Socialive blog

Key takeaways:

• ‍‍Video marketing drives new and repeat business
• Long-form video content is ripe for repurposing
• Creating new content extends the value of each asset

B2B marketers, take note: video is here to stay.

Beyond serving as brand messaging and awareness play, video is helping businesses globally generate leads and drive sales. In fact, 89% of marketers say video gives them a good return on their investment.

This guide shares key video trends and statistics, video ideas to help businesses drive conversions, and B2B video marketing best practices.

In other posts, we'll go over some cost-saving methods in video creation — this ROI guide is all about how to do more with each piece of content without spending money to boost its effectiveness.

Read on to learn how to maximize the value of your video content.

Benefits of B2B video marketing

Many are reluctant to dive into the world of video for reasons such as the perception that video is too expensive, complex, or time-consuming. It’s simply not true — recording professional video is as easy as jumping into a virtual meeting.

Our end-to-end video creation platform and those who shifted to remote work in 2020 prove that video creation is easier than ever, and the proof of ROI is in the pudding.

1. Video consumption continues to soar

Amidst a pandemic, there is no doubt video consumption continues to rise since it is the next best thing to communicating in person. People’s schedules have been disrupted by COVID-19, resulting in more time spent consuming video at home.

A 2020 study showed that the daily time consuming online content has doubled globally from an average of 3 hours to about 7 hours in 2020.

Video isn’t slowing down anytime soon, so if your business does not have a video marketing strategy, now is the time to get on board before you risk falling behind. Case in point: Cisco forecasted that by 2022, video will account for 82% of all Internet traffic.

2. People prefer video

Video content is king for a reason.

When asked how they’d like to learn about a product or service, two-thirds of people (66%) said they’d prefer to watch a short video in Wyzowl’s 2020 Video Marketing Report.

This compares to 18% who would rather read a text-based article, website or post, 4% who would like to view an infographic, 3% who would rather download an ebook or manual, 3% who would rather attend a webinar or pitch, and 2% who would like a sales call.

3. Video improves lead generation

Videos are effective tools for generating leads. In fact, 83% of video marketers say video helps them with lead generation.

There are several video marketing tactics that can be used to generate leads, such as:

• Producing gated content

• Adding a call-to-action to videos
• Including contact forms
• Building a video post-click landing page

Social media channels such as LinkedIn can help your business drive quality, accurate leads with features such as Lead Generation forms.

4. Video increases conversion rates

Video is one of the fastest, easiest, and engaging ways to communicate with your audience as well as build a sense of trust. Not only are videos helping consumers better understand a product or service, but also improving conversion rates.

More than 80% of video marketers say video has increased traffic to their website, and the average time visitors spend on their page. Additionally, publishing video on your sites can contribute to improving your search engine ranking.

Video can also be persuasive in purchasing decisions, with 80% of marketers agreeing that video has directly helped increase sales.

5. Video humanizes brands

Video conveys emotional connection in a way that static press releases and corporate memos cannot. That’s why video is one of the most effective mediums to humanize your brand and boost engagement.

To squash the disconnect between a brand name and the people behind it, why not feature videos with executive leaders who work at the company? By showcasing personality and authenticity in videos, customers can connect with your brand on a new and interesting level.

6. Video reaches wider audiences

Audiences are consuming video like never before, so there is no question as to why social media channels like Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn are heavily prioritizing video.

For example, Twitter launched its own version of Stories called “Fleets,” while LinkedIn recently launched LinkedIn Stories. LinkedIn publicly shares how LinkedIn Live videos receive an average 7x more reactions and 24x more comments than native video.

Plus, each video that you create to drive brand awareness can easily be repurposed into demand-gen content. But more on that later.

Social media channels will continue to favor video by making it more visible in feeds, since it tends to outperform static posts. This gives businesses the opportunity to be creative and find new ways to stand out digitally.

Formats to improve video ROI

When planning to maximize the video’s ROI, first define the metrics you want to move and make a solid plan to track it. To determine the ROI video produces depends on your organization’s needs, goals, and budget.

Whether it is to drive more subscribers, leads, or sales, let’s dive into video formats commonly used by companies to help sell more.

1. Customer testimonials

More than 80% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. So, why not let your customers drive sales for you through video testimonials?

Video testimonials are a powerful way to showcase product benefits to prospects. It not only shows a face to personalize your business, but also features real-life use cases reflecting the challenges your customer overcome. A persuasive case study includes specific numbers and successful outcomes.

Once you have a few customer video testimonials under your belt, you can use specific videos to target specific campaigns and gain lookalike customers.

‍Using Socialive, Boston Consulting Group’s Marketing team accelerated the creation of branded video content for its digital channels. After seeing successful results, Socialive conducted a video testimonial with BCG.

2. Product tutorials and demonstrations

If you are selling software or an app, tutorial videos and product demonstrations are an effective way to show your product in action. 74% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy or download a piece of software or app by watching a video.

Product demos can include unboxing the product as well as product reviews and comparisons.

Vave Health, a healthcare technology startup, hosted a 45-minute live demo of its product, the Vave Wireless Ultrasound Solution. The demo showcases the solution and features a Q&A with their own Founder and CEO.

3. Virtual Events and Webinars

Virtual events are a tried and true marketing tactic to garner new sales leads. With video, you can host a wide range of events such as webinars, conferences, trade shows, and conventions — no matter where your audience is in the world.

When executing your event, it is important to consider which format will resonate with your buyer. Is it educational and informative, or covering a specific case study?

Then, make sure you create an opt-in page to encourage people to register and publish an email reminder sequence. Promote your event in advance, add CTA’s when relevant, and follow up post-event to nurture your audience.

https://youtu.be/LleA8n3OlAsDue to the pandemic, Flipside Group’s client Oppo, a Chinese consumer electronics company, was forced to cancel its in-person press conference in Germany. In a short turnaround time, the team executed around a successful hour-long virtual press conference featuring interviews, product demos, and a live Q&A using Socialive.

