[AI in Action] Learn How to Turn Text into Video Content in Seconds

Episode #117: [AI in Action] Learn How to Turn Text into Video Content in Seconds

WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE

Ever feel like video content is too much work? 

What if you could take your blog posts, social media captions, or course materials and turn them into scroll-stopping videos… in seconds?

In this episode of Tech Savvy 101, I’m breaking down how to use AI-powered text-to-video tools to create professional, engaging videos... without complicated editing, expensive software, or even showing up on camera. 

Whether you’re looking to repurpose existing content, create high-quality marketing videos, or finally start using video without the tech stress, these tools will be game-changers.

IN THIS EPISODE, I DISCUSS:

➔ Why video content is non-negotiable (and the surprising stats that prove it).
The best AI text-to-video tools for different business needs:

• Lumen5: Convert blogs & long-form content into bite-sized videos.
• HeyGen: AI avatars & voice cloning for creating face-free talking head videos.
• Synthesia: High-end professional training & marketing videos. 

➔ A step-by-step walkthrough of how to create videos without spending hours editing
➔ How to choose the right tool based on your content style, budget, and business goals
➔ How to set up a simple video content workflow so you can keep creating without overwhelm

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Affiliate Disclosure: Some of the links below may be affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you purchase through them—at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools I personally use and love!

Lumen5 – AI-powered tool to turn blog posts into videos
HeyGen – AI avatars & voice cloning for video creation
Synthesia – Professional AI video creation for training & marketing

🎧 Join my FREE Private Podcast – AI Content Lab: Evergreen Strategies That Scale

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS:

02:40 – Introduction to AI Text-to-Video Tools
03:22 – Lumen5: Turning Blog Posts into Videos
14:06 – HeyGen: Your Personal Video Studio
19:32 – Synthesia: Professional Training and Educational Videos
23:26 – Choosing the Right Tool for Your Needs
25:05 – Conclusion and Next Steps

