a cinch. It lets you easily record your front-facing camera and screen (with audio) directly from your browser and instantly share it with your team.
The Best Tool for Remote Desktop Access
If you want to gain access to your teammate’s computer remotely, or you need access to your home computer while you’re on the road, AnyDesk is the tool you need.
AnyDesk is a remote access tool that lets you remotely control one computer from another over the internet.
The Best Ambient Sound Generators
A 2012 study found that a moderate level of ambient sound enhanced creativity. Also, ambient sound helps you stay focused by keeping your mind from wandering and blocking out distracting sounds.
Brain.fm offers functional music (backed by scientific research) to help listeners improve their focus and boost their productivity.
Noisli is based on a similar idea, but it offers ambient sounds such as nature sounds, coffeeshop sound, etc. The tool gives you the ability to mix a variety of different sounds.
The Best Tools for Writing and Editing
Evernote is a cross-platform note-taking app that’s great for managing your notes and clipping articles from the web. With Evernote, your notes get synced across all your devices.
Grammarly is hands-down the most popular grammar, plagiarism and spell checking tool. It’s invaluable in that it helps you avoid grammatical or spelling mistakes before you hit that publish or send button.
The Best Noise-cancelling Tool
Krisp is a noise-cancelling tool that removes all background noises while you’re on a call or a remote meeting with your team. With Krisp, your team can have professional, noiseless calls from anywhere.
Also, Krisp integrates with popular apps such as Slack, Zoom, Hangouts, etc.
The Best Mind Mapping Tool
Mind mapping helps you visualize your thinking process. Your team can use mind maps for brainstorming or recording a process step-by-step.
Coggle is a mind-mapping tool that gives you everything you need to map out your ideas and thoughts into something coherent and useful.
The Best Accountability and Reporting Tool
IDoneThis is a daily check-in tool that employees use to submit a daily status update, either via their browser or email. Each team member highlights the tasks accomplished for the day and the obstacles to the tasks’ completion.
The next day, IDoneThis sends out a recap of what everyone on the team did the previous day and gives your team the ability to like and comment on the previous day’s tasks.
The Best Video Making Tool
Animaker is an online drag-and-drop video maker that lets anyone create animations and live-action videos using premade templates and assets. Absolutely no prior video-making experience required; meaning you can quickly whip up a video even if you’ve never created one before.
Most of the tools on this list are free or offer a free trial so you can test them and see what works best for your team. What kind of remote working tools does your team find the most useful? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.
As a company responding to the coronavirus crisis, the health and safety of your employees and customers remain your top priority.
You’ve taken the necessary measures in your business to prevent this virus from spreading. We suppose most of your employees now work from home.
As an employer, your responsibilities don’t end there. As you know, most people need to be educated about how to prevent this new disease and adapt to this new lifestyle.
As a responsible company, you need to strive to better educate your employees and customers on this matter, and make sure they’re safe and productive working from home.
And talking about educating people, what better way to do it than using video? At Animaker, we recognize that we have a responsibility to help our users create useful awareness videos during this time of crisis.
In this article, we’ve put together a list of premade templates to help you whip up a coronavirus-related video quickly.
In order to make it easier for you to educate your staff and customers using video, we’ve created templates you can easily customize to create a coronavirus-related video quickly.
Simply customize the text, colors, and font to make the videos match your brand perfectly.
Most of us are new to working remotely. Use this template to share some tips on how your peeps can make it work and keep themselves productive.
Use this template to give them tips on what they need to do and avoid to protect themselves and their families from coronavirus.
Use this template to provide tips on how people can keep themselves and others around them safe while traveling. Specifically, the template throws light on the precautions and etiquette people need to follow while traveling.
This one helps people with how they can prepare themselves for a potential coronavirus outbreak. Use it to give tips on how people can stay at their homes for a longer period of time during the crisis.
This template lets you convey the basic protective measures they need to take in their households to combat coronavirus. Use this template to help your peeps keep themselves and their families safe at home during the crisis.
While most of your workforce might work from home, there are still some who need to show up at the workplace. Use this template to share some tips on how they could keep themselves safe at the workplace.
It’s critical to keep your employees in the know about the current coronavirus situation. Use this template to share accurate information about the local situation with your employees.
We hope these templates are helpful. On a related note, what are the steps your company is planning to take to handle this crisis? Do you have any template suggestions regarding the coronavirus pandemic? As always, let us know in the comments section.