4. Influential interviews

Providing insightful and valuable information in an engaging format is key to a winning video strategy.

Record snackable bits or livestream discussions with company leaders, industry figures, experts, and influencers, to share compelling stories and establish your organization.

Pro tip: It is a good idea to choose those who have a large social media following and who are likely to promote your videos through their own digital channels.

POLITICO creates high-quality live and live-to-tape virtual interviews for its digital channels, particularly for its website and social media channels. The team has produced a wide range of influential interviews such as this one with Bill Gates. Gates discusses his philanthropic efforts to contain the pandemic.

5. Interactive videos

Video isn’t just a one-way street. Why not get your prospects and customers involved?

Interactive videos invite viewers to engage and participate. Examples include live auctions, contests, or game shows. Make it a memorable experience for prospects.

Walmart innovates with live video by hosting a weekly game show called “Price Check Live.” Beyond its entertainment value, “Price Check Live” represents well-conceived content marketing that advances objectives across the marketing funnel.

B2B video marketing best practices

Whether your videos are recorded, livestreamed, or you send a piece of content through the entire record, edit, publish, and livestream lifecycle, here are some best practices to maximize the ROI of your video content.

Calculate your campaign costs

Before creating video, you need to calculate the total projected costs for the campaign. This includes the cost to make videos and promote them.

Define your KPIs

Nail down your success metrics, which can be a goal for the number of subscribers, website traffic, leads, or sales you’d like to achieve. For example, how many leads or sales do you need from your video content to call it a success? Take into account the total amount of money you are putting into producing and promoting your video, and the cost of each sale.

Add strong CTA’s

In addition to adding branded intro and outros to your videos, be sure to include clear, specific calls to action when relevant. You can link to product demo sign-up forms, or valuable content on your website.

Make sure you have a distribution strategy

If you are hosting a digital event, be sure to promote the livestream in advance by posting to your social media pages, and announcing it on other distribution channels like email newsletters.

Use tracking links

Using tracking links such as UTM links in Google Analytics can help you understand the value of your videos. Specifically, you can track which videos were able to drive the most leads and conversions.

Measure and analyze

Stay focused on conversions. Beyond the engagement numbers, pay close attention to these video-related KPIs:

• Click-through rate (CTR, especially important for generating leads)
• Total video views
• Total video embeds
• Ad clicks and skips
• Number of plays
• Total video completions (this is helping in seeing where viewers dropped off)
• Time spent watching

Optimize videos for each platform and audience

Video isn’t a one-size-fits-all all deal, which means what works on LinkedIn may not work on Facebook. Tailor your content to the platform’s audience and be thoughtful about their viewing experience. This includes choosing an optimal video length for each channel and optimizing for mobile.

Add subtitles

Include subtitles when you can as many viewers may be watching with the sound off. Including subtitles can help ensure your message does not get lost, which can be done quicker than you think.

Reduce costs by repurposing videos

After a virtual event or livestream, edit snackable snippets of the recording and distribute it through organic and paid channels. If you're using LinkedIn Live or creating other livestreams, Socialive makes it easy to create new content for demand-gen campaigns.

Reduce costs by crowdsourcing content

Your biggest cost and roadblock to creating tons of revenue-driving content will likely be scalability. Either your internal video team can't handle all the demand or you're paying a third-party high fees for each piece of content. Instead, empower team members to record and edit portions of your content with a video creation platform to boost the ROI of your video content.

Be authentic

Video humanizes us. By being authentic, you can establish a personal connection as well as foster openness and transparency. Plus, creating authentic video can be fast and easy.

Ask questions and interact with your audience in real-time

During a live broadcast, it’s important to engage with your audience as they are reacting to you. This will help build a stronger relationship with your viewers, and will give them more incentive to tune in to future livestreams.

Nurture relationships with viewers after a virtual event

After the livestream, ask attendees for feedback.

Remember, there is often no one right answer when it comes to content and video marketing. Be sure to try things out, experiment, and never be afraid to share your work and look for opportunities to reuse it. Create, repurpose, and repeat!

2019 saw two game-changing developments in the live-video space:

First, Amazon quietly launched Amazon Live, a channel that will feature live content from in-house talent as well as individual brands. (Think QVC for online shopping.) The emergence of live commerce in North America was one of our predictions for 2019, and Amazon Live is an inkling of what’s to come.

Second, LinkedIn rolled out LinkedIn Live, which will allow individuals and organizations to broadcast live video on the professional-networking platform. As a LinkedIn Live partner, Socialive maximizes brand awareness, while also helping create impactful demand-generation video content.

Together, these moves from two of tech’s dominant players underscore that live video is fertile ground for growth – particularly when it comes to brand-building and commerce.

In this primer, we explore what LinkedIn Live means for organizations and how to avail yourself of the novel opportunities it presents.

What is LinkedIn Live?

After LinkedIn launched video in mid-2017, video quickly became the fastest-growing format on the platform, notching the highest rates of user engagement.

So it comes as no surprise that LinkedIn is venturing into live video  —  a format that outperforms regular video by a factor of 10.

As a LinkedIn Live partner, Socialive enables users to create polished livestreams for the platform  —  with multicam options, branded titles and graphics, and dynamic split-screen layouts.

Why LinkedIn Live Is Different

To be sure, live video has been a part of the social-media ecosystem for nigh on a decade.

YouTube Live launched in 2011, Periscope (acquired by Twitter) in 2015, and Facebook Live in early 2016. (That’s not to mention live-ish video apps like Snapchat and Instagram.)