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Transcript

Sarah Baker 0:00

Hey there, welcome back to our AI in Action series here on Tech Savvy 101, your go to podcast for learning how to use AI tools in real time. I'm Sarah Baker, your tech savvy bestie with another time saving AI trick that's going to make your life so much easier. Whether you're an experienced AI user or just getting the hang of things when it comes to artificial intelligence, stick with me as I share some of my favorite tips, tricks, tools, and shortcuts to save you hours each week within your business. In these episodes, I'm not just talking about AI tools. I'm showing you how to use them in real time. Here's what you can expect from today's episode. Today, we're diving into something that's going to save you hours of content creation time. Turning your text into engaging videos with AI tools. Whether you're watching or listening, by the end of this episode, you'll know exactly How to turn any piece of text into professional looking videos, set up automated video creation workflows, and create scroll stopping social content without the tech headaches. Let's get started. Let me tell you why you are missing out big time if you are not using video content in your business strategy, especially if you are creating evergreen content like we've talked about in our previous episodes. Before we jump into the tutorial today, let's talk about why video content is such a big deal. Did you know that 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool? And it's no surprise, because according to HubSpot, video content drives engagement, increases brand recall, and is 50 times, 5-0, 50 times more likely to rank on Google than plain text pages. So, if you're not leveraging video, you're leaving a lot of potential engagement on the table. The good news? You don't need a degree in video editing or an expensive production team to get started. Here's something that might surprise you even more. You don't even need to show your face to create engaging video content. I know, plot twist, right? The stats don't lie. Videos get 1,200%, 1,200 percent more shares than text and image content combined. Additionally, 88% of people say they've been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand's video. And here's the kicker. People retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video. We are visual learners. But here's the feedback I get all the time. Sarah, I don't have time to create videos. I hear it almost every day. And trust me, I felt the same way before I discovered these tools. And that's exactly why we're talking about AI text to video tools today. These tools are about to become your new best friends in content creation. They make video feel like almost an afterthought once you make them part of your content marketing routine. And since this is an episode of AI in Action, we're going to dive right in and I'm going to walk you through how to use these tools now. If you're listening to this episode, don't worry, you'll find the YouTube link for this episode in the show notes. Feel free to listen along right now and then grab the link afterwards. Let's dive into the three tools I absolutely love for turning text into video content. I'll show you exactly how to use each one and then talk through how to choose which tool is best for you. First up is Lumen5 and let me tell you why I'm starting here. It is the perfect tool if you are already creating blog posts, articles, newsletters, or other long form written content, and you want to turn them into engaging videos. If you don't already have an account, there's a link to Lumen5 in the show notes. To get started, you just sign up. They do have free plans to get started so that you can check it out, but I'm going to show you why their paid plans are also worth considering. Once you sign up, you can also complete your brand kit setup. This is a really crucial step. You can upload your logo and your brand colors. It's definitely worth taking the time to set up your brand kit properly because it'll save you hours down the road, especially as you increase the volume of content you're creating using this tool. To create your first project, you click on create video. You have two options. You can either paste a URL or input text directly. And then you choose your video format. So that's how I've gotten to the screen where I'm at right now, where it's asking me. I've chosen 9 by 16, which is the standard size for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts, basically the reels format, vertical.. So it's asking me what do I want to do? Do I want to do an AI voiceover, convert a blog post document or idea to an AI voiceover video? Do I want to have text on media? They have an AI avatar that's in their beta. They also have a voiceover so you can record your own voice to be converted into video. So especially if you are wary of recording on camera, you feel like you always have to do a million takes. This is a great option to record your own voice, and then you can have your voice avatar voice over your videos without you having to do it manually each time. And then they also have talking head videos, so you can record your own talking head clip. So for this one, let's convert a blog post document or idea to an AI voiceover video. So it's giving me the option. Do I want to outline an idea, paste text, import a URL, or upload a document? These are all fantastic options. If you already have an existing blog post that's published on your website, you could easily just drop the link to the website in. If you have a transcript of a podcast, you could upload the document. If you have a YouTube video, you could drop that in. If you are outlining an idea, you can start to upload images, tell it what your video is going to be about and outline what to reference in your script. But if you're going to paste text, you can either upload images or cut and paste your text in here. This would be a great option if you were repurposing a newsletter or even a long form Instagram caption would be a great option for in here. For us, for this example, We're going to go with a blog post. So what I'm doing right now is I'm just dropping in the URL for my website for the show notes from a previous episode, and I'm telling it to import my article. So it's pulling this information directly from the show notes from episode 114, Evergreen Content, What It Is and Why Your Business Needs It. You can see that it's even pulling the