You’d need to resize a video for Instagram if you want it to appear properly on the platform.
If you don’t, Instagram will automatically crop a part of your video which might make it look awkward. This will negatively impact your brand and the engagement of your video.
There are various size requirements depending on the kind of Instagram video post. Read on to learn the different Instagram video size requirements and how to perfectly resize a video for Instagram Story, Feed, and TV.
Posting a video on Instagram’s feed requires your video to be either square (1:1) or vertical (4:5) in size while posting it as a Story or on TV requires it to be portrait (9:16) in size. Below, we’ve listed 3 simple tools that would let you quickly resize videos for Instagram.
Animaker is a free online tool that lets you quickly edit videos for social media. On top of allowing you to easily resize videos for various social platforms, the tool allows you to quickly trim, rotate, flip, merge, filter, adjust, mute, and change the speed of your videos.
Here’s how to resize Instagram video using Animaker in 3 easy steps:
1. First, open Animaker’s video resizer. Once you’re on the page, pick the dimensions you’d want to resize your video to; in our case, square (1:1) or vertical (4:5) or portrait (9:16).
2. Now upload the video you want to resize.
Optionally, you could scale and reposition the video to fit the dimensions perfectly. Simply click on the “Resize” icon in the top right corner of the video. Now hold and drag the edges of the video to scale it and reposition it by simply holding and dragging it. Once done, click on the green button that says “Apply” to save the changes made.
3. Click on the orange button in the top right corner that says “Download” to download the video.
Kapwing is an online video editor that lets you easily resize videos.
1. Visit the site and navigate to its “Video Resizer” page. Once you’re on the page, you can upload your video from your local computer or from a URL.
2. Pick the dimensions you want to resize based on the type of Instagram video post.
Optionally, you can scale your video and adjust its position.
3. Click on the big red button that says “CREATE!” to download the video.
EZGIF lets you resize a video to the custom dimensions of your choice.
1. Visit the site and navigate to the “Resize” page. Once you’re on the page, click on the “Choose File” button to select the video from your computer. Once you’ve selected the video, click on the “Upload!” button to upload the video.
2. Now, enter the width and height you want to resize your video to, and click on the “Resize video!” button.
3. Finally, click on the “save” button to download the resized video to your computer.
Did you know that some stock videos on Pond5 can cost as much as 1200$? Even for prominent services such as Shutterstock, it will cost you 359$ per month to get access to just 5 videos.
If you’re a startup, you cannot afford to spend that kind of money on just a few videos.
The question is, how do you find stock videos that won’t break the bank?
Don’t be alarmed by the cost of stock videos, there’s a growing wealth of free stock video sites that offer amazing, professional stock video footage for free.
In this article, we’ve compiled a list of all the best free stock video sites to help you find amazing stock footage for your video marketing campaigns.
Site: Pixabay
A huge library of high-quality stock videos that are completely free to download and use.
Site: Pexels
A large collection of free high-definition stock video clips in plenty of categories.
Site: Videvo
Videvo offers over 120,000 free stock videos, motion graphics and sound effects.
Site: Videezy
Videezy offers a wide range of free HD, 4K stock videos, including great aerial drone footage.
Site: Coverr
Coverr offers free stock footage for your website’s homepage or Facebook cover photo.
Site: MixKit
MixKit offers free high-definition, incredible quality stock footage, outdoor clips, animations, lifestyle footage, and business & tech footage.
Site: Life Of Vids
A relatively small, but great collection of free high-quality stock videos for marketing purposes.
Site: Mitch Martinez
With 35+ categories to choose from, Mitch Martinez offers 1500+ free stock videos in 4k resolution.
Site: Motion Elements
Motion Elements Offers upwards of 4000+ free professional-quality stock footage.
Site: Stock Footage 4 Free
The site offers a wide variety of free stock videos, from nature clips, time-lapse videos to looping clips and slow-motion footage.
Site: Vidsplay
Vidsplay offers a small number of generic free stock video clips in twenty one categories.
Site: Mazwai
Mazwai offers 200+ free cinematic stock video clips and mini-films.
Site: Motion Places
A fairly large library of free professional, high-definition stock videos that are primarily country footage.
Site: Freestock
Freestock offers free high-definition stock videos, industrial footage, corporate video assets, food clips, and green screen videos.
Site: Cute Stock Footage
A wide range of free stock video footage, motion effects, audio effects and textures.
