Short-form videos have surged in popularity online for the past five years with 73% of consumers saying they prefer them to other formats. But, especially in B2B, there’s still a place for long-form content such as webinars and podcasts that explore topics in more detail.
The problem is that this content just doesn’t work on social media. We have to adapt it to the appetite for short-form video by clipping highlights that grab attention and direct people to learn more with longer, more in-depth content.
It’s probably on your to-do list but if you’ve ever tried to do it yourself, you know how time-consuming it can be. So you may be wondering – should you use AI to clip videos for social media? Or should you enlist an agency to help?
Let’s look at the pros and cons of either using an agency or AI to repurpose long-form videos…
AI to clip videos vs. agency: which is best?
Generative AI tools are everywhere in content creation. And they continue to improve all the time, but how and when should you use them?
When it comes to repurposing long videos into shorter videos for social media, there are AI tools that will do this for you. Some will auto-generate closed captions or even transform your landscape videos into vertical ones. Plus, you can use AI to write the social post copy to go along with them.
Sounds great, right? But is using an AI to clip videos the best option?
As a content repurposing agency, we help many clients repurpose long videos into shorter videos for social media. So naturally, we were curious to see just how good AI is at doing the same thing. Keep reading to see what we found…
Pros & cons of using AI to clip videos for social media
AI pros:
Save time: Using an AI tool to repurpose videos can save you a lot of time. Rather than hand-picking moments and doing everything manually, an AI tool can do it in seconds. That saved time can then be put into creating other content.
Low-cost: AI tools are often low-cost or even free... If you have a smaller budget to work with, AI can help you to get more from your longer form video content.
AI cons:
AI may not pick the best bits: Asking AI to select moments from your recent webinar can be hit or miss. What the AI thinks is “interesting” may not align with your audience, content strategy or business goals. AI can even totally miss the best bits from your videos. So that great point your podcast guest said at the end? It could be completely ignored.
Stand-alone content: Many AI tools really struggle to pick a key moment that stands on its own. If the video refers to something said earlier in the longer video and doesn’t make sense or add value on its own, then the post might just annoy your audience!
The risk of errors: AI tools aren’t the best judge of what needs editing out of a short video. You might end up with clips that start or end mid-sentence or a video with repetitions, mistakes, distorted audio, or long pauses left in. The result? A poor quality video that people scroll past quickly.
Formatting mishaps: While AI tools can reformat your video for social media, for example, by turning landscape videos into vertical ones for Reels and TikTok. But we’ve seen first hand how this can go wrong…
AI tools we’ve tested can be a bit hit or miss. We saw one video of two people talking that was turned into a vertical video for social media. The problem was the AI tool had cut both of the speakers out of the shot, instead opting to focus on a lonely looking water bottle on a table between them. Not a great look!
Issues when editing clips together: If you want to piece a few clips together to make a great point over social media, AI struggles here. It may be able to stitch a couple of clips together but it can be super jarring as the video changes from one clip to another – for example, cutting off the previous clip’s voices mid-sentence or leaving in moments where a speaker pulls a weird face.
AI might focus on bits you’d rather avoid: When picking clips, AI doesn’t mind swearing or other controversial points you might not want to highlight on social media (at least without context). Relying on AI alone to pick these clips could lead to some awkward moments.
On a less controversial note, there may be great points that AI picks up in the videos but visually, they aren’t right for social media. For example, if you’re repurposing a webinar where there’s a screenshare right at that moment. It doesn’t make for a visually interesting clip and can distract viewers from your message.
Less tailored to your brand: Ideally, you want the videos you post on social media to be aligned with your branding design, colors, and fonts. AI tools can help you make videos look polished but with pre-designed templates with limited settings that might not align with your own brand.
Pros & cons of hiring an agency to clip videos for social media
While we can’t speak for all agencies, we can tell you what we do.
Unlike a tool, we provide an in-depth service that takes audience requirements, branding, and goals into account when selecting segments for repurposing. Our team has different experts on hand, including copywriters, graphic designers, video editors, and social media experts to make sure your content is effective and on-brand.