Among social platforms, however, LinkedIn is distinct as a professional, career-based community. It engages a different audience — and engages it differently:

> An audience of peers: While social platforms like Facebook and Twitter have evolved over their lifespans, they remain spaces where people participate largely in their personal capacities. Consequently, on these platforms, brands communicate to a predominantly consumer audience.

As a professional community, LinkedIn engages people and organizations around career growth and business development. On LinkedIn, your brand’s audience, then, is as often peer entrepreneurs and organizations, investors, and current and potential employees, as consumers.

> Community-building ethos:  In many ways, social channels are still a Wild West for marketers. Because they are broad-based consumer platforms, there are no settled rules for what to message. As a result, brands use these channels liberally, for all manner of messaging, from upper-funnel affinity- and awareness-building to direct sales.

LinkedIn has a more defined ethos that shapes what constitutes good and appropriate messaging on the platform. As a space where people and organizations find professional opportunities, collaboration, and support, LinkedIn is more a space for nurturing a professional community  —  via stories, insights, and conversation  —  than one for overt promotion.

> Elevated tone:  There is a difference between how you speak to friends and how you speak to colleagues. Whereas organizations can communicate more informally, even playfully on consumer-centric social channels, the conversations on LinkedIn occur at a more elevated, professional register.

By incorporating what has hitherto been a social, consumer-spirited feature into a professional context, LinkedIn Live is an altogether novel medium  —  unlocking a new audience  —  and, for all brands, a wellspring of opportunity.

How LinkedIn Live Can Benefit All Brands

The revolution in online live and live-like authentic video is also an aesthetic one.

YouTube vlogs, Facebook livestreams, and Snaps have evolved our expectations for how online video should look, especially live video. Typically, this content has a stripped-down look, with minimal bells and whistles, and featuring only one or a few subjects in-frame, speaking directly into camera.

There are several reasons for the emergence and codification of this new video aesthetic. It communicates a directness and authenticity on the part of the speaker. It’s suitable for viewing on smaller screens. But, above all, it’s inexpensive.

For brands, what that means is that creating online video — and, now, live content for LinkedIn Live  —  is accessible. You don’t need the six- and seven-figure ad budgets of yesteryear to produce watchable content. (In point of fact, slickly produced videos can seem out of place on social and digital platforms.)

Whereas a live-like video style allows a brand to capitalize on ease of production as well as an aesthetic that connotes authenticity, real-time broadcasts for LinkedIn Live offer further advantages:

> Foster engagement & community:  Live broadcasts on LinkedIn Live enable a brand to engage its audience in real-time. Viewers can ask questions and provide feedback during a broadcast, allowing them to shape the conversation. By creating opportunities for viewers to become stakeholders, a brand can build affinity and interest, while gaining valuable insights about its audience.

> Humanize your organization:  The live aesthetic and the real-time access of live content communicate transparency and authenticity. Today, audiences are savvier and more skeptical of self-serving, manicured messaging. Live allows for more unvarnished, human storytelling, especially when you spotlight the people —from leaders to employees — who comprise your organization.

> Establish thought leadership:  Live video is well-suited for Q&A sessions, roundtable discussions, and keynote speeches that explore ideas, innovations, or industry developments about which your organization may have particular and valuable insights. Conducting a conversation in real time — and opening it up to a professional community on LinkedIn — can both build goodwill for your brand and cultivate its reputation as an authority.

> Attract collaborators & professional connections:   Ultimately, an effective live strategy — which nurtures a LinkedIn constituency, shows the human side of your brand, and delivers expertise — can expand your LinkedIn audience and generate opportunities for business development, partnerships, and recruitment of top talent.

How To Approach LinkedIn Live Content

As explored above, LinkedIn Live is a distinct platform, with a niche audience, defined ethos, and professional decorum. It follows, then, that the content your brand creates and curates for LinkedIn Live should match that environment.

Practically, that means a content strategy that incorporates certain best practices:

> Give, don’t take:  LinkedIn is adamantly not a venue to trumpet deals, push promotions, or make emphatic appeals for sales. Given the distinct nature of the LinkedIn community, this sort of messaging comes off as tone-deaf and can actually cut against your brand  —  painting you as an ill-mannered gate-crasher.

Rather, LinkedIn is about building and nurturing professional community  —  by connecting with like-minded professionals and peer organizations, contributing insights and ideas, and turning the individual journey into a shared experience. Generosity is the key to compelling LinkedIn Live video.

Produce content that benefits entrepreneurs, investors, business leaders, experts, and workers  —  such as interviews with company insiders, expert commentary, even entertaining episodes about what goes on behind the scenes at your company.

Think of LinkedIn as a highly effective upper-funnel channel, an opportunity to generate goodwill and affinity for your brand among a community of peers and professionals. Doing this well can lead to business opportunities and help attract great employees.

> Encourage conversation:  Relatedly, craft live content with an eye toward interaction and engagement. Other channels — with perhaps a more homogeneous, consumer audience  —  may be better suited to a one-to-many broadcasting model.

The LinkedIn ethos, however, favors conversations — where multiple parties can participate in a discussion, share unique insights and feedback, and thereby elevate understanding for the benefit of the larger LinkedIn community.

LinkedIn Live enables real-time exchanges between the creators and consumers of live-video content. Prompt your audience to use the comment feature to submit questions and share experiences, and follow through on opportunities to carry a conversation forward post-livestream.

> Polish your content:  A key challenge for organizations is to balance the authentic aesthetic of live video with the imperative to preserve brand equity.

Raw livestreams — the sort broadcasted by individual users on social platforms  —  are not well-suited to brands, nor are they in-tune with the more buttoned-up, professional context of the LinkedIn community.

By enhancing the production value of your content, you can give it a professional veneer, while maintaining the spirit of authenticity and transparency that gives live video its impact.

