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 for some of the best ways to cut a video for Instagram?
In this article, we show you three free, easy methods to cut and shorten a video for Instagram.
Most marketers and content creators post videos to Instagram from their laptop or desktop computer.
If that’s the case, you’d want to give Animaker’s trim tool a shot.
The tool works in your browser and lets you trim or cut a video to your desired length.
Also, it lets you download watermark-free videos.
The tool makes it super simple to trim a video for Instagram. Here’s how to use it:
That was quick! Take our video trimmer for a spin today! In the later sections, we cover how you can cut and split videos for Instagram on your Android or iOS device.
If you’re using Instagram on Android or iOS, you can use the app’s built-in video trimming feature to trim video for Instagram Story, Feed, etc.
Here’s how to use Instagram’s built-in video trimming functionality:
If you want to post lengthy videos — videos that are typically several minutes in length — then you’d want to use a free third-party app such as Video Splitter for Instagram (for Android) and VIDEO-SPLITTER (for iOS).
The best part about using a third-party app is it lets you cut the video into shorter clips based on a custom duration of your choice.
Let’s say you want to post a video that’s 3 minutes long to your feed, if you were to choose a duration of 1 minute, your video will be split into 3 video clips that are a minute in length.
Any tool that you probably already use to trim videos for Instagram that you think does a better job? Any free app or online tool that could be added to this list? Please let us know in the comment section.
And if you’re looking for an easy way to edit your videos online, please feel free to check out our online video editor. It lets you quickly edit your videos for various social media channels with ease. Animaker’s video editor has been specifically made for non-designers, marketers, and anyone who doesn’t have any experience editing videos.
Looking for a tool to trim a video for WhatsApp Status online?
Is your video too long to be set as a WhatsApp status?
Your video can’t be set as a WhatsApp status if it’s longer than 30 seconds.
You’d have to cut it into shorter clips that are no more than 30 seconds in length.
In this article, we explore three best, free ways to trim a lengthy video into shorter clips that could be set as your WhatsApp status.
The status feature in WhatsApp Web lets you post WhatsApp status online right from your PC (Windows or Mac OS).
If you use WhatsApp Web on your desktop to post status, you can use Animaker’s video trimmer to cut/trim your lengthy videos into shorter clips.
With Animaker’s video trimmer, you can cut any part of a long video with ease.
Here’s how to trim a video for WhatsApp status online using Animaker:
And that’s how super quick it is to trim a video using Animaker! In the following sections, we cover how you can trim or cut videos for WhatsApp status on your Android or iOS device.
Oftentimes, you set your WhatsApp status using your smartphone. If you’re an Android user, you can use the built-in feature that WhatsApp offers you to trim a video.
However, WhatsApp’s built-in feature is only ideal for cutting videos that are about a minute in length. If your video happens to be even a little lengthier than that, you’re better off choosing a third-party app as it would let you quickly do this with much less hassle.
With a third-party app such as Video Splitter for WhatsApp Status, you can automatically split your long video into 30-second clips with just a simple click, rather than having to manually trim your video into 30-second clips several times until you’re done trimming down the entire video.
Also, using a third-party app, you can trim your video to a custom duration of your choice.
If you’re an iOS user, you can:
Any tool that you probably already use to trim videos for WhatsApp status that you think does a better job? Any free tool we seem to have missed adding to this list? Please let us know in the comment section.
And if you’re looking for an easy way to edit your videos for social media, please feel free to check out our video editor. It’s got all the video editing tools you’d need to polish and post branded videos on your social channels. Moreover, it’s been specifically made for non-designers, marketers, and anyone who doesn’t have any experience editing videos.
A promotional video is without a doubt one of the most effective ways to market and sell your brand.
83% of marketers say promotional videos give them a positive ROI, and 68% of consumers say they prefer to learn about a product or service by watching a promo video.
But the process of creating a good promotional video can be tiresome and complicated.
That’s why I’ve created this 3k-word article in which I’ll show you everything you need to know about promotional videos, from its meaning, examples, and ideas, to the steps needed to create one yourself.
