A newsroom’s guide to getting started with Genna’s VidGen tool

Ready to learn more about Genna’s VidGen tool after reading the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s case study? Here’s what you need to know before getting started with VidGen.

Genna, built by the team behind Stringr, offers a simple interface to quickly produce short-form video from published content. The tool can automatically adjust aspect ratios for different social media platforms and it has responsive customer service. The company was founded by a former broadcast news producer, which could be part of the reason why their VidGen tool blends well in newsroom video workflows and gives users complete control over the final product.

Initial steps

1. Book a demo with Genna. Your newsroom point person should be someone who is involved in video or social media production. Before your call, it’s helpful to understand what your short-form video production looks like now. Make sure you can answer questions like:
   • How many videos do you produce per week? 
   • Who oversees that process? 
   • What tools do you use now? 
   • What vendor(s) do you currently use for content and do you need to check to see if that media is accessible while using VidGen?
2. Attend the demo, with your estimates of video output, production needs and budget in mind. And, of course, ask other questions based on your newsroom’s needs.
3. If the tool seems like a good fit, Genna’s team offers training and onboarding to your production team. Ideally, the person responsible for making strategic decisions for short-form or social media video should attend the training to understand the basics and surface questions about where the team can experiment with VidGen.
4. When you’re ready to plan your video production strategy, decide whether to integrate your own multimedia library and/or use Genna’s Getty library (which costs $1 per video for usage).
5. Decide topics and platforms where your team will use Genna and set up a new cadence of producing, posting and measuring video performance across platforms.
6. If you don’t already have a baseline for your current social video strategy, based on views, engagement or some other metric, now is the time to identify those measurements. As you dive deeper into your experimentation with Genna, being able to track the success will be valuable in your decision-making going forward. 

Is VidGen a good fit for your organization?

Genna might be a good choice to consider if:

• Your organization publishes at least dozens or hundreds of articles per month that you plan to turn into videos. Genna starts at $1,000 per month. That cost would include at least 250 videos monthly (at $3 per video), with optional access to Getty video and photo licensing (+$1 per video). You have to make sure you’re able to reach the minimum investment. 
• Your team already has dedicated staff for social media and video who feel comfortable editing videos according to your organization’s style and brand guide. While VidGen does make social video creation a lot easier, this tool is not a replacement for lack of human staffing.
• Your organization has an AI policy and/or is comfortable using AI-powered tools. The Review-Journal has an organizational AI policy and audience disclosures on platforms where AI-generated tools have been used. They are ready to address audience questions or feedback based on that policy and disclosures.

Genna is not a good fit if:

• Your organization plans to publish a lower cadence of videos — read on for alternatives.
• Your team is not set up for quality control. This is a helpful tool that shortens short-form video production time, but there will be issues and mistakes that require more than a few minutes to fix, especially when getting started. This process also requires someone on the team to advocate for fixes or requests with your Genna partner manager.
• Your organization does not have an accountability standard for AI-powered tools. Though the technology powering VidGen is less generative and uses your own content, there are still risks to consider before investing in an AI-powered tool that will also cost time to train staff and change workflows. Understanding your organization’s standard of accountability with using any kind of AI-powered tool, especially if your organization hasn’t developed guidelines around using AI, will help you decide if Genna is the right tool for your team, and how to communicate that to your audience.
• Is your newsroom in a good position to adopt a new workflow? Ideally, VidGen is meant to simplify the process needed to produce and publish hundreds of short-form videos to platforms from teams who are already producing a high volume of video. This new workflow, however helpful, will take time and troubleshooting to customize, from creating branded templates with your colors, logos and fonts, experimenting with music and AI voices, and editing the final product across languages, if applicable. 

Pro tips and known issues

Genna has demonstrated experience in evolving their product along with their customer’s needs and requests. Las Vegas Review-Journal successfully requested adding photo credits. Genna’s CEO said they added Greek to their suite of 21 languages because of a client request, and are open to adding others as needed (depending on the digital translation technology of the language).

A nice highlight for Genna’s suite of tools is that they can publish directly to your newsroom’s social media platforms, any owned platforms, many content management systems and ad technology platforms, all without leaving the tool. Your newsroom may need technology and/or product support to make these connections happen.

Genna’s AI-powered voices, which read the auto-generated video text aloud, will not always pronounce everything correctly, particularly with regionally specific words and names (this is true of any AI voices). Part of the editing process should include a newsroom staffer listening to the AI voiceover (and background music) so they can manually adjust any pronunciation of such words before publishing.

Security and privacy

With any AI-powered tool, there is a concern about how the data put into the tool is used. Genna’s suite of tools, including VidGen, converts published articles into video, so it doesn’t have access to anything that’s not already public and not fed into it.

VidGen alternatives

Nota is a suite of AI-powered tools that help automate social and newsletter production, SEO optimization, and short-form video production. Nota’s VID tool, similar to Genna’s VidGen, also converts published text articles into short-form video that can be customized with stock images, videos and audio and exported into formats that meet Instagram Reels, TikTok and YouTube  requirements. 

Nota may be an option for smaller newsrooms who produce fewer stories per month. Visit the Scorecard to learn more about Nota and read our case study looking at the value smaller publishers are getting from this AI optimization tool. 

• Category: Getting Started Guides
• Tag: AI, Genna, video production