Covid is bad enough without powerpoint too. The tonic is animated videos and here's the treatment.

Hello world. This is Jim James, welcome to this episode of speak PR. This is from the shared studio and I am fresh from making an animated explainer video. And I wanted to just get on the mic and share the power and the simplicity of making an explainer video. I've been using a platform called doodly by brixon. And I want to share that because I've been able to take a presentation that normally I would be sitting there with a group of delegates and students talking for four and a half to five minutes about something and hoping that they're listening, and maybe with PowerPoint, some static pictures. But with doodlee, and with an animated explainer video, I can create characters, I can create motion, and I can get engagement well beyond the static presentation. So welcome to speak PR. This is the program where I share tools and tips on how companies and entrepreneurs can get noticed without a large budget. In fact, often without any budget at all. I've been running a public relations firm for over 25 years, and I set up a businesses on three continents. So what I'm doing is sharing tools and technologies that I know work, and the big companies pay agencies to do. But what I'd like to do is to share that with you for free as part of the speak PR program. So let's just look today at the opportunity to create an explainer video. Now explainer videos that we can use in sales, for example, for potential customers that might be thinking about a product or service. We can use them for explaining what we do to partners, but also for training, and for helping on customer service where we've got people that maybe have bought and coming back for repeat questions that we can answer, where it isn't necessarily possible to use a bot for that, because you may want to actually give some pictures as well to show now, the explainer video on doodly. And there's another one called tune Li which is like PowerPoint animated videos. But doodly is really enabling you to create videos of any length to add audio, and be that voice or music, or both. So the platform is actually remarkably simple to download and to use. And even a novice like me can create a video, really within the first 10 minutes I've created something I can use. So the the idea behind this is that if you want to introduce a concept, as I'm doing for the speak PR program, I'm introducing the concept of engage. And I'm introducing this concept of content being engaging, if it is new, and if it is simple, then it's shareable. But if it is old, and it's not new, it's not shareable, quite a simple concept in a way. But I'm able to animate this and then show the people that are listening to me a build up of the concept over a period of two to three minutes. And I can introduce different elements. And I can show and create a list. What I've done in this particular video is to choose a green chalkboard, you can have a clear chalkboard, a black chalkboard or a white chalkboard, you can then choose whether you have a an arm a person writing, or if you don't want anybody actually doing the writing on the screen, but you just want the the writing to appear. And you can animate from left to right, you can choose how quickly the animation comes in. And you can choose different objects. So you can choose person characters, you can choose a piece of furniture, for example, you can choose office objects. And you can introduce all of those in the same way that you might with PowerPoint. But then you can animate them and you can choose the sequence, the time that it takes for them to build in and out. And also for the relationship between these different elements to change. So this is fantastic. What you could do is create a scene, for example in office, and then you can introduce a person and then you can have that person with a dialog box. And then on the next chalkboard have the beginnings of what you're trying to share with your audience. So plainly, this is going to be very useful if you've got something that you have as a repetitive presentation. So then what I've done is I have created the the moving images and the chart to show the engaging content being in the top right hand corner and able to then do an arrow and show that this is where it's going to be so for ephasis, the audience will see not just the text, but see motion around the text. And also, then I've been able to embed a couple of pictures because you can upload pictures from outside and put them onto the onto the chalkboard or the whiteboard, whichever board you choose, then you can create different scenes. So I guess just in the same way that you would with a PowerPoint, you create a different slide. The departure from PowerPoint is that PowerPoint is always the same size and it's a static, and you animate onto the page. But with this, you can extend the timeline for each scene. So you can have a scene that is 2345 seconds if you like. And then where you can control the introduction of different pieces of information over time and create if you like scenes, some short, some long, that can create a pace to the presentation. So now once you've entered all of your content with these different icons, straight lines, drawings of people, drawings of office furniture, cars, there are a number of them, you can add. And if you upgrade, you can get over 1000 of these different images. Plus you can add your own images, then you can also change their composition. So you can change them to be line drawings, you can change the color of the lines, you can have them filled in and scale them big small and so on. So very flexible. Then, once you've created the if you like the framework and the content in the drawings and the text, then you can add on the audio. Now this I had some fun, it did take me a little bit of time to do this. But what you can do is you can record your voice directly underneath the the film and the slides as they're playing Hamlet a bit of a challenge with getting the timing right, because it seems to keep starting from the beginning. But you create little clips of audio underneath the slide itself. So you can actually talk to the build out. So from a presentation point of view, this is really, really handy. If you try and do this into PowerPoint, which I believe you can do now also in the keynote, you've got so much going on on that one screen, that it can be quite a lot, the file gets very large. But with this because it's in a in a filmstrip presentation, it's really nice because you can see what came before and what's coming