I’ve left no stone unturned. This is by far the most complete guide on promotional videos ever. Put your seatbelt on, because it’s going to be a long ride. Here’s everything I’m going to cover, feel free to jump around:
6 Best Promotional Video Ideas and Examples
How to Create a Kick-ass Promotional Video On Your Own
A promotional or promo video is a short video that promotes a company’s product or service. The best promotional videos weave a story to educate, inspire, or delight prospective (or existing) customers. It’s short yet educates people and influences them to take a step forward.
Now that you know what a promotional video is, let’s take a look at 6 of the best promotional video ideas and examples you can take inspiration from to create your own.
“We asked consumers what type of video would best assist them in making a purchase decision: 15% responded with explainer video, 16% chose customer testimonials, and a whopping 69% chose product demos.” – Wyzowl
A product demo video shows your product in action. Unlike an explainer video, it doesn’t simply talk about how a product works. Rather, it shows how a product works by taking a dive into its features and benefits.
A product demo video shows users how they will go through the process of using your entire product or some of its core features. It gives your potential customers an opportunity to see your product used in everyday life, which ultimately leads to conversion.
I love Google’s launch video for Duo that demos the video calling app in a fast, easy-to-watch way.
“91% of consumers have watched an explainer video to learn about a product or service.” – Strategic
An explainer video, as its name suggests, does just that — explain something. An explainer video explains how something — a product, service, or a specific feature — works. And, most importantly, it explains what sets you apart from your competition.
It’s especially useful if you offer a product or service that isn’t immediately understood. It’s typically an animation and used in the hero section of a website’s homepage or a landing page.
“What is Ahrefs?” is one example. This video explains what Ahrefs offers and shows the viewers why Ahrefs is the tool they need to outrank their competitors in search engines.
“Customer testimonials are one of the top three most effective types of video content.” – Marketinghy
A customer testimonial video features a happy customer who tells the story of how your product or service solved their problems and helped them achieve their business goals.
It’s highly personable and relatable than any promotional video in that it features a person who isn’t connected to your brand talk highly of your product.
For this reason, new prospects — especially the ones that are convinced about the other aspects of your product such as its features and pricing — feel more confident and secure about making that final purchase decision.
Calm’s customer testimonial video shares the wonderful experiences of its real-life users and serves as a motivation for others to follow suit.
“62% of consumers watch product review videos before making a purchase.” – MediaKix
A product review video features a reviewer, typically an influential person in your niche, who shows the product in action and gives his unbiased opinion about it.
Prospects who watch it feel like they’re getting an honest take about your product. It’s what really proves the superiority of your product in the eyes of your prospects.
Of late, third party product reviews are the most trusted. Even more so than customer testimonials since getting one from your customer base is quite easy.
To illustrate, watch this review of Blue Apron’s meal kit delivery service by a popular YouTuber.
“Brands that inspire higher emotional intensity receive 3 times as much word of mouth marketing as their less-emotional counterparts.” – Sprout Social
A company culture video showcases your company’s culture and introduces the people behind your brand. It helps you humanize your brand and gives your customers an opportunity to form a personal connection to your brand.
Also, it gives prospective employees a glimpse of what it’s like to work at your company and helps you attract the right people.
The video below for BambooHR, a cloud-based HR management software, is a textbook example. This video shares the stories of its employees and beautifully explains how work/life balance works at BambooHR — it adheres to the 40-hour workweek despite being a startup.
“Video of a live event increases brand favorability by 63%.” – Twitter
You can create an event promo video to build excitement before an event, and during the event, you can live stream short snippets — typically highlights of the event — as live videos on Twitter and Facebook or as Stories on Instagram.
Promoting an event on social media is a great way to gain fans and followers! An event video brings the fun of the occasion to those who couldn’t make it and is reposted by the ones who made it to your event.
To give you an idea, check out this video of Google’s Pixel 2 reveal event from Verge.
I’ll walk you through step by step on how to create a kick-ass promotional video on your own. We have a lot to cover so let’s jump right into it.