Site: Archive
Archive offers free stock videos that are mostly old Americana and culture-based films (American B-movies, commercials).
Site: Splitshire
A small and beautiful collection of free stock videos that are primarily drone footage.
Site: XStockVideo
A library of 600+ unique free stock video clips across nine categories.
Site: OrangeHD
A small library of free high-definition stock footage across seventeen categories.
Site: Distill
Distill provides email subscribers with 10 free HD stock videos every 10 days.
The Super Bowl is the single biggest sporting event of the year, with over 100 million people watching the event in the United States alone!
But it’s also the biggest moment in the year for the advertisement industry.
Super Bowl ads are a big part of the Super Bowl experience and are watched closely. In fact, the Super Bowl has been called “The Marketer’s Holiday” in America.
The ads are incredibly expensive. A 30-second ad cost $5.25 million this year. This doesn’t include the cost of producing an ad which is estimated to be around $4.5 to $5.5 million.
For this day alone (the Super Bowl Sunday), the world’s top marketers come together and give their best shots at defining their brands and telling their stories to a massive, unsegmented audience.
As marketers, we wondered – how can you take the video marketing strategies in these ad campaigns and apply these strategies to your own video marketing?
In this article, we take a look at the 5 best Super Bowl ads of 2019 and the video marketing lessons you can learn from them.
In this ad, a Dalmatian is viewed riding atop a wagon pulled by a pack of Clydesdales, as Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan’s song “Blowin’ in the Wind” plays in the background. The song does a great job in lending a quaint, emotional resonance.
Midway through the ad, the camera pans out to reveal the horses pulling the wagon through a wind farm, probably somewhere in rural America. The ad ends with the tagline, “Now Brewed with Wind for a Better Tomorrow”.
The ad clearly conveys the message that Budweiser is committed to renewable energy. This message is a nod to the fact that the company has committed to purchasing 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025 for its brewing operations.
Instead of focusing on its target audience’s immediate needs and promoting the product directly, the ad focuses on their customers’ bigger goals that their product can help them achieve. By drinking Budweiser’s beer, you do your part to save the environment! By drinking their beer, you’re drinking to a better tomorrow!
Key Takeaway: Sometimes the best thing you could do to promote your product is to not promote it directly, but to promote a bigger, more significant cause. That way, you’d not just improve the sales of your product(s) but also enhance your brand’s image. A recent research found that 63 percent of Americans were “hopeful businesses will take the lead to drive social and environmental change.”
This ad from Verizon is a real tearjerker. The ad features Anthony Lynn, former NFL player and coach of the LA Chargers, who survived a life-threatening car crash in 2005. The ad highlights the first responders who were the first on the scene of Lynn’s accident.
Lynn meets the first responders who answered the call that night and gets emotional. “I’ve often thought about who showed up that night,” he says. “I never thought I’d see you. I mean, this is unbelievable. They said I had to have angels with me that night to survive. I believe that, and I believe you guys are angels.”
Verizon, “The World’s Most Reliable Network”, ends the ad with a perfectly targeted message: “First responders answer the call. Our job is to make sure they can get it.”
In this Super Bowl ad, rather than self-promote, Verizon aims to build an emotional connection with its audience by sharing a tragic real-life story of a coach in the NFL who survived a near-fatal car crash while also stressing the importance of reliable communication in a critical situation.
Key Takeaway: If done well, appealing to emotions can make your ads and brand stories more memorable. Focus on making an emotional connection between your brand and the customer. Studies show that a person’s emotional response to an ad is more likely to influence their buying decisions than the content of the ad itself.
A medieval-themed ad set in the middle ages tells a funny story about the ingredients used in a Bud Light. The ad pokes fun at its competitors (Coors and Miller Lite) for using corn syrup, a highly-processed ingredient, in their beers.
By conveying that Bud Light is brewed without corn syrup, an unhealthy ingredient, and with only natural ingredients (Bud Light contains only water, rice, hops, and barley), they clearly demonstrated why they’re different in a way that matters to their target audience, people who want to consume healthier beers and healthier food items, which happens to be almost everyone.
The ad successfully positioned Bud light as a beer brand for people who prefer drinking healthier beers and leading a healthy lifestyle.
Key Takeaway: Identifying and emphasizing what your product does (or does not) offer can help differentiate your brand from your competitors and attract new customers.
Wix’s 30-second real-time Super Bowl ad stars Karlie Kloss, a supermodel who codes. Kloss is the founder of “Kode with Klossy”, a coding boot camp for young women.