afterwards. And then you can articulate the pitch as the slides are unfolding. The next part is that you can add in an audio so music track underneath the entire piece. You can also drag and drop audio mp3 files of your own, for example, sound recordings. So then you have your buildup of the text on the slides. Then you have the voiceover and you have the music. Now the the one problem I found was that when I then change the animation duration, on an element in one of the pictures, it would make that frame shorter. But it didn't make the audio any shorter, and didn't make the music any shorter either. But that's not the end of the world. It's a very easy drag, slide, cut and paste process to get the voiceover and the audio track to all be in sync. So the the secret and I guess the Polish will come when you're getting the voiceover pacing to be better with the animation, pacing, and the level of the music ought to be in alignment. So these are some skills that I've got to learn. And having learned how to use GarageBand I know that this is really a case of diving in at the beginning, making some mistakes, not being afraid of it not looking too good. But just learning and practicing. And I've certainly found with the podcast now back to Episode 225 that I got a lot better, a lot more fluid it using the technology and worry less about the technology and more about the content. And this will be the same I think with the doodly. So I've already found that I've been able to create several doodly videos one very short, I started off with just a one minute one and I suggest that you do that as well just start with on very simple, very short, with no voiceover to get the hang of the animation first. And then I've made a longer piece. And now my third piece I'm trying to add the voiceover so just building up slowly but surely, but doodly which is just Doodly.com is available with a $39 a month package and $69 a month package. For $39. You can get unlimited videos, and I guess there's a euro Sterling Price as well. Equivalent you can use on multiple computers, which is great one login Of course and one account, you get support, you get 803 characters I've been using a lot, which is one of the people who you know, looks bemused, looks happy, and so on. This adults children, there are women and men of different races and nationalities, for example. There are 1157, prop images, 84 scene templates, for example, there's hotels, as bedrooms as offices, and so on. And 100 royalty free music tracks. And there's also a Facebook group, which I have to confess, I'm not that interested in joining a Facebook group. If you go for the enterprise, then you get, you know, turbocharged 3000, prop images, 150, royalty tracks, and so on. Personally, I've got enough to manage it with the 803 characters, I should stick to one or two to start with, but nonetheless, and I think that I actually paid a one off fee to pay for an annual license as well. And if you do that, then you save nearly 50%. So it's expensive to go to a third party to have to make an explainer video I saw on LinkedIn, someone was advertising for making a three minute explainer video about 600 pounds. So that is great. But I'm going to be making a lot of these and it's 600 pounds per time, I also got to brief them. And what I found was I was creating a lot of the content as I went along. Because the software, frankly is so easy to use, it's perfectly easy to have a little storyboard or some notes offline, and then be building the content online on the fly. And for me, that would save the time of outsourcing, briefing, outsourcing, getting it back reviewing and so on. But we're all different. And I just use a MacBook Pro using standard Safari. So all works pretty quickly. And then when you've made the video, you can export that to an mp4 file, they come down quite light, actually they come down 2030 megabytes, so not too much effect much less than if you make a movie on iMovie, for example. So I was able to download the movie and it's already to upload to Vimeo. Or in my case, I'm using it on the Thinkific site for the speak r.co mastermind. So here I am rying to build a training ourse around how to create ompelling and engaging content, oving images, multiple times 30 imes more engaging than static mages. And creating a owerPoint where you sit there nd train people by PowerPoint s both repetitive for the rainer, but also not articularly engaging for the eople that are watching. So a ool like doodly and as a ister, one called Toonly and t is is also the cover that has a application called Talkia, wh ch I go into another day. But ba ically you enter the content, th text and it will create a vo ceover and you can drag and dr p the audio files into your do dly. And therefore you can hav a third party narrate for you if you don't want to do the voi eover yourself. So an int resting suite of services and tools all from this brixon com any had to say so far I'm enj ying it. And I want to share wit you a tool a practical way tha you can create content you self that's not that exp nsive, frankly, pretty easy to se. Even a non techie like me an use it. There are some oth r testimonials on their web ite. Amy killin who's a med cal doctor says fun videos for patient care. They had som one here had used video scr be and they say doodly is bet er. Someone says thank you for making me look like a rock sta . And someone in real estate say make your business grow, inv st a small amount. And ano her doctor is teaching med cal students with this as wel . So there are many people out there already using this too . And I share this because if ou haven't heard of it, you mig t find it a useful way to get what you're sharing to be ani ated with voiceover and if you want with music too Thanks so uch for listening. If you're int rested in even joining us on the speakPR mastermind, this is wher I'm creating these dulli vide s for let me know it's a spea PR.Co. If you like this podca t, please rate it and share it. If you'd like to subsc ibe to our newsletter, we have ll of these podcasts trans ribed, and made into artic es and they go on a weekly newsl tter on a Friday, you can subsc ibe at EastWestpr.com. So I do run a public relations agency. So if you think I can be of any ssistance to you have offices in Singapore and China in the K, but in the meantime, I hope hat just by sharing what I know 'm adding some value in helping you on your way. So thanks o much for listening. And in he meantime, until we come to ether again. I wish you the bes of health, a profitable busines and that you animate some of your ideas into a into a video.