Corporate Video: Working with a Videographer Video Series - Wylie.Video

TRANSCRIPT:

There are many ways that video can support your business, from educating employees and customers, attracting potential customers, and supporting your sales team and customer service folks.

Today, I'll provide an overview of these topics, and in the future, we'll take a deeper dive into some of these areas.

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Hi, I'm Eric Wylie, a freelance corporate videographer and editor. Welcome to this series for corporate communicators, marketers, and business owners about partnering with a videographer to get your message out using video.

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To start our tour through the world of business video topics, let's talk training. And it's not just the employee training you may be thinking about, but that is important. Employee training videos typically include onboarding videos for new employees.

Video can make the onboarding process more engaging and consistent, introducing company culture, policies, and expectations in a way that is easy to digest.

Safety training for workers who perform duties that have a level of risk hazard, like material handlers, assembly workers, equipment installers, drivers of road vehicles or earth moving or other specialty equipment, and office workers who should be familiar with your company's basic first aid and evacuation or sheltering procedures, as well as your business campus parking and walking safety.

Work process training... This is training related to the specifics of an employee's job, usually for someone who is working in a manufacturing environment.

A work process training video typically features one of your star employees, someone who is regularly held up as a good example of how to safely and correctly complete the work at hand.

This video will visually document and teach the tasks to be performed using video, graphics, and on-screen text to reinforce the message heard in the voiceover.

Human Resources training...

HR communicators use video training to help employees learn to use online tools related to benefits and wellness, as well as many other work-related interpersonal skills.

HR professionals know that video can make a good one-to-one connection when in-person training and information sharing isn't possible, or when important information needs to be released to large groups of employees at the same time.

Formal sales training, sales presentations, or interviews with your top salespeople can be educational and motivating.

Capturing interviews with your top performers can inform management about what motivates top performers and inspire other salespeople to stretch their goals and adopt the technique shared by these high performers.

Using video for training doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be a fully polished, start-to-finish training video. If your company uses an online training platform, video is typically a component of that. You can share video clips to demonstrate procedures and share properly executed examples within your training modules.

You can also intentionally record incorrectly performed procedures for use in testing modules.

Now, earlier I mentioned that there's a type of corporate training video not everyone thinks about, but this one can be very valuable.

Training your customers.

Through video, you can explain to customers the procedure for using or maintaining the equipment you manufacture, install, and or sell.

An example would be a food manufacturing machine that fills cartons. You'll need to thoroughly explain and demonstrate how your customers need to clean and maintain this type of equipment.

Likewise, smaller products may need some explanation as to their use and care.

If you're a service-based business, showing your customers what to expect when working with you is a form of training, setting expectations about how your employees will interact with your customers.

Training your customers and sharing information through video can help reduce complaints, unnecessary customer service calls and visits, and earn the respect of your customers for providing them with helpful video manuals for your products.

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Our next umbrella topic is employee communications.

Change management and executive communications... Video is a tool to help engage and inform employees about change management initiatives and executive communications to share strategic plans. It captures important, timely information, distributing the same explanation to everyone in an easy-to-digest manner, with the ability to rewind and listen to the key points.

Event recaps... These are used both internally and externally to share the success of an event your business hosted or participated in.

Think ribbon cuttings and open houses of your facilities, trade show or conference participation, or capturing and sharing all the fun that took place at the company awards event to create hype for the next quarter or year.

If you don't have all the employees you need, video is useful for employee recruiting. Behind-the-scenes, company culture videos showcase what it's like behind the scenes at your business, highlighting employee stories, company traditions or team events to help build employer branding and potential employee interest.

Corporate social responsibility and sustainability videos... If your business is involved in sustainability initiatives, charities or community outreach, showcasing these efforts through video can improve your public perception and demonstrate your company's commitment to social good.

Facility tours...many years ago, tours of manufacturing facilities were common, but safety and security concerns have largely put an end to those. But that doesn't mean that the public isn't interested in what goes on inside your walls.

A well-produced tour video can be used by employees when making presentations to community groups and schools.

Related to facility tours is the corporate B-roll package.

First, let me explain what B-roll is.

B-roll video is the shots you see in video that aren't of a person speaking on camera.

Interviews and people presenting on camera is considered the A-roll video.

This all comes from the world of film -- which by the way is before my time -- but the jargon remains. For example, if I were talking about winter weather in the Midwestern United States and you see me right now talking about that, but if I cut away to some winter weather video to illustrate what I'm talking about, that is the B-roll.

A corporate B-roll package is a pre-produced collection of video clips that you can provide to area media for when your business makes the news.

It allows you to control what about your business is shown. If any of your leaders are featured in an interview for broadcast or online, a B-roll package is handy to have. It shows what happens behind the scenes without sharing any company secrets and makes media coverage about your company more engaging.

Another public-facing video type is investor and stakeholder updates. Keeping investors informed about company performance, future plans, and major milestones through video can strengthen relationships and build trust.

And the last internally focused video type I'll mention today is live streamed meetings and events.

This may include videos produced ahead of time to play during an online event, or the video and audio technical and artistic management needed for your live stream feed.

Hiring a professional and their professional gear for your live streams provides a much higher level of quality than using webcams at desks with that fuzzy-edged background replacement feature.

The final umbrella topic is, of course, marketing...your external efforts to engage customers and potential customers. Ultimately, marketing is sharing how you solve your customers' problems.

Types of marketing videos include time-specific ads, 15-second, 30-second, or 60-second ads for social media, broadcast, or over-the-top advertising,

product and service introductions, and relaunches,

feature jobs or projects or clients,

content expert interviews and presentations designed to position your business and your business leaders as thought leaders in your industry.

Customer testimonials...one of the most powerful corporate business marketing videos.

When a customer is willing to go on camera and tell the world how great your company and products or services are, that's an amazing endorsement.

Case study videos are similar to customer testimonials, but more in-depth. These showcase how your company solved a client's problem with measurable results.

So there are just a few of the many types of videos that can support your business, and there are others. But it all comes down to the powerful and engaging medium of video to connect with your customers and employees.

I plan to dive deeper into some of these topics in future videos, as well as many other aspects of corporate video production and how to partner with a videographer for your business.

If you found this information useful, please be sure to like and share this video and subscribe to my YouTube channel and turn on notifications so that you know when the next video is available. And please share your comments and questions wherever this video is posted.

Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.