How to Generate Custom Videos for Your WordPress Site (Using the Moovly Plugin)

More and more, it’s becoming clear that video content is hugely effective at grabbing people’s attention and engaging their interest. However, adding videos to your website can be easier said than done. Unless you have a lot of time, creating regular video content might seem out of reach.

Fortunately, as a WordPress user you have some unique options available to you. For example, you can use the brand-new Moovly plugin to generate professional-looking videos from existing content, quickly and easily. Although this plugin is still in beta, it offers a number of promising features.

In this post, we’ll briefly discuss why video content is so vital on your website. Then we’ll introduce the Moovly plugin, and talk about how you can try it out for yourself. Let’s jump right in!

Why Adding Custom Videos to Your Site Is a Smart Move

We’ve all heard the saying: “A picture is worth a thousand words”. As it turns out, however, a video is even more valuable.

Video content is flourishing online, and for good reason. It’s one of (if not the) most effective type of content on many platforms. Just to give you a few examples of video’s many benefits:

76% of businesses that use video marketing see an increase in traffic because of it.
In 2017, businesses and marketers using video content saw a 49% increase in revenue over those relying on more traditional methods.
80% of marketers who use on-site videos reported an increase in ‘dwell time’ (how long visitors stay around).
About 72% of consumers prefer to learn about a product or service through a video, rather than through text.

These are some compelling stats, and are just a small taste of the research that’s out there. In a nutshell, creating video content for your audience can drive traffic to your site, help visitors retain information better, and promote more conversions – all things that will benefit any business website.

Of course, the downside is that videos are usually much harder to put together than text content (or even text supplemented with images). A custom video requires commitment, the right software and tools, and a certain amount of expertise. Not everyone has the budget or time required to put together even simple videos on a regular basis.

That’s why a WordPress plugin that can help you create custom videos for your site is such an intriguing possibility. This kind of tool can save you a lot of time, while helping you produce more engaging content. Next up, let’s take a look at one such plugin.

Introducing Moovly: A Custom Video Plugin for WordPress

There are a lot of WordPress plugins that help you display videos on your site, or even edit them. However, there aren’t many options that can assist you with creating a video in the first place. For that, you’ve traditionally had to go outside the platform.

The Moovly plugin aims to change that, by enabling you to integrate the Moovly video-creation service with WordPress:

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This tool uses a specially-designed Application Programming Interface (API) to help you create branded videos from your existing posts and other content (such as news articles and social media posts). All you have to do is select a template, fill out some information, and then paste a shortcode wherever you’d like your video to display.

More specifically, there are three main types of videos you can create using Moovly.

Template-based videos:

An example of a Moovly video created from a template.

Using a simple form, you can generate a professional video with your own custom content.

Data-based videos:

An example of a Moovly video created from data.

If you have a list or database full of information, you can generate a personalized video collating that data.

Feed-based videos:

Finally, you can automatically convert Twitter feeds, RSS feeds, and similar sources into custom videos.

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This simple but flexible functionality has a wide range of applications. You can use Moovly to create product videos, news announcements, testimonials, informational content, and much more. Let’s take a look at how this works in practice.

How to Try the Moovly Plugin for Yourself

The best way to gauge whether a new plugin might be useful on your site is try it out for yourself. Fortunately, Moovly is a free plugin, so you can give it a test drive right away.

Do keep in mind that while this plugin is functional, it’s still in beta form. That means you’ll want to try it out on a staging site first, just in case it conflicts with any of your existing plugins (or your theme). If using it on a live site, make sure you have a recent backup in place, just in case.

Then, you can install and activate the plugin on your site. As you might expect, you’ll find a new Moovly tab in your dashboard:

The Moovly plugin section in the WordPress dashboard.

You’ll want to start by following the simple instructions on this page. That involves setting up a Moovly account, and creating an access token. The links here will help you complete each step.

Then open the Settings page, and paste in your access token. This will add several additional tabs to your dashboard:

Connecting the Moovly plugin using an access token.

At this point, you can go ahead and start creating videos to add to your website. For more information on how that process works, you can reference the detailed plugin documentation.

In a nutshell, you’ll access your Moovly Studio dashboard to create and customize a template, which you can use to generate as many videos on your site as you’d like. With a little practice, you’ll find yourself churning out new video content at a quick pace.

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Conclusion

The more video content you can add to your website, the better. Most users will find videos far more engaging (and persuasive) than text and images, so using them to supplement your other content is a smart plan.

Normally, producing plenty of custom video content takes a lot of time. To simplify the process, however, you can check out the Moovly plugin for WordPress. This tool lets you create templates and use them to generate videos based on lists of data, social media feeds, and more. With it, you can greatly expand the possibilities for video content on your site.

Do you have any questions about the Moovly plugin and how it works? Let us know in the comments section below!

Image credit: JuralMin.