How to Use Storyboards in Animoto Marketing

When we set out to make our Animoto Marketing, we wanted a way to let anyone create marketing videos for social media and beyond to promote their businesses, even if they had little-to-no experience going in. To do that, we designed a series of storyboards, giving you a pre-built template video you can just drop your own content into. Take a look at how simple it is to use our storyboards to create marketing videos that can be used on social media to promote your business.

Step 1: Start a marketing video

When you log into Animoto, select the blue CREATE button in the upper-right-hand corner of your screen. You’ll be asked what type of video you’d like to create. Select the blue CREATE button on the right to select “Animoto Marketing.”

Step 2: Choose a storyboard

Once you choose “Animoto Marketing,” you’ll be brought straight to our pre-built storyboards. We have a variety of types, including some designed specifically for professional photography and real estate marketing, and others that’ll help you create an About video for your business, share tutorial videos that explain how to use your product, and more.

You can click on each storyboard to see how it looks and see a short written description. Once you find one you’d like to use for your video, click on the blue CHOOSE STORYBOARD button to get started.

Step 3: Add your content

To add in your photos, video clips, and logo, select the “Media” icon from the toolbar on the left-hand side of your screen (it’s the icon at the top of the toolbar). Then choose the photos and video clips you want to upload from your computer. Once they’ve been added to the Media tray, you can drag and drop them into the storyboard blocks, replacing the storyboard photos and video clips with your own content. Note that you can drop a photo into a video block or vice versa.

If you have more content than you have storyboard, that’s okay — you can click “ADD A BLOCK” and then add extra content or even your logo.

Step 4: Change the text

Add your own message into the video by clicking the text icon beneath a block and replacing the existing text with your own. You can also change text, and get more text editing tools by clicking “SEE MORE.”

Step 5: Customize your video (optional)

Once you’ve got the text, images, and video clips you want, you can customize your video, changing the colors, fonts, music, and filters to suit your taste. Here’s how:

• Switch your style: Experiment with different transitions and color effects by clicking on the “Style” icon. You can find out more about switching your video’s style in this blog post.
  
• Switch your aspect ratio: Optimize for Facebook and Instagram with a square video, or create a website-friendly landscape video just by clicking the “Ratio” icon and switching over to the aspect ratio that works best for your project.
  
• Change the look of your text: To change colors and fonts for your whole project, click on the “Design” icon (it looks like a paintbrush) on the left-hand side of your screen. You can also click on a block and then select “SEE MORE” to change the text colors, size, and layout for just that one block.
  
• Add a filter: You can use the “Filter” icon (shaped like a magic wand) on the left-hand side of your screen to add one of a range filters. Our filters can change up your video’s look, color correct your images, or make your text easier to read. Take a look at this blog post explaining exactly how to add a filter to your marketing video.
  
• Pick a new song: You can also find the “Music” icon on the left-hand side, which you can click to see your default song and change it. (If you’re not familiar with how to navigate our library of licensed music, check out this post on different ways to find the right song for your project.)

That’s it! How much you change your marketing video is up to you. You can keep it close to the original storyboard, or experiment and see how you can incorporate your company’s style and color into your video. But, in either case, you’ll have created a professional video that you can easily share on social media.

Have you already made a video with one of our storyboards? We’d love to see it! Post a link in the comments below, or share it with us on Facebook or Instagram with the hashtag #MyAnimoto, and we might share it with our audience.