Agency pros:
Expert decision-making based on your content strategy: An agency armed with a team of experts will be able to take the time to understand your content, subject matter, audience, and overall goals and make suggestions on what type of content will work well.
When choosing clips, editing them, and formatting them for social media, an agency will be able to align these decisions with your content strategy and goals such as building awareness, brand authority or increasing conversions.
Copy that maximizes the effectiveness of your videos: To go along with your short videos, you also need great copy that adds value, provides insights, and encourages engagement. An agency with copywriters at the ready will be able to go one step further than an AI tool. AI can write copy for you, but expert copywriters are your best bet to make sure that copy is in your tone of voice, professionally edited, and targeted to your audience.
Hand-selected highlights: Breaking a larger webinar or podcast into bite-sized chunks may sound simple enough in practice, but an agency will be able to assess which parts of your content work well as stand-alone content that will resonate with your audience.
Unlike using AI to clip videos, the short videos you produce for social media will only focus on the best bits, the most strategically important elements for your brand’s social media presence.
Expert editing for added value: AI tools struggle to edit effectively while also getting the point in your video across clearly and effectively. Some of the edits we make at Content 10x to client videos include removing repetition, stutters, long pauses, or mistakes. Our goal is to make the video as sharp and to-the-point as possible by removing unnecessary bits, panning, zooming, using jump cuts and b-roll.
Additional content: Posting repurposed videos to social media works best when it’s part of a fully thought-out strategy to maximize the effectiveness of your content. An agency like ours works closely with you to produce additional content including social media graphics, carousels, copy, and podcasts as part of a full campaign, not just singular creative assets.
All content is tailored to your brand: The final product of social media videos produced by an agency will always be aligned with your branding design to ensure consistency and recognizability over social media. Agencies work closely with clients to create on-brand videos as well as any other additional content like copy or graphics – a service that AI can’t quite replicate!
Agency cons:
Cost: The main con of using an agency is of course the cost. It’s definitely cheaper to use a low cost or free tool than to hire an agency to handle it all for you. However, even if you do use an AI tool, you will still need someone to do the work - from set-up to checking and editing the content that it produces - whether that’s an in-house person or external.
Time: Hiring an agency to handle your repurposing isn’t an instant result for your strategy. AI can create short videos in seconds whereas an agency will take longer to produce quality content aligned to your brand.
AI or agency: which should you pick?
If budget and time are the main concerns, then using AI to clip videos can help you to repurpose your content without that big investment. But be aware that errors, quality issues, and branding issues can crop up and you will need someone to fix these before you can publish the content.
For a more tailored and strategic approach to your content, then an agency will provide quality short videos and other repurposed assets that are based on the nuances of your brand. This does come at a cost, though.
What about an agency that utilizes AI effectively?
The good news is that you can find a happy medium with agencies that use AI strategically.
Using AI for content is something of an art form these days. There’s a lot more to it than asking a simple question and getting perfect results instantly. Simply asking the AI to clip videos can have mixed results for your brand. By partnering with an agency that uses AI effectively, you can maximize the benefits of both sides of the debate.
An agency that uses AI tools to manage projects, test ideas, save time, and produce content faster, can help you save both time and money – boosting your content’s ROI!
At Content 10x, we use AI to streamline processes and aid in content creation. But our team of experts take the time to understand your brand to produce the most relevant, effective, and quality short-form videos, graphics, and copy that will resonate with your audience. We work closely with you during onboarding to develop any AI processes we may use to make sure you’re happy. Our team is committed to continuous AI improvements and we consistently update our knowledge and processes so we’re at the forefront of it.
To learn more about our content repurposing and strategy services as an agency that utilizes the latest tools, book a discovery call today. We help businesses in various industries repurpose their long-form content into small pockets of value to help you extend brand reach and drive results.
Thanks for reading. We hope you found this helpful, let us know on LinkedIn.
Content 10x is the world’s leading authority on content repurposing. Specializing in transforming your content into multiple formats and distributing it across various platforms, Content 10x helps maximize your reach and impact. Our expert team takes your core content and creates a diverse array of high-quality, engaging assets, including videos, podcasts, social media posts, and more. Trust Content 10x to enhance your content strategy and ensure your message is seen and heard by the right audience.
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