graphics from that webpage, and it has the entire length of that blog post, all of the information. Awesome. And now it is composing a script. And this is an AI tool that is composing a script for the video. It's giving you a title for the video. It's giving you the target duration. Now, I'm working on the free plan right now. But it's giving you the options when you upgrade to have longer duration videos. On the free plan, you can get videos one minute or under, which are ideal for social media anyway. But if you wanted to have a longer video, say you were creating a YouTube short and YouTube shorts can be up to three minutes long and you wanted to have longer, you would need to upgrade. You also get access to 40 or more lifelike AI voices and up to 1200 words for longer videos. And you can create videos faster. So that's if you upgrade. The tone is going to match my content. Same thing, when you upgrade you have more features to choose from. And you can give it additional script instructions. Very similar to prompting chatGPT. So it has given me the script that it composed with AI based off the content of my blog post. And I hit continue. And then it has multiple voice avatars. Discover the secrets of a healthy lifestyle. That's Bria. Liam. And then there are a bunch of other ones that are only available, there are a bunch of other avatars that are only available on the paid plan. And it tells you what their tone is, whether it's balanced or casual or deep or assertive, what their style is, conversational, narrative, presentational. And what their accent is. American, Portuguese, British, Chinese, Irish, Italian. So it looks like there's quite a diverse amount of voice AI, and then they also have quality and says high quality voices are more consistent in tone and experience fewer audio anomalies. So you can choose which avatar you want. For this case, we will choose Bria.. Let's convert it to video. So it's preparing my voiceover. could take up to a few minutes. Now if I didn't want, pulled a graphic from my blog post, if I didn't want to use that graphic, I could very easily choose from their stock library of images, and that's something to consider as well if you don't have a lot of graphics on your blog posts, or if it just doesn't quite fit. All right, let's preview it. Evergreen content is timeless, valuable material that remains relevant long after publication. Unlike fleeting social media posts, it consistently attracts, educates, and converts audiences. Think of it as the little black dress of your content strategy, always in style and adaptable. I want to pause here for a second to say how, for those who are listening to this episode, that comment about being the little black dress was on the screen as like a pulled out quote. Evergreen content is essential for long term business growth. It drives consistent traffic, as 68 percent of online experiences start with a search engine. Same thing here, it's pulling out that statistic and putting it onto the screen of the video. Unlike short lived posts, evergreen content compounds over time. So at this point, we've got some stock footage of people typing on computers. Attracting new leads. It builds trust and authority, positioning you as an industry expert with solutions that resonate with your audience. And at this point it's going back to pulling out text from the script and putting it up onto the screen. Now, I won't preview the whole thing because that's quite long, but I can see very easily how with just a few minor tweaks, like the graphics that it pulled from my show notes blog, weren't ideal. There are some little tweaks, but overall I think that this could be edited with making some manual tweaks within a matter of just a few minutes. On top of that, I haven't finished setting up my brand kit in this platform. So it's not customized to my brand, but when you add in that additional element of customizing it, it just really makes it that much more personalized. Where Lumen 5 really shines is the ability to break your content into scenes. You can see over here on the right hand side that it's broken it into scenes with numbers. Each one of these little blocks is its own scene. And that's how you know where the video is gonna break. It then does its best to match visuals to your text. And it also adds in AI suggested music based off of your content. One of the things I want to encourage you to do, I already spoke on this a bit, is don't just accept all of the AI suggestions. Always review and adjust. Like we've talked about previously, AI is your unpaid intern. You are the CEO of your business and you need to proofread everything that leaves your business. So don't just give it a blanket stamp of approval. Make sure you go in there and make any additional tweaks so that it's exactly as you want it. But this saves you an Immense amount of time by giving you that first draft so that you can come in and just give it that final polish. Some of my favorite features of Lumen5 include the style studio. If you go over to the left hand side and click style, this is where you'll set up your brand kit. You can also set up things like custom transitions, font combinations, scene variations. They also have the media library with tons of stock footage. You can upload custom assets or images, and you can also create branded templates. So if you have a template that really is working well for you, you can continue to use that template over and over. Overall, I find that the AI in Lumen5 is pretty impressive. I really like the smart scene splitting, the automatic keyword detection, and the visual matching technology, as well as the smart text placement. Lumen5 uses AI to suggest the visuals, the animations, and the music, and saves you an immense amount of time. I also think that the transitions between scenes are very smooth and you can tweak these for a more dynamic feel or keep them subtle for a professional vibe. They have a ton of royalty free music in their library that allows you to set the tone for your video and if you want to add a voiceover you can either, like we talked about, you can either use your own voice or use an AI voice. I suggest if you're going to repurpose a blog post that you focus on pulling out the key points rather than trying to include everything. So that may have been one of the issues. here was that I kind of went the lazy route for the purpose of this video and gave it the entire blog post, which may have been too much content. In order to keep your