You need to answer a few questions before you can start writing the script. Answering these questions provides you with some crucial insights you’d need to craft a good script. Answer the following questions:
With these insights you’ve gathered, you can start writing your script, but before you do that, you need to be clear about what you want your script to achieve.
A good promotional video script:
To achieve this, you can follow this general outline for your promotional video script:
If it seems overwhelming to come up with a script, I understand. When you have to explain what you do, why you’re different and tell an engaging story all in a short amount of time, it can seem overwhelming even to a pro who’s done it many times over.
Don’t worry. There’s a solution. You can use a video making tool that provides you with readymade templates. Take Animaker for instance, its in-house scriptwriters and animators have come up with promotional video templates for numerous use cases and industries.
Let’s say you want to create an explainer video for your product, all you have to do is pick a template and treat it as a starting place to create your own unique explainer video.
Keep the script short. Restrain from talking about every single benefit or feature your product offers. Remember that you’re battling against the attention span of your audience.
Studies have shown that the shorter the promotional video, the higher the chances of it being watched till the end.
So how long should your promotional video be? Your promotional video should be about 1 minute or less in length. That is, the script should be 130 words or less.
Once you have a script, you’ll need a voiceover. Here are some options:
A video is made up of a bunch of scenes. Each scene conveys a message and lasts for a few seconds before switching to the next and so on until the last one.
Your goal for each scene should be to clearly communicate your message with the right visuals.
Once you’ve come up with a list of visuals you’d need to effectively communicate your message to your audience, you’d have to create or find these visuals.
What type of style would you choose to create the promotional video?
Well, that depends on the kind of promotional video you wish to create.
Do you want to create an explainer video? If yes, you’d need to create an animation. For this, you’d need visual assets such as icons, shapes, scene backgrounds, etc. Visual assets for animations are typically created by a design pro using a tool like Adobe Illustrator.
Unless you are a designer and have created this kind of visuals before, I wouldn’t recommend using these professional tools. The learning curve is steep and you’re better off using a tool that provides you with all these assets right out of the box.
Specifically, an app like Animaker provides you with thousands of readymade icons, scene backgrounds, characters, shapes, and other visual assets to convey any message or promote any product or service.
If you were to create your own visuals, you can only use them to create a simple animation that might do a poor job of conveying your message. This is because the created assets might seem unprofessional and you can’t use characters in your animation.
Animating an icon or shape is possible, though, it’s not easy for someone that’s never used a video editing software before, but animating a character is not (more on this later).
If you want to create a product demo/tour video for your web app, or you want to create a video promoting your mobile app, you’d need screen recordings of the app.
You’d need a tool to record your desktop or mobile screen. To record a desktop or laptop screen, you can use a tool such as Free Cam. It lets you easily record your screen. It’s a free tool that doesn’t place any watermark or impose any time limits and is ad-free.
There are two downsides to using it though. It saves your screen recordings only in WMV format, which you’d have to then convert to a more popular format such as MP4, and it doesn’t let you record your front-facing camera.
If your app is web-based or you want to record your screen from a chrome extension, you can use Loom. Loom lets you easily record your screen and front-facing camera directly from your browser.
Vmaker is another desktop screen recording tool (for mac and windows) that’s intuitive, fast, and free.
To record your mobile screen, you can use a tool that comes pre-installed on your Android OS or iOS; you don’t need any third-party app to record your mobile’s screen.
A good app promotional video shows the mobile app in action and explains its features & benefits using text and possibly a voiceover.
If you’re looking to create a promo video for your mobile app, you can use a tool that offers readymade templates. Here’s the thing: it’s hard to create a promo video for your mobile app from scratch and also make it seem professional.
And if you’re someone who’s got absolutely no video making experience, let the template take care of the animation part for you.
With a tool like Animaker, all you have to do is pick an app promo template, upload the screen recordings of your app, and swap the placeholder videos in that template with your own video recordings. And you’re done!
Want to create promotional videos using stock videos and photos? There are plenty of sites that offer high-quality stock videos and images for free.