Instead of smartphones or webcams, for instance, you can use pro-grade cameras. Taking inspiration from live-TV broadcasts, you can deploy multiple cameras or switch between live feeds and pre-edited video. You can also add branded title cards and on-screen graphics.

As part of its LinkedIn Live rollout, LinkedIn has partnered with Socialive for this very purpose: to enable brands to easily produce elevated, professional live broadcasts.

> Repurpose & tailor:  As intimated above, a fundamental precept of communication is that context shapes what you say and how you say it. The ideal of crafting bespoke messages for each channel, however, clashes with the need to create content efficiently.

Instead of producing single-use video for LinkedIn Live, consider how you can reshape, reframe, and repackage existing content to match the audience, ethos, and tone of the LinkedIn community and the inherent advantages of the live video format.

For instance, take a blog post exploring a news development and repurpose it into a live discussion between two brand reps about the same news item. Invite your audience into the conversation by soliciting their thoughts and have your brand reps respond to viewer insights. Then take the recording of that discussion, edit the best moment, and create new sponsored content to promote the next event.

Considering the distinct nature of the LinkedIn community  —  its unique audience, ethos, and tone  —  the launch of LinkedIn Live is not an instance of just another social platform adding live.

Instead, it introduces a novel opportunity for brands to forge professional relationships that can amplify and accelerate growth  —  and to do so more reliably, given the persuasive power of live video.

During this time of uncertainty, many businesses are experiencing disruption and feeling disconnected from their audiences.

Utilizing the most effective advocates that many organizations have, executive messaging is an opportunity to reforge that connection. Despite the changed environment, it’s still essential to be responsive and to take control of the messaging around your company.

Why use live video for executive messaging?

Thanks to video, especially live video, executive messaging can be delivered in a powerful format. With its instant visual and audio impact, video is the most engaging format online.

Video conveys emotional connection in a way that static press releases and corporate memos cannot. Specifically, for executive messaging, live video is the ideal medium and is often preferred to traditional approaches.

At this unprecedented moment, it’s necessary for leaders to speak openly to their customers and employees, and to demonstrate empathy. With social distancing and remote work arrangements in place, there is a greater need for management to have a voice.

This is the time for executives to showcase resiliency, highlight how their organization is contributing to the greater good, and announce any changes to company operating procedures, such as work-from-home or sick pay policies.

Live video, by its very nature, is a format that humanizes your brand and emphasizes transparency. Rather than a monologue, live video allows for an authentic dialogue in real-time and gives audiences the opportunity to be heard.

How executives are using live video

Whether you’re broadcasting a memo from the CEO or streaming a virtual town hall, live video offers executives a wealth of ways to reach internal and external audiences. Below are examples of executive messaging through live video in action.

1. ELLEVEST

Use case:  Thought leadership series on LinkedIn

On a mission to close the gender money gaps, Ellevest brings its LinkedIn page to life with a stream of live video content on its feed.

Ellevest’s CEO and co-founder, Sallie Krawcheck, hosts a live video series on relevant topics such as investing, the economy, and career development. While broadcasting, she is able to interact with her viewers and answer questions in real time.

Along with sharing her expertise, she brings in guests such as career coaches, financial planners, and investment professionals. By giving their audience access to experts, the LinkedIn Live series has become a go-to resource for those with money and career questions.

2. HEADSPACE

Use case:  Acknowledges current events and offers a solution on YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn

On World Meditation Day, Headspace invited its social media followers to experience a special live meditation hosted by its co-founder Andy Puddicombe.

Headspace’s use of live video illustrates how a business can take its product and adapt it to a moment in which mental health is top of mind. By recognizing World Meditation Day during this stressful time, the company showcased awareness of the COVID-19 crisis, and provided a solution for its viewers.

In addition to being timely, the live stream leveraged its co-founder to host the meditation, which strengthened the humanity of the brand. Audiences want to know the person behind the title, and want to connect a face to the name. Showing the leader behind Headspace’s efforts is an effective way to build trust and connect with viewers.

3. BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP

Use case:  Commencement speech on LinkedIn

In-person graduation ceremonies were one of the many events cancelled amid the pandemic. In response, Boston Consulting Group CEO Rich Lesser delivered his first-ever commencement speech. He congratulated the class of 2020 and shared reassuring words of wisdom.

Rather than letting the momentous occasion go unnoticed, Boston Consulting Group leveraged a firm head in their organization to participate in a cultural moment and contribute to the trending conversation.

This broadcast is an example of how to boost brand affinity and establish an emotional connection with your audience.

Live video best practices for executives

Even though the broadcast is live and in the moment, you want to be as prepared as possible. We’ve rounded up a few tips to help you get started.

• Create a live series: To maintain engagement and viewership, create a live video series instead of stand-alone or one-off videos. When you have episodes streaming on a consistent schedule, your audience will be able to plan around new broadcasts and know when to tune in.

• Pick a theme for your series: Decide what topics you want to cover, and what type of conversation you want to have with your audience. Sticking to your theme is important because it lets your audience know what to expect.

• Feature guests: For a dynamic conversation, bring in guest speakers to add insight and expertise to your regular programming. This will help ramp up engagement, views, and reach.

• Respond to your viewers in real time: During the broadcast, it’s important to engage with your audience as they are reacting to you. This will help build a stronger relationship with your viewers and will give them more incentive to tune in to future live streams.
• Be yourself: Video humanizes us. This moment is about showing your human self, not overly manicured communications. By being authentic, you can establish a personal connection as well as foster openness and transparency.

Now more than ever, ensuring that your business has an effective executive communications strategy is essential. That’s why more executives are embracing the power of live video to connect with employees and customers.

Beyond delivering executive messages, live video humanizes the brand, increases brand affinity, and changes the way people think about an organization.