The ad shows Kloss sitting at a desk and showing the target audience how to build a website in a snap using Wix. The ad highlights Wix’s important features such as the Wix Pro Gallery and SEO Wiz.
Unlike other brands that promoted their products indirectly, Wix directly promotes their brand in this ad. Wix’s marketing message is focused on addressing the needs of the end-user.
Key Takeaway: Sometimes you just have to tell it like it is and directly address your customers’ needs and desires. Craft your ads around what your customers actually want and what would interest them the most. Remember, the only person you want to like your ad is someone who will actually buy your product.
In this rip-roaring ad, Mr. Peanut (an animated peanut 🙂 ) is on a mission to deliver his fresh snacks in the “crunch” time, with cameos from Charlie Sheen and Alex Rodriguez.
Mr. Peanut recklessly drives down a street in his NUTmobile. As Charlie Sheen watches this from a bench, he says “And people think I’m Nuts”. In the end, Mr. Peanut successfully manages to deliver his sacred nuts and saves Alex Rodriguez from the fate of eating kale chips.
The next time people think about buying a healthy snack such as kale chips, they’ll probably consider another healthy, but also a tasty alternative that is planters’ nuts.
And, by adding a touch of humor, they’ve made sure the message sticks in the minds of consumers for a very long time. Moreover, the ad is unique and reflective of the company’s brand.
Key Takeaway: Infusing humor into your video marketing and advertising will make your message travel further and make your brand more likable. The key is to find and take a unique angle.
What’s your take on this year’s Super Bowl ads? Which of them did you like the best (and the least)? Did you learn any lessons from them that could be applied to your video marketing? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comment section!
Optimize your thumbnail image for the best dimensions: 1280 pixels wide and 720 pixels tall. The thumbnail should have a minimum width of 640 pixels and follow an aspect ratio of 16:9.
Ever feel like your YouTube videos aren’t getting the attention they deserve?
You’ve spent hours making your videos entertaining and informative.
But why are people ignoring them?
It might be because your video thumbnails are failing to grab their attention or give the viewers a good first impression.
Well, your thumbnail image is your video’s first impression. Because of YouTube primarily being a visual platform, the thumbnail image is the first thing your viewers will see before they read the title of your video.
For this reason, a thumbnail plays a huge part in deciding whether a person will watch or ignore a video. Moreover, it helps you improve your channel’s brand recognition apart from attracting more eyeballs to your content.
Because of thumbnails being pivotal in getting more views for your YouTube videos, we’ve put together a guide on everything you need to know about custom thumbnails for YouTube, specifically, we’ll look at:
YouTube Thumbnail Dimensions: Everything You Need to Know
How to Enable Custom Thumbnails on YouTube
How to Create a YouTube Thumbnail with Picmaker
YouTube Thumbnail Best Practices
Below is a list of technical requirements for a YouTube thumbnail image. All the following recommendations come directly from google, so it’s safe to say that they’re reliable.
The best YouTube thumbnail size is 1280 x 720 pixels. The larger size has to do with the quality of the image.
If you use low-resolution images, they’ll look pixelated when used as a preview image in the embedded player, or a suggestion for the next watch.
For this reason, you want a high-resolution image that won’t look blurred when scaled up.
While 1280 pixels is the ideal width, the minimum recommended width of a thumbnail image is 640 pixels. An image with a width lower than 640 pixels cannot be set as a thumbnail for a video on YouTube.
Your thumbnail image should maintain an aspect ratio of 16:9. Aspect ratio is derived by comparing the width of the image to its height and expressing this comparison as a ratio.
An aspect ratio of 16:9 means your thumbnail image should be 16 units wide and 9 units tall.
Why 16:9 ratio? Because that’s the ratio used most often in YouTube players and previews. You could use a simple aspect ratio calculator to make sure your thumbnails follow this ratio.
The maximum upload size of a YouTube thumbnail image is 2MB. Keep the file size under 2MB to be able to successfully upload it to YouTube.
The file formats accepted by YouTube for a thumbnail image are jpg, png, gif, and bmp.
Are you looking to set a custom thumbnail image for your YouTube video? To be able to set a custom thumbnail for a video on YouTube, you need to first enable this functionality on YouTube. Read on to learn how you could do that.
A standard YouTube account doesn’t come with the ability to upload custom YouTube thumbnails. In order for your account to gain this ability, you need to verify it.
