Short Form Video Revolution: Tools and Resources

Kristina Stubblefield: [00:00:00] Thank you for tuning in to WedPro Business Solutions. I'm your host, Kristina Stubblefield. I am so excited to hop right into this topic because. So many people have been asking me about the tools that I use in regards to short form video, so I decided to share it out as a podcast episode. You may or may not know, I actually really enjoy helping entrepreneurs, business owners with developing their video content strategy. It has been a passion of mine for a long time. Years ago, I would preach about the importance of video in your marketing, and your brand, and I still haven't stopped that. It's just taken on a whole new meaning with short form video.

It's not even a question if you should use short form video, it's where [00:01:00] should you use it? How often should you be putting it out? And I don't want you to get hung up on, I need to be putting out some type of short form video every day. So many times people get in their own way, in their own head about, I can't produce enough content.

I don't know where to get started. Just stop. Don't get in your own way, and I speak from experience about this. There are so many amazing tools out there to help you create short form video. And I'm going to pull back the curtain and share with you what I use along with my team. And some of these are available on your smartphone, some of them are available on desktop. The great thing about it is there is a lot of free or very low cost software tools, resources to make it easy for you to put out content on your website, your blog, social media, [00:02:00] wherever. You are utilizing it to reach your target audience. After all, that's why you want to put content out is to become a magnet to attract your ideal client. So let's hop right into these tools and don't worry if you don't want to take notes, you don't need to. You will be able to get a link to my resources page wherever you are listening or watching this episode. I want to start off with one of the apps that I use the most, it's called Splice.

Now I'm an Android user, you might find that shocking with my IT background that I'm not an Apple user. I do have an Apple tablet, but I am an Android phone user. I'm a PC person, so Splice it is so easy to go into this app and pick what size video [00:03:00] you are wanting to create, whether it be for stories, reels, or YouTube, your website, you have all of those options and the sizes are in there in templates, so you don't have to know what the sizes are for those specific video files.

And this is one that I use a lot because it does not take a lot of time. I can open the app, import my video in, edit it very easily. I can add some music, I can add some other things. It has a lot of features inside, but whether you're just a beginner, with your short form video, or you've been doing short form video for a while, this is a tool that can save you a lot of time, whether it be yourself or you have someone helping you with your content that you're putting out.

So Splice, I'm a big fan. The second app that I use a [00:04:00] lot, probably not as much as Splice is InShot. It has a lot of different features. I don't use all the features that are available inside the app, but that is a paid app where Splice that I mentioned before, I use the free version of Splice.

So InShot is a paid app, but you can always start with a free software and then look for a more advanced software or something that works better for your needs. You may just have to pay something for it. Next is Descript. This one is very close to my heart because we use this in every aspect of our business with clients, every aspect. This doesn't matter if you are putting together a video for YouTube, your website, short form video. This makes it very easy to repurpose videos, and what I mean by that is you can upload a [00:05:00] video that is sized for actual YouTube, and then it makes it very easy to actually pick out a sentence or two and turn that into a short form video without having to upload a new video, edit it down.

It has some amazing features. It is a great software, the desktop app is what I use on my computer. My team uses this as well. We're able to share files easily inside the app. This software works great with adding captions to your video. There's so many different things, how you can add graphics, gifs, music. The list goes on and on with this software. And again, you don't have to worry about writing this information down. You'll get a link to these different softwares. You can get that easily on my website. The next one that I'll mention, I used it a little bit, CapCut, it is popular with [00:06:00] a lot of people.

And again, most of these are just what works best for you. I didn't want to leave out CapCut, it is a great software and should definitely be mentioned on here. Now for those that are utilizing videos, like let's just say you do a video in the TikTok app, but then you want to take and put it on Instagram, you definitely want to remove that TikTok watermark and there's a great app for that.

That is Snaptik.app and this can remove the watermarks from the videos. There is a free version, but there's also a paid version without ads if you choose to use that one. And the other thing to note about this is it does save your videos, your history of your videos in it. One of the ones that I tend to use a lot of time, it's installed on my phone is TikDownload.