In the Third Wave of Digital Transformation, Enterprises Turn to Video Content to Empower Storytellers and Build Authentic Human Connections

LOS ANGELES – Oct. 7, 2021 – Socialive, the self-serve video content creation platform for the enterprise, today shared its vision for Enterprise Video Transformation, a third wave of digital transformation characterized by the ubiquitous use of video for storytelling and audience communication in the enterprise. Decades ago, in the first wave of digital transformation, enterprises began to embrace the internet and digitize business processes to boost efficiency and reduce costs. As the use of technology to solve business problems became predominant, enterprises started to create their own software. Today, nearly every company has become a software company, as predicted in 2011 by Marc Andreessen, who boldly claimed that “software is eating the world.” In the next wave of Enterprise Video Transformation, which is already well underway, every company will become a media company, embracing technology to create video content as a means of storytelling and communication across core audiences to build human connections and drive business value.

“We envision a world in which any business professional can become their own video creator, regardless of their technical expertise,” said David Moricca, founder and CEO of Socialive. “By democratizing the art of video creation through technology, anyone will be able to produce the video content they need, in less time and without sacrificing quality. In the consumer realm, social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok have sparked a massive shift in how individuals create and engage with video content. We’re seeing a similar evolution in the enterprise toward video as a means of storytelling and communication. Until now, enterprises have lacked the technology by which to easily create video content in a way that is high quality and relevant for their audiences.”

Authentic Storytelling: The Future of Enterprise Video

Information sharing and communication technologies have advanced rapidly over the last several decades. Email was one of the first digital communication channels to rise to prominence, offering an asynchronous means by which to more quickly and effectively connect with others. In recent years, collaboration tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams and Google Chat became the prevailing means of business communication, offering semi-synchronous, or near-real-time, connections. As shelter-in-place policies went into effect during the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses underwent rapid adoption of video conferencing tools like Zoom, Google Meet and Webex for synchronous, real-time communication. However, concerns around video conferencing fatigue are rising, with recent research finding that nearly half of remote workers have experienced a high degree of exhaustion as a result of numerous daily video calls.

Moricca continued, “We’ve mastered the technology required for fast and personal communication with email, collaboration and video conferencing tools. Despite these digital infrastructure achievements, many enterprises still struggle to engage their audiences in fresh, dynamic ways. The next stage of communication in the enterprise will be centered around telling better, more authentic stories and empowering more voices from across the organization. Historically, media companies have been the primary drivers of this style of communication, which is now propeling every enterprise to become their own media company. To deliver better stories at the enterprise level, businesses must equip their storytellers and make it easier to deliver high-caliber video content at scale.”

Self-serve Technology Offers a Path Forward

Video is now the preferred channel for enterprises to engage with customers and employees. However, producing high-quality videos at scale is challenging, because companies often lack budget, expertise and bandwidth. Until recently, the vast majority of technology solutions for enterprise video have focused on hosting, managing and distributing video created through traditional production and post-production tools. Since traditional video production methods require significant travel and production expenses, video is often reserved for only mission-critical initiatives involving senior executives.

“Socialive is ushering in a new era of video content creation, in which businesses can use video to amplify diverse voices across the organization, not just the C-suite,” said Moricca. “Our aim is to democratize video content creation and make it accessible to the masses, so that video professionals and everyday business users alike can produce high-quality video anywhere, anytime and from any device — all from a single, easy-to-use platform. We believe that everyone has a story to tell; by lowering the barrier to entry for video creation, companies can empower more people to tell their unique stories.”

Announced in tandem with the company’s vision for Enterprise Video Transformation, Socialive today announced the findings of its 2021 State of Enterprise Video: Creation, Broadcasting, Distribution report. The company also unveiled the next-generation Socialive platform, offering enterprises and high-growth companies a unified platform to create, broadcast and distribute studio-quality video content.

‍Additional Resources

‍Learn more about Socialive on our website

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‍About Socialive

‍Socialive powers self-serve video content creation for the enterprise. It’s the fastest, easiest way to create, broadcast and distribute unlimited live and on-demand videos with studio quality. The Socialive platform puts intuitive, professional-grade video production workflows into the hands of content producers and everyday business users, lowering the barrier to entry and increasing employee-created video output. Videos enable brands to connect with people in fresh, dynamic ways but it’s hard to produce great videos at scale while maintaining brand standards — budget, team capacity and internal expertise can be in short supply. Just-in-time production with Socialive unlocks use cases for video that build human connections through relatable content, turning video into a powerful engagement channel for employee, customer and partner communities to strengthen brand loyalty and company culture. Socialive’s Studio in the Cloud™ and integrated Virtual Green Room preserve the authenticity of live video while streamlining the end-to-end process from creation to delivery, consolidating the number of tools traditionally required for video production. Mobile friendly and simple to use, Socialive helps bring together diverse people and perspectives to amplify voices distributed across organizations and geographies. The platform’s industry-first remote recording capability captures high-quality video anywhere from any device with full enterprise-grade control. Leading enterprises and high-growth companies including Charles Schwab, Deloitte, Nike, Oracle, TikTok, The New York Times, Walmart and Zendesk use Socialive to drive business value through better, more frequent video creation. Meet the Moment With Video.™‍

Media Contact

Jennifer Burak

VP of Marketing, Socialive

press@socialive.us

Let’s face it: we don’t like to turn our phones into horizontal, TV screens.

Thanks to popular apps like Snapchat and Instagram, vertical video made its way to the limelight in 2012. But for video creators, producing high quality, sophisticated video for mobile audiences hasn’t always been as easy as it seems.

Rather than relying on your smartphone to capture vertical video, we are excited to share you can now elevate the look and feel of your videos straight from your desktop using Socialive.

We dive into what vertical video is and why brands can’t afford to ignore the trend any longer.