Here’s how you can verify your account and start uploading custom thumbnails:
1. Log in to YouTube
2. Click on your profile icon in the top right corner of the page
3. From the dropdown menu, select ‘Settings’
4. In the ‘Your account’ section, click on ‘View additional features’
5. Click on the blue button that says ‘Verify’ right below your channel name
6. Choose how you’d like the verification code sent, either by text or call, then enter the phone number you’d like to receive the verification code on and click ‘Submit’.
7. Enter the verification code and click ’Submit’
You should now see a confirmation message saying that your account has been verified.
Now that we have enabled this feature, let’s look at how to make a custom thumbnail with the perfect YouTube thumbnail size.
Making a thumbnail for YouTube can seem daunting, especially when you consider making one using full-blown graphic design tools that have complex interfaces and features.
While they provide you with flexibility, these tools have steeper learning curves and make it time-consuming to create even a simple image.
If you’re looking for an easy way to create eye-catching YouTube thumbnail images in a snap, you’re in luck. Picmaker is a free tool exclusively made for the purpose of creating YouTube graphics.
Being the one of a kind tool that it is, it’s been built with speed and ease of use in mind. The best part, Picmaker has over 700 pre-made YouTube thumbnail templates that are entirely customizable and have been made with conversions in mind so you don’t have to worry about creating an attention-grabbing thumbnail from scratch.
To start off simple, we’d be using a pre-made template as our foundation to create a YouTube thumbnail image in less than a minute. If you want to create a YouTube thumbnail from scratch using Picmaker, our article on How to make a smashing YouTube thumbnail in 5 mins! has got you covered.
First, sign up for a free Picmaker account(Picmaker is absolutely free, forever).
In the next screen that appears, click on the “YOUTUBE THUMBNAILS” button to create your own custom YouTube thumbnail.
Once you’re in the app’s dashboard, you’ll see that the ‘Prebuilt’ tab in the main menu is already open. The “Prebuilt” tab in the main menu has a wide collection of pre-made templates to get you going in seconds.
Templates have been categorized to help you find the desired template fast. Choose a category by clicking on the ‘All Prebuilts’ dropdown and select the template of your choice.
Everything about the chosen template can be customized, from the background, text, font to the graphics and placement of design elements.
The image is automatically set to a YouTube thumbnail’s ideal dimensions (1280 x 720 pixels), if you wish to change this, simply click on the gear icon in the top left corner of the dashboard to set the custom dimensions.
Once you’re done customizing the template, click on the ‘Preview’ button in the top-right corner to get a sneak peek of how the thumbnail image would look like in different places on YouTube.
Finally, click on the ‘Download’ button in the top-right corner to download the YouTube thumbnail image onto your computer.
Great, that’s about it! You can now easily design your own custom thumbnails for your YouTube videos.
We’ve identified a few best practices that will help you design effective YouTube thumbnails. Here are four best practices to get you started.
If you use text in your thumbnails, you need to make sure that the text is readable and draws the eye in.
How do you do that? By achieving a high contrast between the text and the background.
Two different colors have high contrast (for instance, black and yellow) while two similar colors (say, orange and yellow) have low contrast.
In the image below, the text on the left is more readable than the text on the left. This is because the color of the text on the left contrasts well with the color of the background.
Fortunately, Picmaker’s pre-made templates have been designed with this best practice in mind.
If it helps, you could also use a color contrast analyzer to make sure that the two colors contrast effectively.
If you want to grab the attention of your viewers and get more views for your videos, you need to have strong visuals that make your viewers eager to watch your video.
The high-quality picture should act as a teaser by giving the viewer a glimpse of what they could expect from the video.
In the example below, the thumbnail image makes you want to see these adorable puppies in action.
If you’re looking for free high-quality stock photos to use in your thumbnail images, check out this list of resources.
You need to be aware of YouTube’s guidelines when designing thumbnails for your videos. Specifically, it’s against YouTube’s policies to post thumbnails that:
Adopting a consistent style for your thumbnails familiarizes your brand with your audience and helps them identify your content from other videos. This can help drive clicks, views and build brand recognition.
Neil Patel does a great job of staying consistent with the use of fonts and colors that match his brand perfectly.
In addition, making a thumbnail gets a lot easier when you adopt a consistent style. Using a tool like Picmaker, you could easily create a template that can be reused later for recreating your YouTube thumbnails.
