1. Conference Video and Event Video
Conferences and workshop days can often inspire and energize teams and individuals, giving them both a break away from their normal daily environment and the chance to hear other professionals and (hopefully) motivating speakers.
Unfortunately, one of the downsides of these events is that they last for only a short period of time and their impact can begin to fade almost from the moment the delegates are on their way home.
Video is a great way to capture content from these events and extend its power over a long period of time. While a handful of print-outs and leaflets are all well and good, they are often quickly dispatched to the back of a drawer to gather dust. An online video however can really give a delegate the opportunity to re-live parts of the day, enjoy the speakers again, refresh their memory on that exciting new initiative and so on. It even provides the opportunity to share the experience with other collegues who may not have been able to attend the event.
Even if you are unable to organise a professional video, a simple ‘point and shoot’ handycam on a tripod is a start.
If nothing else, this ensures you have a record of the event or at least key speakers. However, with a little more expertise from a professional video production company you can achieve a great deal more. Here is a great example of a more documentary style piece that mixes interviews with key people with event footage and background information / illustrative images.
Sometimes managers will be reticent to put money into getting a professional video made. It should be seen in the context of what it would cost to set up the whole event and speakers again! It seems a shame that the investment of venue, working days, travel, food, speakers, av-hire, print materials, organisation time etc is used up in one event with nothing to show for it afterwards.
And remember, as you build a library of videos of events/workshops/speakers you are building a superb training and induction resource which can be used by your staff and future recruits for years ahead.
2. Step by Step guides
While training materials often need to address large and complex issues, sometimes it is small discreet processes, such as how to use a particular form or piece of equipment that need a simple step-by-step explanation.
Seeing other professionals on screen talking staff through the stages takes away the fear and allows the viewer to take the process at their own speed. Video training isn’t always about large seminars or professional presenters. Sometimes familiarity and a relaxed step-by-step approach by real people is what is needed.
A simple training video that hits the mark will be worth its production cost many times over as it supports and informs 24/7 for years to come.
3. Video magazine
A particularly powerful use of video for your organisation is to create a regular (monthly) magazine. Your audience (staff / stakeholders / clients) can view the content either for free or through a subscription service.
Serialised video content allows you to build relationships and improve engagement with your audience. While your client, for example, may have been used to an occasional leaflet, imagine how much more a video magazine can demonstrate not only your services but build a sense of the character of your organisation or department.
For internal use also, a video magazine can keep staff up to date with information and vastly improve the sense of community within an organisation. This is especially important for any workforce that stretches beyond the boundaries of one office location.
Wide Eye recently produced a video magazine for a regional organisation. There are fifteen offices across the county and the directors were aware of how individual office teams in separate locations had very little sense of really being colleagues with staff in other offices and other towns. After all, these were people they may occasionally email or see only once a year at the Christmas party.
The monthly video magazine was produced to feel that it was made very much by, and for, the staff. It covers items about various offices in a light chatty style, often introducing new members of staff and helping to put faces and real character to names that employees might only have heard of in memos previously. This helped people to communicate better across offices and form better relationships.
For a small investment compared to print communication or trying to organise monthly get-togethers for all staff, the video magazine / newsletter can pay a great dividend in fostering team spirit and open information sharing. That’s got to be priceless.
4. Reception area welcome
Make a first impression that can’t be beaten. With big screens ubiquitous
in most reception areas, atriums and so on it’s a fantastic opportunity to craft and hone an impressive and effective opening gambit for visiting customers, contacts and prospective clients.
Designed to work both with sound and also mute, your welcome video can bring your reception area to life, provide a focal point and deliver a host of overt and subliminal messages about your organisation, engaging and welcoming your visitors.
5. Induction video / Orientation video
Welcoming new employees into your organisation successfully and effectively is vital. These opening days can set the compass for an employees months or years ahead.
The sheer pressure of work often means that the new recruit has to quickly get up to speed in an environment where new colleagues often cannot give the amount of time or attention they’d ideally like. Even when the organisation has the benefit of dedicated training / induction staff, practicalities of time, availability or location can sometimes leave the new employee waiting for an induction session.
The employee induction video or orientation video is a great way to introduce new staff to your organisation’s history, operating structure, procedures, policies and codes of behaviour. And most importantly it is available on demand and can feature all the key players you require and can be honed to perfection.