What is vertical video — and why does it matter?

Vertical video, also known as vertically-oriented or portrait-mode video, is one that is taller than wider. Full portrait video uses a 9:16 aspect ratio and is formatted to take over the full vertical screen on a smartphone.

So, which platforms support vertical video? Here’s a handy chart that breaks down each platform and its aspect ratios:

The benefits of mobile video

Below, we rounded up a few key statistics that show why vertical video is the dominant format to pay attention to.

Mobile video consumption continues to rise

There’s no doubt video is a powerful medium.

Combine that with stay-at-home orders during a pandemic and the rise of addictive mobile apps like TikTok, more businesses are turning to video marketing to reach their mobile audiences.

In fact, U.S. adults spend 13 minutes daily accessing video apps alone on a smartphone, according to Statista. Not to mention, mobile video ad spend has overtaken desktop video ad spend, and is projected to exceed 8.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2023.

Square video optimized for social media

In a world where everyone is trying to catch their audience’s attention, how do you create eye-catching video? By taking up space.

Square video (1:1) takes up 78% more real estate in a user’s mobile newsfeed than landscape video (16:9), according to Buffer. Square video can expand to fit the height ratio and is 1280px x 1280px.

That explains why square video is the recommended go-to format for social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Vertical videos drive higher engagement

If you didn’t think that video format impacts engagement, think again.

Square videos result in better video views, engagement (likes, comments, and shares) and completion rates than landscape video on social media, according to the same Buffer report.

In some cases, square videos resulted in up to 35% higher video views and an 80 to 100% increase in engagement.

The overall takeaway? Regardless of content, the format of your video is a determining factor in how long viewers watch your video, and if they engage with it.

A product demo is a stellar way to show your product’s value — and a professional video is the best way to get it in front of your vast audience. Why? More than 70% of customers say they actually prefer to learn about a product or service from a product video. More visibility with your unique value prop means you are giving yourself the best chance to drive conversions.

What is a product demo video?

Product demo videos are typically short, educational videos that explain what the product is. You can also incorporate them into your digital marketing strategy to encourage further interest and conversion.

Prospects will always want a clear picture of what a product really looks like and how it works before they’re ready to buy. More importantly, the true value it brings them.

How will that shirt really look on a live person who is moving and sitting? How can I use that app to find the best service provider and quickly schedule an appointment? How easy is it really to set up that four-person tent in the middle of the night with no instructions? What does that new feature do for me that I should care about?

Most people are visual learners and video is an efficient way to show rather than tell. So, product demo videos help answer these questions in a more engaging and realistic way than you can with pictures or text descriptions.

How to use product demo videos

There are several creative ways you can use product demo videos. Here are just a few ideas to get you started:

• Promote a shoppable video with clickable links, so they can learn more about it and buy it. This can be a powerful addition to your e-commerce strategy.
• Livestream your product launch or new feature introduction. Generate buzz with a live event for your product launch and simulcast it to all your web and social channels.
• Publish a recorded product launch video to your social media channels. Storyboard a pre-recorded product launch video to highlight key features, and use it to amplify your launch message.
• Demo your product in action. Record a short, engaging demo of your product designed for users to easily share in their social channels.
• Target your customers with a training video that quickly shows useful tips they might not have known about.
• Share an explainer video that breaks down how your product works, highlighting one or a handful of key use cases.
• Create a myth-busting video. If there’s a common misperception about your product or a feature of your product, or even how your product compares to a competitor, easily clarify the story.

Video is a flexible platform for showcasing your product in as many ways as you can think.

Turn prospects into buyers with Socialive

Product demo videos may be one of the fastest ways you can transform a prospect into a buyer. At Socialive, we make it easy for anyone to create professional-looking product videos. We empower everyone from video experts to entry-level marketers to easily create branded, immersive videos that inspire, inform and engage viewers — ultimately converting them into buyers and lifelong fans. Socialive’s all-in-one enterprise video content creation platform lets you:

• Record professional-quality video from anywhere — straight from your phone, tablet, or desktop browser — with Socialive’s remote recording capabilities ensuring the highest quality content possible
• Create dynamic and engaging product content, faster and easier, by recording, editing, and publishing or livestreaming your product video all in one platform
• Manage and collaborate with talent behind the scenes in our Virtual Green Room
• Reach the widest audience for your product by simultaneously livestreaming to multiple channels and quickly publishing recorded videos to all your channels at once
• Streamline content management in a secure, centralized recordings library where all your recordings and livestreams are instantly sent — with no manual file transfer required
• Upload recordings to your site to drive traffic and maximize your product marketing
• Repurpose recordings in multiple ways to share in marketing, sales, training programs, and more, so you can extend the life and value of your product video — clip out the best moments or edit portions into new content

It turns out there is science behind the expression, “In one ear, out the other.” The human brain processes and retains visual information far more efficiently than auditory information alone (University of Iowa).

Video is such an effective communication medium that it has become the preferred content type on the Internet across different age groups, with Cisco predicting that in 2021, video will make up 82% of Internet traffic throughout the world.

The message is clear: If you want learners to engage with and retain the information in your class or training, think visually.

How video enriches your customer classes, training and certification programs

One of the most effective ways to incorporate more visual content into your learning curriculum is video. Video packs a powerful one-two punch, combining a mix of different types of visual and auditory information to maximize retention. Video can put a human face on your learning content, making it more personalized and engaging. Video can be delivered either one-to-one, one-to-many or within collaborating groups. It can also be delivered synchronously (or live) and asynchronously (or pre-recorded), making it flexible and convenient for training, upskilling and certification programs.

Boost customer training with video

The speed with which companies must evolve in today’s digital world makes training crucial. Video makes it easy, fast, and affordable to train customers in new product features that can help them be more effective at work, engaging audiences with material they are more likely to retain.

