Social Video Toolkits apps 101

If you aren’t already incorporating social video into your marketing strategy, it may well be the technical side of things that’s holding you back. After all, while 84 percent of professional marketers have recently used video marketing, according to Animoto, only 55 percent of small and medium-sized business owners have done so.

While professional marketers have access to larger budgets and high-end video tools, it can be harder for smaller operations to get a social video marketing plan off the ground.

Fortunately, there are plenty of free and inexpensive social video apps and tools that businesses of any size can use to create compelling videos for use on all social media channels. From quick text animations to photo-based video slideshows to movie-like video storytelling, here are eight social video tools that can help you create your first marketing video before the end of the day.

8 social media video apps for marketers

1. Animoto

The promise: “Turn your photos and video clips into video slideshows, quickly and easily.”

The price: Professional plans start at $26/month; 14-day free trial.

Animoto allows you to simply choose a pre-built storyboard and start adding photos and video clips. You can use the collage and split-screen tools to show several photos at once, or photos and videos alongside one another. Add your voice-over, or choose from a library of 2,000 songs. Then, add some text and share or embed the video directly from the Animoto interface.

Best feature: Option for square videos using pre-built storyboards optimized for mobile.

Available for: Browser, iOS, and Android

2. Biteable

The promise: “Make animations completely online in minutes.”

The price: There’s a free plan, but businesses will want to upgrade to the premium plan for $99 per year to get rid of the Biteable watermark and access additional social media video tools.

Biteable bills itself as “the world’s simplest video maker.” With a library of pre-built scenes, including animations and real video footage, it does make creating a video as easy as dropping elements into your storyboard and adding some text. You can upload your own footage if you like, but Biteable really shines for those who are looking for someone else to do most of the heavy lifting.

Best feature: The ability to create complete videos, including real video footage, without ever picking up a camera.

Available for: Browser only

3. GoAnimate

The promise: “Make professional animated videos.”

The price: Plans start at $39/month ($299/year), but business will want to upgrade to the GoPremium plan for $79/month ($599/year) to remove the GoAnimate watermark and access additional social video tools; 14-day free trial.

GoAnimate is different from Biteable in that it allows you to create your own scenes in which customized animated characters interact with and speak to one another. When you record your own dialogue, the characters’ mouths will automatically sync up to match the recording.

You can add your own logo, images, and audio files to match your video to your brand, and export the video straight to YouTube and other video hosting sites, or download so you can share to social. You can also use the suite of video tools to create whiteboard animations, or video infographics.

Best feature: Ability to create custom characters using the character creator, so you can make a digital version of yourself, your target customers, or any of the key people in your company.

Available for: Browser only

4. iMovie

The promise: “Turn your videos into movie magic.”

The price: Comes bundled with a new Mac; iOS app $4.99; macOS app $14.99.

iMovie is the classic video editing app for the Apple generation. It’s a robust video editing program with advanced options like picture-in-picture, split screen, and ability to use green screen filming to add in custom backgrounds. There’s a library of included music, title sequences, and sound effects, along with a suite of 10 filters to customize the look of your video.

You can post directly to YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook, or export a file to upload to other social channels.

Image via Apple.

Best feature: You can seamlessly start your your video project on your iOS device and finish editing it on your Mac.

Available for: Mac or iOS

5. Legend

The promise: “Words move people | Legend moves words.”

The price: $1.99

Unlike the other social media video apps on this list, Legend does not allow you to combine photos or video clips. Instead, Legend is all about animating your words. The animated videos, which can feature just one background photo or video clip, are a maximum of six seconds long.

You can save your animation as a GIF or a video, then post directly to Instagram or download to post on other social networks.

Best feature: It takes as little as two taps (plus entering your text) to create your video.

Available for: iOS and Android

6. Magisto

The promise: “Magisto turns your everyday videos and photos into exciting, memorable movies you’ll want to watch again and again.”

The price: Plans start at $2.49/month, but marketers will likely want to upgrade to the business plan ($9.99/month) or marketers plan ($49.99/month) for expanded social media video tools and the ability to add branding; seven-day free trial.

Magisto uses artificial intelligence to create videos with virtually no editing work on your part. You upload photos and video clips, and video tools like facial recognition and speech recognition work with the “AI-based storytelling engine” to stitch things together. You can make manual tweaks if you’re not happy with the automatic edit.

Best feature: Fully automated video editing allows you to create videos in record time.

Available for: Browser, iOS, and Android

7. Ripl

The promise: “Create eye-catching animated posts and share them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram with one tap.”

The price: Ripl offers a free option, but marketers will likely want to upgrade to Ripl Pro ($9.99/month) to replace the Ripl logo with their own branding and access other premium social video tools.

This video app combines up to eight photos with your text to create a short animated video that you can post directly to Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, or download to post elsewhere (Pro plan only).

Best feature: Create quick, catchy videos from still photos, with no editing skills needed.

Available for: iOs and Android

8. Spark Video by Adobe

The promise: “Make compelling animated videos—in minutes.”