Video gives you the opportunity to ‘get it right’ right from the start. Sadly, some trainers may not be as good as others, while the best might not always be available and key managers may not be constantly able to welcome new staff personally. A video induction gives you the chance to capture all these people and all these essential messages in an engaging and powerful way and then deliver it to new recruits time and time again.
Also, for businesses or organisations with multiple locations, a corporate video enables a new employee to quickly and easily see these places and get a much wider sense of the structure.
A good induction video can work both independently or as part of an induction presentation / session. Great trainers are worth their weight in gold, but even the best can always benefit from the sheer range of quality content and information and human engagement that a video can deliver.
As well as being part of sessions, an orientation video can stand alone, either given to a new recruit to watch on DVD, as part of an induction pack (pre or post start date) and available online. Having it always available also creates a useful reference both for the new person and existing staff as well.
Induction videos or orientation videos are a powerful tool to have in your organisation’s armoury. Getting new staff off to a flying start is more important than ever and the effort taken to get this process as effective as possible pays huge dividends.
6. Video Case Studies
Corporate video can deliver extended and more detailed information than just a simple snapshot. While it’s great to see a film that features a client or customer singing the praises of your particular service, it’s even better if viewers get to find out a little more about the process.
Following the basic format of ‘brief / solution / benefits’ the video production can demonstrate the whole process from the dual positions of your organisation and your client’s.
This makes for both a more powerful testimonial and also a useful ‘training’ tool in that it explains and demonstrates your service to viewers that might not fully grasp your processes or indeed the benefits they could enjoy. Another great benefit is that the video production of the case study itself becomes another shared project with that client or group and allows further ‘bonding’ and often the subject is flattered by being used as a case study
Corporate video comes in many guises and in this case it has been employed to capture something of the spirit, facilities, sense of place and community of a new library complex in Ivybridge Devon. The library was required to submit a number of documents, photos and testimonials about its formation and facilities. It raised the quality of its content when it commissioned this short corporate video to bring its messages alive.
With a mixture of location shots and interviews with some key people and members of the local community and library users, the film was shot over one day and delivered in a number of formats including DVDs and on online video podcast which the library service and Devon local authority use on their websites.
7. In store / office / POS
From being a rare sight a decade ago, flat screen displays in-store and up to and including at Point-Of-Sale are a regular feature offering you the ability to promote your products and services or even to generate income by promoting other complimentary services or partner organisations.
Whether in a streamlined minimal office or in a brash, busy store, your video can be designed to fit perfectly in both tone and content.
8. Round table forum
This is a great format for sharing information, ideas, knowledge and expertise, which in turn will drive users to your site and make them stay to hear more.
Simply assemble a small number of great talkers, key people or respected experts in your particular field of endeavour and get them around the table for a chat. From industry challenges, to new opportunities, from personal experiences to market forecasts, this ‘think tank’ can explore and discuss all, in a free ranging discussion that is caught on camera and distilled into one or more video podcasts.
9. Recruitment Video
If you want attract the best people, ensure that you make an impression that leaves them reaching for the application form that minute.
Fine words and prose will of course make a great case for your organisation but it’s video that can bring it to life and demonstrate its human side, its excitement, its buzz and its culture.
One of Wide Eye’s recruitment films for a senior Director of a major organisation prompted the eventually successful candidate to affirm that it was in fact the film above all the other material that persuaded him to apply.
With our recent social worker recruitment video, the film was shot over three days following the 3 Devon social workers who feature. There is a senior practice manager alongside an experienced and a newly qualified worker giving their views candidly about the challenges of social work and care in Devon.
10. Heart of the community
Social responsibility is a vital part of many organisation’s strategic plans. In this day and age and video is a brilliantly effective method both to help deliver and to demonstrate community involvement,
Video could be used in a myriad of forms such as delivering help, information, shared experience personal testimonies, local histories etc. In addition, the same and other videos can be employed to raise the profile of the business and its social involvement.
11. Staff profiles
Whether as a fantastic way to introduce clients to your organisation or as part of an induction strategy for new staff, video profiles are a powerful tool. Imagine, for example, the ‘about us’ page of the company website where one might get the chance to see and hear individuals actually talking about their work, experience, philosophies and even some background and hobbies.
Instead of just being reduced to a photo and a few lines of text, the key asset of any organisation – its people – make real contact with clients, almost face to face.