Enrich customer experience with video-based upskilling

Customers place high value on upskilling that can move their careers forward. You can exceed their expectations by using video to communicate new concepts and skills, as well as provide coaching, mentoring, and highly collaborative learning experiences with subject matter experts.

Deliver high-quality certification programs with video

Providing certification programs can give customers access to highly desirable, career-forwarding skills. With video, you can provide the visual content that helps explain complex concepts and step-by-step procedures. You can bring in industry thought leaders to offer insights and perspectives.

How to enrich your customer classes, training, and certification programs with video using Socialive

Producing customer classes, training and certification materials can be time-consuming and complicated to produce — requiring multiple platforms, workflows and stakeholders. The logistics can be overwhelming. At Socialive, we’ve made it easy for you and your team to work together to produce unique, engaging video content for classes, training and certification programs. Socialive’s all-in-one enterprise video content creation platform lets you:

• Create compelling and authentic learning with cloud-based video production, mixing high-quality live and pre-recorded content with dynamic layouts to explain details and storyboards to plan a narrative
• Capture HD video and audio content from anywhere — straight from your phone, tablet or desktop browser — with Socialive’s remote recording capabilities to ensure the highest quality content possible
• Streamline content management with the ability to securely capture, store and access HD video in your cloud-based recordings library — with no manual file transfer required
• Simulcast live across multiple channels or deliver on demand
• Collaborate behind the scenes with presenters, sharing talking points and other direction through a virtual Green Room
• Repurpose content into snackable clips to share in your learning and development programs

Video can transform your customer learning program into a strategic advantage for your business.

Frontline workers in the field, estimated to be more than 2 billion people globally, are the human faces of your brand to prospects and customers — in stores, on calls, at events, and wherever is convenient. Corporate field marketing organizations (FMOs) empower frontline workers with the tools they need to directly connect with and engage buyers. Whether it’s supporting sales, hosting a demo, providing quick bits of knowledge, or facilitating a webinar, field marketing is all about building relationships with people. In an increasingly digital world, video offers field marketers a convenient, flexible, and secure way to scale how they create authentic connections and experiences.

Buyers love video, too. Because it’s processed by the brain 60,000 times faster than text, it’s highly engaging. Buyers also love the ease and convenience of videos. In fact, 91% of buyers prefer interactive video content (DemandGenReport), and 70% of B2B buyers consume video during their buying journey (Google).

With video, field marketers can increase awareness and engagement with buyers, delivering the immersive experiences they crave.

Be in the room with buyers — from anywhere

When you can’t be there to communicate live or in person, snackable video makes it easy for anyone in the field to put a human face on messages. You can securely record, edit, and instantly send these personal videos from a smartphone, tablet, desktop, or any other device — from anywhere your field team may be, whether in the office or on the go. They’re a perfect way to convey the context and emotional connection that is sometimes lacking in emails, texts, and chats.

Take your events to your customers

Remote and hybrid work models are more prevalent than ever, and video makes it easy to engage with prospects and customers wherever they may be. You can bring the experience of an in-person event straight to your target audience with dynamic livestreams of your virtual events. Then, to give your audience even more flexibility, make the recordings of the virtual event available on demand later, so you can get more from your investment.

Transform webinars into unforgettable experiences

At the heart of every successful event is a deeply-engaged audience. Instead of settling for a simple, one-way presentation, transform your webinar into a fully interactive, immersive experience that your audience will not want to miss. Give your audience a voice to interact in real-time, mix in recorded segments that will thrill viewers, and make your webinar an experience customers and prospects won’t forget — regardless if they’re watching live or after the fact.

Bring your customers into the fold — amplify their voice

Your customers are your biggest fans. They have insights you can’t get anywhere else. Bringing them together to share their confidential feedback informs your business strategy and makes them feel special. Invite them to a quick, virtual recording session where they can speak face-to-face, in a group session, or by themselves on their own time.

While taking your event virtual is easier than ever, virtual customer panels and roundtables have proven just as effective as in-person, without the costs and logistical challenges common with live events.

Take your customers behind the scenes

When it’s not possible to bring customers into a briefing center or areas of your business that might not be open to visitors, such as a tour of a lab or production facility, or a glimpse of an employee's typical day, bring the experience to life with video instead. A behind-the-scenes look or an insider’s point of view, recorded or even livestreamed, can make customers feel special and help you create lifelong fans.

Make your products tangible for customers

Seeing is believing! Showcase your product with video to bring it to life, highlighting key features, explaining how-tos, and sharing insider perspectives that inform and inspire. Show, don’t tell, why your product provides immense value and should excite customers — extending their lifetime value.

Scale your reach with video marketing from the field

You cover a lot of ground in field marketing. With video, field marketers can easily scale reach, elevate the experience for prospects and customers, and maximize business impact.

At Socialive, we believe that everyone should be able to use video to easily communicate and collaborate with prospects, customers, partners, employees, investors, and more. Regardless of your team’s experience or skills, we can help you create recorded and livestreamed video experiences that truly inspire, inform, and engage.

With Socialive’s end-to-end enterprise video creation platform, you can realize the future of field marketing today by recording, editing, publishing and livestreaming high-quality, branded, immersive experiences with the team you already have:

• Make it easy to record, publish, and livestream HD video content from anywhere — straight from your phone, tablet, or desktop browser — with Socialive's CreatorSuite to ensure the highest quality possible
• Streamline content management with our secure cloud-based recordings library — no manual file transfer required — and your content is automatically transferred from the recording device, so you don’t have to worry about tracking down content, file storage, or sensitive content living on someone’s device
• Your virtual broadcast studio enables you to create dynamic and engaging livestreams and virtual events with ProducerSuite, including preset templates to mix and match live, recorded, and screenshare video with dynamic layouts and graphics to keep everything professional and consistently branded
• Manage talent behind the scenes, sharing talking points and collaborating with presenters through a Virtual Green Room
• Quickly create snackable video clips — sharing snippets or edited video content across channels and programs

Companies throughout the Fortune 1000 across every industry power the field to create video marketing assets with Socialive. Now you and your field marketing team can, too.