The price: Free

This free tool has solid functionality. To start, choose a pre-built theme and customize your layout, colors, and fonts. Add icons, photos, and video clips—your own or a selection from the extensive library of photos and icons—then complete your video with animated text overlay. You can add your own narration, choose from the provided audio clips, or import your own music, then share directly to your social networks.

Best feature: The video templates guide you through creating a compelling video, with hints about how to set up an effective narrative structure based on your video’s goal.

Available for: Browser or iOS.

If you’re keen to put these social video apps and tools to use but don’t know where to start, check out our quick tips for creating compelling social videos and our post on how to optimize video for different social media channels.

Note: All prices listed are U.S. dollars.

Creating a Strong Company Culture 101

In his book Fueled by Failure, entrepreneur and philanthropist Jeremy Bloom shows readers how rebound and reprogram themselves after defeat and how to use the lessons from those failures to achieve winning results. In this edited excerpt, the author reveals the five things you can include in your company culture to help create a thriving business.


Building a strong culture within a team is at the core of business success. You want a culture that recognizes and embraces shared values, attitudes, standards, and beliefs that characterize the goals of the organization. And it’s a good idea to make sure it suits the best people who work at the company while making a positive impression on customers and anyone else associated with the business.


Establishing a culture you believe in means having a clear and consistent vision and knowing how you'd like everyone, inside and outside, to view the company. Many old-school CEOs and leaders were often “business operations first and people second.” But it's the people that make a business successful. The greater inclusion of people in the operation of the business has led to far more significant contributions by employees, which spill over to more appreciation from customers. So unless you are alone with nothing but technology, your business is built around people producing products and providing services for other people.


It’s a good idea to start by sitting down with your board of directors or co-founders to write down what your core values are and how you want to weave them into the DNA of your team. It’s important that the founders uphold the culture from the very beginning. To do so, the culture has to be more than just a shared vision. If you have a vision without a strategy, it will never be more than a vision.


Following are some things I believe to be the cornerstones of a solid business culture.

1. Transparency.


At my company, we go over all the key metrics of the business with the entire company. The goal is for all employees to feel they know the thinking, responsibilities, and strategy at various levels of the company and can share ideas and feedback no matter who they are.


Another thing we do to help bring more transparency into the organization is what we call a TGIF (I got this idea from Google). Our TGIF calls take place every other Friday and are all-hands calls. Everyone in the company can participate and ask questions. Since people often feel intimidated or uncomfortable in an any-question-welcome situation, we built a private forum on the Integrate server where employees can ask anonymous questions.

2. Time to disconnect.


We all need to hit the reset button once in a while -- people can't come in early and leave late every single day without getting burnt out at some level. While you want employees to have a work-hard founder’s mentality, you need to recognize the work-life integration that exists and how significant it is to make sure you have personally fulfilled, clear-thinking people. It’s important to understand that sometimes life will get in the way of business and everyone should be allowed to take care of pressing personal matters.

3. Empowerment and a sense of freedom.


You empower people by not micromanaging, erring on the side of giving people general guidelines rather than explicit, detailed directions. Informed employees are more involved and empowered in a company. And the more freedom people have to take on tasks, manage them, find solutions, and execute them, the more they feel connected to and woven into the company’s culture.
4. Physical space.


If you haven’t watched Susan Cane’s TED Talk on introverts, I highly recommend it. She opened my mind to the idea that American businesses are built for extroverts, down to the floor plans of our office spaces. Although open spaces are great for some, other people need to be able to close the door to be at their most productive. It’s important to consider the comfort level of your employees before you decide how to lay out space or what type of office space to lease.

5. Talking to customers and employees.

At different points in a company’s maturation process, you're almost guaranteed to go through weeks or even months where you feel lost. When you haven’t nailed a product market fit or you’re having challenges relating to your product or corporate vision, the natural tendency is to turn your attention to where you or your team went wrong. Another way to try to solve these problems is by talking to your customers.


“I go out to talk to customers to understand what works and what doesn’t work in the product," says David Tomizuka, CFO at Integrate. "It [also] helps you refine your approach and know how you're going to market it. And probably the most important thing is it fires you up. You get a lot of enthusiasm from being out there with customers and talking to people about your product.”


It's also important to touch base with your employees. “As an executive, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the minutia and the day-to-day operations that you're not out on the front lines as a leader,” Tomizuka adds. “So many leaders I know never go out and talk to their employees without an agenda. I used to schedule time just to walk the halls and get a pulse on how the culture is doing, how the employees are doing, and build and develop relationships. Making personal connections makes such a difference.”

6. Your organizational design.


Simply put, organizational design is the processes, structure, and hierarchy you put into place that allow you to put your culture into practice. It’s “how you do things.” This will include your communication, company policies, team building, performance indicators, performance evaluations, division of responsibilities, and even how you schedule, and run, meetings. For example, do you have a weekly meeting at the same time and in the same place, or do you hold meetings only when there's something worthy of discussing at a meeting? Are meetings for all employees, division heads, or certain team members? Do you always meet in conference rooms, in a specific area of the office, or by conference calls, or does the setting change?


If designed well, everyone in the business can do his or her job more effectively. Your business culture will significantly be enhanced if the organizational design you put into place clarifies authority, responsibility, and accountability.