How to Auto-Generate and Post Quote Videos for Social Media
In this no-code tutorial, you'll learn how to automatically create and post Instagram quote videos using Make, (Google) Forms, and Creatomate.
Quotes from your most valuable content are a great way to repurpose content for social media. There is no doubt that videos perform better on social platforms than text or images, however it would be a hassle to turn every quote into a video...
That's when video automation comes in handy. By using a video creation form, you simply have to enter the quote details and the video is created instantly. It's also mobile-friendly, so you can create quotes wherever you are. Better yet, you can share the generated videos directly on social media. Our goal in this tutorial is to create a form to generate and post Instagram quote videos using Make and Creatomate. Let's make videos like this:
Tip: If you'd rather use Zapier, you can follow this tutorial. However, Zapier lets you post videos to Twitter, Facebook Pages, and YouTube, but not to Instagram or LinkedIn.
Prerequisites
These are the tools we'll use:
- Creatomate: to auto-generate the quote videos by filling out a form. Sign up for free.
- Make (formerly Integromat): to auto-post the videos on Instagram.
- Instagram Business account: to share the videos with your audience.
How to automatically create and post quote videos?
The first thing we need to do is create a video template in Creatomate. This template will be the basis for our quote videos. We'll then turn this template into a video creation form that we can use to generate videos. Our final step will be to set up an automated workflow in Make that will post the videos to our Instagram Business account.
Tip: Rather than using a video creation form, you can also set up a fully automated workflow with apps you already use. Check out this tutorial as a guide.
Let's get started!
1. Create a template in Creatomate
Log in to your account, go to the Templates page and click + New. We can pick a template from the gallery, customize it, or design our own. For this tutorial, let's go with the the Sliding Quote template from the Marketing category. The 1:1 Square size is fine, so click Create Template to open it in the editor:
It's good to know that a template contains dynamic elements. In the left-side panel, you can see that Name and Quote are our dynamic elements. In other words, they can be changed to create unique videos because dynamic elements will be mapped to form fields:
Let's add another dynamic element to the template before we create our form in the next step. By doing this, we can add an extra input field so that we can add captions to our Instagram posts. However, we don't want this caption to show up in our videos. As shown in the video below, we'll add a text element, make it Dynamic, set visibility to Hidden, and name it Caption:
Tip: You can also give the template a background color you can change with the form. Simply add a shape element, position it in the background, and make it dynamic. You'll get an input field where you can enter HEX, RGB, or HSL color codes.
Feel free to modify the template's design as needed. Once your template is ready, let's move on to the next step where we'll turn it into a video creation form.
2. Create a form that generates videos
To turn our template into a form, click Use Template in the upper right corner of the template editor. Choose the Form to Video option and toggle the switch to Enable Shareable Form. Click Open in new tab to see how the form looks:
Tip: This form is accessible without logging into Creatomate because it's on a public URL. So you can share it with anyone, like colleagues or VAs. It also works on mobile devices, so you can create videos anywhere.
Now that we've a template with a form, let's move on to Make to set up a new scenario.
3. Add trigger: Webhooks - Custom webhook
We're going to connect a webhook to grab the videos we'll generate with our form.
Log in to your Make account and click + Create a new Scenario. Then, choose the Webhooks app and the Custom webhook trigger. Let's click Add to create a new webhook, give it a name and click Save.
A new webhook is generated. Just copy the URL and click OK.
We need to connect this webhook to our Creatomate Project. Click the three dots, select Project Settings, paste the webhook URL in there and click Save:
In Make, right-click the webhook module and select Run this module only. Then, move back to our video creation form and fill out some test data. Click Create Video to generate it:
Once the video is rendered (it takes a few seconds), the webhook gets the video and returns it.
Now that our webhook works properly, let's set up our Instagram module in the next step.
4. Add action: Instagram for Business - Create a Reel Post
Add a new module, choose the Instagram for Business app and select the Create a Reel Post action. Go ahead and select your Instagram account or sign in first. Next, choose your page:
We'll now add the video to our Instagram post. Let's select 1. url in the Video field:
Finally, we'll add our caption to the post. Let's select 1. modifications: Caption in the Caption field. When done, click OK:
5. Test Scenario
Let's test our scenario by clicking Save first and then Run Once in the bottom left of the workflow editor. Then, we'll move back to our form. Click Cancel and fill out the fields. We can watch a live preview of the final video while filling out the form. When you're happy with the video, click Create Video:
When the video has been rendered, you'll see that this video with the caption is posted to your Instagram account:
When the test was successful, toggle the Scheduling button on the bottom left to ON.
Wrapping up
By now, you've made a video creation form and connected it with Make to automatically post quote videos to Instagram. All you have to do is open the form, fill in the quote details, and click Create Video. That's pretty easy, isn't it?