12. Company overview / promotion
Like a personal profile (above) the company profile can quickly and energetically present a living, breathing expression of the organisation.
Clients can get to see a montage of production lines or shops / offices, voice-overs from staff and customers, key interview sound bites, products in action, services on location, potted history, research and development and future plans etc. The list is endless and with stylish editing, effects and music the company profile can introduce your organisation with power and impact in a way that no other media can match.
13. Product overview / promotion
A great salesperson talking face to face with a prospective client isn’t always possible, especially in the digital age but a great sales video for your specific products or services can give you back the advantage.
Clear and compelling content delivering those sales messages as well as product demonstrations and full and extensive detail as required, present a viewer with all the information they need in an engaging and entertaining format.
14. Client testimonial
A classic, and undeniably, powerful tool in any organisation’s armoury, the testimonial is king. No matter what you may have to say about your products or services, prospective clients/users will often measure your quality and standards by the people and organisations you already serve.
A list of names and logos is good. A list with some great quotes is better. But a video with some of these organisation’s key people talking directly about your product/service and ‘singing your praises’ is unbeatable.
15. Annual review / MD’s address
Sometimes, especially in large organisations, it’s impracticable to deliver corporate-wide statements from director-level to all staff in person. That can result in important information being disseminated through small team meetings or letters, emails or memos. This can infer an unwanted separation between senior management and staff.
A video, for example, blending the information delivered directly from the CEO or board with info-graphics, shots of ‘the new factory’, comments from industry observers etc can ensure that all staff experience the statement with clarity, involvement and a sense of being addressed personally.
16. Vox-Pop
Sometimes ‘staged’ sometimes completely authentic, this gritty and very ‘real’ format can deliver a great buzz around a product or event.
Spontaneous feedback from carefully targeted questions to the public, event visitors or key users can provide exciting and compelling footage that can be used as a stand-alone film or incorporated into many of the other films listed here.
Sometimes shot ‘loosely’ with a deliberately ‘guerilla film-making’ style the sense of reality lends a special power to the vox-pop that have made it a companion of the testimonial.
17. Facilities / equipment tour
For some businesses, being able to demonstrate its infrastructure, equipment or facilities might be a vital selling point to prospective clients.
For example, a simple ‘walk-through’ of the factory floor explaining and highlighting specialist facilities or investment in new technology might be all that’s needed to turn that prospect into a real customer.
Or for existing clients it might, for example, be an introduction to new software or system that is going to offer them an even better service.
18. ‘How to’ for users
Similar to an ‘in-house’ training unit, these videos can provide easy to understand support to your end users. It could, for example, be a ‘how to set up your new product’ or ‘how to get the best out of our X service’ etc.
It could be supplied on DVD within their info pack, it could be part of the product demonstration on an Expo stand or it could be a resource within the after-sales support on your website.
As many businesses understand, a full and confident understanding of the product or service is key in ensuring happy clients.
19. Health & safety, legal, industry updates
Whatever your field of endeavour, we live and work in a fast changing business and legal environment. It can be hard to keep your organisation up-to-date with changing conditions and so video provides a fast response method to distribute information and guidance.
Without the need for long planning and print requirements video updates can be turned around in a matter of days and quickly distributed online across your whole organisation. Explanations, demonstrations and advice are delivered with video’s customary clarity and ease.
And if things change only weeks or days later, there’s no need to ‘bin’ all that print material you paid so much for. Digital video can be quickly revised and amended and the new version uploaded to your intranet in a matter of hours.
20. Going Viral
One of the most mysterious, challenging, elusive and incredibly powerful forms of web-video there is.
There’s no set formula for the content but essentially a company or organisation produces a short video that is either quirky, comic or surprising enough to engage people so much to make them want to ‘forward’ it via email or social networking to friends and colleagues. Those friends and colleagues do the same and so on. It’s that simple. But like trying to make a hit song or hit TV show, the simplicity is deceptive as it’s hard to make it happen.
However, the benefits can be astonishing, and there are many examples of small low-budget videos that have ‘gone-viral’ drawing in literally millions of world-wide views, massive exposure for a brand or company and a host of spin-off PR opportunities.
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And there you have it; 20 great opportunities to use video for your business or organisation. There are lots more and we’ll be covering them in other posts on this blog. We’d also love to hear from you about your own ideas or completed projects.