Pexels and Pixabay offer a huge library of professional stock videos and photos that are free for personal or commercial use without attribution.
If you’re looking for premium, authentic stock videos, and photos in 4k quality, check out Animaker’s built-in library. It gives you access to 100M+ beautiful, royalty-free stock videos and photos.
If you need live videos to create your promotional video, here’s a guide on the best way to shoot a video by yourself.
In this step, you animate or edit the visuals you’d created in step four.
You can use Camtasia to create a simple animation with your graphics.
Here’s a tutorial to help you learn how to create an animated scene using Camtasia.
Using Camtasia, however, isn’t the most effective way to create an animation by yourself. There are better tools out there that would let you create an animation without any animated video-making know-how or experience.
An app like Animaker has been specifically created to let anyone create an animation to tell any story and for any occasion or moment.
It offers a simple drag-and-drop interface and a huge library of hundreds of thousands of readymade assets such as characters, HD stock images/videos, scene backgrounds, shapes, icons, special effects, emojis, GIFs, music tracks — you name it, it’s got it.
It stands out from most tools in that it gives you the ability to create the web’s two most popular types of videos: animations and live-action videos. If you want to create a wide variety of promo videos, choose a tool that lets you create both these types of videos.
With Animaker, you can include animated characters to tell your story. It’s the only animation maker that has pre-animated, realistic-looking characters. I don’t think you can find a tool that provides you with animated characters more realistic than Animaker.
You can animate a character with the touch of a button. Based on your story, drop a character onto the canvas, and pick an action you want this character to perform or an emotion you want it to express. It’s that simple.
Also, you can build a unique character (or a mascot if you will) to represent your brand and reflect your brand’s unique personality. People come across countless brand names every day, and while it’s easy for a brand name to slip someone’s mind, it’ll be much easier for them to recall the face of a unique, memorable character.
Moreover, Animaker makes it incredibly easy to create promotional videos that are on-brand. With just a simple click, you can customize the color of all the visuals in a scene to perfectly match the colors in your brand color palette.
If you’re using live videos in your promotional video, you can now edit and fine-tune them.
You’re going to need video editing tools to:
You can use a standard video editor like Camtasia or Movavi to do this. If you’re a Mac user, you can use a preinstalled video editing software called iMovie to edit your promotional video.
I’d recommend you to pick an online video editor, though. Unlike standard video editors that require local installation and high-end hardware to run smoothly, an online video editor works in your browser and is lightweight.
While a professional can find an online video editor useful, it’s specifically made for non-designers, marketers, and just about anyone who wants to quickly edit videos for social media and the web.
It’s now time to add music to your promotional video. For an explainer video, the emphasis should be on the explanation that it offers.
In this context, the music is merely used to help make the explanation effective. The music simply adds to the explanation and takes a back seat.
When talking about your product, using upbeat, funky music can make the product seem easy to use, and when talking about the problem your product solves, using dramatic, suspenseful music can make the problem resonate with your audience.
You can automatically lower the sound of this background music — only when the narrator speaks — using a technique called sidechain compression (or ducking).
Where do you find music tracks for your promotional video? Premium Beat, Artlist, MusOpen, and YouTube Audio Library are a few sites that offer quality music tracks.
You can find thousands of premium, incredible-quality music tracks in Animaker’s audio library. The music tracks have been categorized based on the types of videos you’d use them in, say an explainer video, or a video ad.
Or they’ve been categorized based on the kind of emotion or state you’d want to express, say fun, love, happiness, gloom, or sadness. This makes it easy for you to use just the right soundtrack for your video.
Once you add a music track to your video on Animaker, a fade-in/fade-out effect is automatically added. This effect gradually increases the volume at the beginning of your video and then gradually decreases the volume at the end of the video.
That’s everything you need to know to create a promotional video all by yourself. Now go ahead and create a killer promotional video! If you’re looking for an all-in-one video making tool to create one, be sure to check out Animaker.
Do you know any tricks or tools for creating engaging promotional videos? Let me know about them in the comment section.
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 should strive to help 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.