video concise and engaging between the 90 second to three minute mark, which is really the sweet spot, you really want to just pull out the most valuable information. So I think in order to get videos even tighter and exactly what you want, instead of providing it with the entire blog post, by really focusing in on the content that you want in there, you're going to get an even more refined final product. Once your video is polished and ready, it's time to share it with the world. And here's how you do that. You can download the video and upload it directly to platforms like YouTube, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Since each platform has different best practices for video length and format, make sure you keep that in mind. You can also repurpose it for multiple platforms by using the same Video across multiple platforms and just tweaking the dimensions. You could keep it horizontal for YouTube or vertical for YouTube shorts. You could crop it to square for Instagram or leave it vertical for Instagram reels, and you can create a vertical version for TikTok, or embed it on your website. You can add the video to your blog post or your landing page. And this not only enhances the user experience, but can also improve your SEO rankings. It's really easy to export. You just go to publish. And then once it's finished processing, you'll be able to download it. And you can see down here, you can also grab the transcript, translate the video, resize it, or copy the link. All right, let's move on to the next tool, which is called HeyGen. This is seriously like having a professional video studio in your pocket. This is the tool I get the most excited messages about from my community because it feels like magic the first time you use it. So if you don't have a HeyGen account yet, grab the link in the show notes. When you log in, you'll set up your HeyGen account. You'll set up your workspace. This is where all of your videos will live, and you'll upload any custom assets that you want to use. I also encourage you to play around with the free plan before you get started. It allows you to create up to three videos and set up your AI avatar, So that you can really get a feel for how it all works So i'm going to show you I created a new AI avatar today. I have not looked at it yet. But here's what happens when you log in. You can generate an avatar using a text prompt, or create your own avatar. It's super simple to do. You record yourself talking for between 30 seconds and three minutes. You can talk about anything. They give you very, very clear instructions on what you need to do. You need to be making eye contact with the camera, pause after each sentence, and just talk naturally. You can talk about anything you want. Then you upload your video, and you get your avatar. So like I said, I have not, I have not looked at this. We are looking at this together. So this is my new avatar that I just did today. Hey Sarah, your instant avatar is ready. Try creating videos with it. Also, click the feedback button to share what you think. Hope you enjoy. So that is my video avatar. That's pretty cool, huh? So now that I have my video avatar, what can I do with it? It sounds like me, it looks like me, it moves its hands like me. So what are the possible use cases for this. You can edit the look, meaning you can basically style your avatar so that all of your videos don't end up looking like you're wearing the same outfit. But additionally, this is where, since we're talking about text to video tools, your ability to bulk create content just exploded. Because if you are uncomfortable on camera, guess what? You don't have to be on camera now. You can have an AI avatar be on camera while you could be in bed in your pajamas. So this is an absolute game changer, especially if you don't want to be filming content, but you know that you need to show up with video. I also encourage you to not get stuck in Avatar creation limbo. You can redo them as many times as you want, but I think the most important thing is to create one, get started, figure out how to use it, figure out how to start actually creating videos with your avatar, and then you can always go back and refine it down the road. First off, we can edit my look. A lot of these features are going to be paywalled because I am playing around with it in the free version right now. You could do a face swap, you can change the speed, you can change whether you want it to be a close up, half body, circle, in the paid version you can also kind of blur the background, you can change the pitch of the voice, you can have up to a hundred different looks for your avatar. So you really can mass create content. And have it not all look identical. As with Lumen 5, you can build your brand kit in here so that all of your content has your unique brand with it. You can also record your own voice. So if you don't want to have a visual avatar, but you just want to have a voice avatar, that is an option as well. Or you can use one out of the library of voices. And you can see just like with Lumen 5, they're giving you options for excited, or friendly, or serious, or soothing, or broadcaster. So you can browse through all of those. And then they also have AI avatars down here that you could choose to create content with, if you prefer to not be on camera. So how do we create content? We're going to go to create video. And we're going to say we want to do an avatar video. Do we want to do portrait or landscape? Let's do portrait and let's create my first video. So we're going to use my avatar and we have to give it the script. So at this point, this is where you would cut and paste in whatever script that you want to use, whether it's information for an ad or a social media video or anything that you want. You would put it in here. In this case, it's going to, it looks like it's going into a presentation. Building an inclusive workspace. But what's really nice is if you don't want to use your own avatar, the selection of avatars in terms of accent selection, tone adjustment, multilingual support, there are hundreds of different languages supported by HeyGen, so that is also a really, really nice feature. Some of the other features from HeyGen that I really like are the auto punctuation fixing, the tone suggestions, the pacing optimization, and the natural language processing. It also has automatic gesture matching, eye contact optimization, expression matching to script tone, and smart scene transitions. The