And [00:07:00] the way it works is you go in and you copy the link. To the TikTok video. You paste it into this app, it downloads it, and then you can save it or you can push it out, to Instagram, or YouTube shorts. It will pull the actual logo off of it for you. 

I also want to mention another app that I use for stories, and that's called Story Cutter. I've used it for, I can't even begin to tell you how long, but what it does is say, I have a minute long video. And I want to upload that as a story. I can actually use this app and it will automatically cut it into 15 second clips to be able to upload 'em where they're shorter clips for stories. So I use the free version of Story Cutter and have for quite a while.

As I mentioned now with short form video, I must add in I [00:08:00] love AI tools. You know, my background with technology as well as marketing. I believe AI is a wonderful tool for small businesses, really for all businesses. So I've taught some classes on this. And if you want to know more about AI, you can get information, that is available in regards to a webinar as well as a course that I have in regards to utilizing AI for your business.

 I'm definitely a fan of ChatGPT, I use the paid version. It's not very much a month. definitely a fan of it. You can generate video ideas, help writing captions. Honestly, it offers so much. The other thing that I like about it is if you're trying to get your bio. down to a certain number of characters.

You can use AI tools to help you do that. So big fan of ChatGPT. I'm also a big fan of Jasper.ai. [00:09:00] I have been a paid user of Jasper for quite a while now and really like their product. it is packaged completely different than ChatGPT.

There's a lot more organizational tools built into Jasper.ai. So that is a software that I encourage you to consider for your marketing. Now, if you've not been using AI in the past, I would definitely start out with the free version of ChatGPT, just to get started so you can see how it can help you in your business.

One of the other things that people ask me a lot of times, How do you keep your ideas? Where do you put all of them? How do you keep track of them? I use Google Keep. It is a free Google software. It's installed on my phone. I can access it on the computer as well. And if I'm in a meeting, if I'm at a networking event, if I'm working with a client or on a [00:10:00] project and I just want to jot down some ideas, I put it in there.

And that way I have access to it no matter where I'm at for my tablet, my phone, my computer. Also, you can save ideas through the different apps. So if you see an Instagram reel that you would like to do a version of, or do one just like it. You can actually save it. It's like bookmarking it in your phone, and then inside of your settings you have where all of those saved items go.

And you can do the same with Facebook, TikTok. All of the different apps have a way for you to save, and you can always copy the link to the video and put it in Google Keep or Word, Google Doc, whatever's most convenient for you to use. Lastly, I'd like to share this with you. If you have an assistant or a VA that's helping you with your social [00:11:00] media or your marketing, I encourage you to use a tool for your usernames and passwords instead of just turning that information, your logins for each of your different platforms over to that admin or VA, I encourage you to use a software that stores that information. Myself and my team, we use LastPass. Been very happy with it. It's very affordable, and honestly, our team has not had any problems with it. We've used it for quite a while, and that way I can share certain passwords, I can share all the passwords.

It's organized, and I can give someone access to what they need. They don't have to have access to everything. So I just encourage you to consider some type of password keeper. That allows you to share that to your team members or your VA [00:12:00] instead of giving your username and passwords. 

We know there's no hiding from using short form video in your marketing. No matter what industry you're in, what type of business you have, short form video, it's a key piece to your marketing puzzle. I hope that you found this helpful, if you want more information about these tools, I have a link included. You can always visit my website, Kristinastubblefield.com, and go to my resource page where you will find links to the different software and tools that I mentioned. Also on that page is different gadgets that I use, cell phone holders, wireless microphones. I share with you exactly what me and my team use. I love providing that information to clients and others, so I hope that you will visit the resource page on my website to get all of those details.

Thank you so much for tuning in. If you've not already joined [00:13:00] my free Facebook, I encourage you to do so WedPro Business Community. Until next time, take care.