best practices that I've picked up from HeyGen are to keep videos under three minutes for best engagement, use emotion markers every two to three sentences, and mix up your camera angles for longer videos. You can also make sure to include natural pauses in your script. Last up is Synthesia. This is perfect for creating professional training and educational content. Now I've included this one because if you are a course creator and you are filming content for your course, this might be the option that you want to choose. Synthesia allows you to convert text to video just from single text prompts. You can create videos from text, words, documents, or even PDFs in just one click. There is a large pre designed video template library to choose from, so you're not having to start from scratch. And there are also a wide variety of AI avatars to choose from, so if you're wary of appearing on camera, this is also a great option. Another great option is that this has the ability to create your own AI avatar, just like HeyGen, which then allows you to bulk create content lightning fast. They have an AI powered prompt to video, instant translation, and dubbing into over 80 languages. And this is perfect for YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, in addition to what I already mentioned, that it is great for content creators who are filming courses. You can choose your AI voice, tone, and language, and you can clone your own voice to pair it with your custom avatar. I would say that this is your go to when you need an extra level of professionalism, especially if you're working on client facing content or training materials. If you don't have an account yet, there's a link in the show notes. You log in similar to the other products. You set up your brand kit, which is crucial for consistent videos, and you upload any custom backgrounds or assets. Once you're in, you click create new video and choose between a template or a blank canvas. And then you select your aspect ratio and set up your scenes. So, for example, let's set up a video together. In this case, let's do a case study. We're just going to let it prompt us so that we just see the example. It's asking us to tell us what the video is about and tell us about the audience. We're going to go with what is already filled in, but it's also saying, already have something in mind, upload a PDF, Word, or text file, so you could upload all of your information about your specific use case and give it all that information at once. And then we click create video. Now it's letting us know that we can select an avatar or switch them out from the ones that they have already put in, we can select a voice, and we can generate our video. So in this case, it's given us a young woman and a man on a different slide. And it's got the full script for each slide down at the bottom. So it's very easy to plug in whatever text you would want on those slides. For this case study, this is eight slides, an eight slide pitch deck. Once you hit create, let's say that everything here is exactly how we wanted it. We can hit create, and it's going to generate and take about ten minutes to process. So while we let that process, let's talk about where Synthesia stands out. It stands out because of your ability to add visual elements, select or upload your background, and input your script. Don't try to fit too much text on screen at once. With these type of professional videos, less is definitely more. Some of the most powerful features that make it worth the investment include multiple presenter scenes. As you saw, there were two different avatars in that video, and PowerPoint style slides. This also allows you to have custom transitions and screen recording insertion. This is definitely the option if you are looking for the most professional text to video option. The AI in Synthesia is incredibly sophisticated. It allows you to do natural speech patterns, emphasis detection, pacing optimization, and multilingual translation. The visual AI also has automatic lip sync, gesture matching, expression optimization, and scene timing adjustment. You can also connect your Synthesia videos to Google Analytics for even deeper insights into how your videos are performing. Now that we've covered all three tools in detail, let me help you decide which one to start with. I recommend that you choose Lumen5 if you're mainly repurposing blog content or other long form written content, if you need quick social media videos, and if you're working with a smaller budget. I recommend that you choose HeyGen if you need talking head videos without filming. This is the tool for the introverts out there. Or if you want to create multilingual content. If you also need voice cloning capabilities, HeyGen is the tool for you. Finally, I recommend you choose Synthesia if you're creating professional training videos. Or if you need high end corporate videos or client facing content. It is definitely the most expensive of the three tools, so this is the tool for you if budget is not your primary concern. All right, let's wrap this up with exactly what you should do next. Here's your step by step action plan. First, set up your tool. Choose one tool to start with. Sign up using the link in the show notes and connect your brand assets. Make sure you set up that brand kit so you save time down the road. Next, create your first video. Start with one short piece of content like a blog intro. Use one of the templates that's existing in the tool you've chosen. Last, set up your video content creation workflow. Choose your content pillars. What are you going to talk about? What is your audience looking for? Schedule regular video creation sessions. Remember, this may not be you being on camera. This may just be you putting text content in to create new videos. Use the automation features we've covered, and remember, start small and build up, you don't have to implement everything that we went over today. And there you have it, a complete walkthrough of how to use AI to turn your text into engaging videos. If you're ready to take your content strategy even further, don't forget to check out my private podcast, AI Content Lab: Evergreen Strategies That Scale. In the podcast, I share even more tools and strategies to simplify your content creation process. Sign up for free at the link in the show notes. Thanks for tuning in. Be sure to subscribe and check out the YouTube version of this episode for a hands on demo. I'll see you really soon.