As the next normal takes shape, companies across industries and regions face unprecedented challenges in successfully recruiting the workers needed to drive their businesses forward. To start with, companies have rapidly become remote and hybrid, making it difficult to meet and engage with candidates.

Now another post-pandemic reality is ratcheting up the pressure more. Many industries are contending with a post-pandemic phenomenon sometimes referred to as the “Great Resignation.” A jaw-dropping 65% of the U.S. workforce is looking to change jobs in the near future, leading 90% of CEOs to expect higher than normal turnover (PriceWaterhouseCoopers).

These daunting challenges add to a long list that recruiting teams already juggle, including gaps in recruiting technology, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) mandates, relationships with hiring managers and more. Talent acquisition teams must find creative ways to attract a robust pipeline of candidates and engage them in a differentiated, compelling, and deeply personal candidate experience — delivered almost entirely virtually.

Among the technology-enabled options available to help time-strapped recruiting teams, video stands out. Versatile and highly cost-effective, video can do everything from informal one-on-one interviews to more formal one-to-many presentations. It can be presented live or made available on demand. It can incorporate a variety of visual devices, from simple slide decks to split-screen interviews. Video puts a human face on your company and creates a space for making real connections. If you’re not using video to its full potential, you may be missing out on some of the most effective ways to meet your recruiting goals.

To spark your imagination, here are just a few creative uses of video to push the limits of your virtual recruiting events so you can connect and engage with candidates effectively.

Host a virtual meet and greet

Inviting candidates to a virtual meet and greet is a high-value win. Focused more on social interaction and making personal connections, you can structure the event around a virtual coffee or happy hour. You could introduce your CEO to share insights from their own career path or give an insider’s perspective on the industry. Or, you could introduce current employees who can share what it takes to succeed there. The possibilities are endless.

Open the doors for a virtual office tour or open house

With a virtual office tour or open house, you can show how your work environment functions, whether it’s in the office, fully remote or hybrid.

If you have physical office locations, you can give candidates a glimpse of shared spaces and resources.

If you have remote or hybrid work locations, you could consider hosting a live or recorded tour of select representatives of that work experience. For example, you might let two or three employees show off their remote work locations and explain their experience.

Sponsor a workshop or special competition

Whether it’s an informal workshop or a gamified challenge like a Hackathon, these recruiting events offer more opportunity for interaction. Candidates appreciate the opportunity to learn something while showcasing their own skills. Companies can demonstrate their expertise and community spirit while hiring managers can evaluate a candidate in action. The focus can range from skills building to industry trends to your company’s culture to a project.

How to elevate virtual recruiting events using Socialive

Going virtual by amplifying your recruiting events with video can increase your reach and elevate the job candidate experience. You might think that you need extensive investments in studios, equipment and talent to make the best use of video, but Socialive’s all-in-one enterprise video content creation platform lets you produce high-quality, branded, immersive video experiences with the team and equipment you already have. With Socialive you can:

• Source HD video and audio content from anyone, anywhere, anytime straight from your phone, tablet or desktop browser

• Simplify production processes and achieve dynamic broadcasts with cloud-based video production, including preset workflows to mix and match live, pre-recorded and screen share video with dynamic layouts and branded graphics

• Repurpose content in multiple ways and streamline content management with the ability to capture, store, and access HD video in a secure, centralized cloud-based recordings library, with no manual file transfer required

• Collaborate behind the scenes, manage presenters, and share talking points through a Virtual Green Room

Companies from the Fortune 1000 to high-growth startups across every industry power their business with video content creation capabilities from Socialive. Now you and your team can, too.

Quarterly earnings calls may be routine for publicly-traded companies, but they represent one of the most strategic communications methods for influencing investor relations — specifically the analysts, investors, and journalists who attend the briefings. An earnings call is the ideal platform for a company to control its message and showcase its track record in execution, promote its forward-thinking strategy, and manage expectations around performance.

Set up your CEO for success

In particular, how an analyst perceives a CEO’s presentation can have an outsized impact on how investors and the media evaluate a company. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, shares of companies with CEOs who make liberal use of positive words when describing financials during earnings calls outperform other companies by as much as 9% per year (via CNBC). Clearly, how a CEO delivers the company messaging on an earnings call can pay huge dividends.

Challenges in preparing an earnings call

The timing between closing the books on a quarter and reporting on performance is often tight, making it difficult to create a polished, professional earnings call that elevates your company and positively impacts investors.

There’s a lot that goes into it, such as:

• Creating the story and integrating content from multiple sources and types, such as charts from Finance or video clips from Marketing
• Ensuring consistent branding across all components
• Coordinating with your C-suite team to prepare and present, whether they are in the office, traveling, or working from remote locations
• Managing all the technology required to ensure the highest audio and visual presentation quality
• Making sure everyone stays on point during the call
• Capturing the call and making it easily available on demand

All the moving parts must come together smoothly, or you risk missing the mark and leaving a negative impression on the people with the most influence on your company’s stock performance.

How to create impactful CEO earnings calls and briefings with Socialive

To execute a flawless earnings call or briefing that shines light on CEO leadership and company performance, you need a solution to streamline and elevate how you create, produce, and present the event.

At Socialive, we’ve made it simple and quick to create professional video. Everyone who contributes to preparing for your earnings call, regardless of video expertise, can work together on one platform to create branded, immersive experiences that inspire, inform, and engage viewers.

Socialive’s end-to-end video creation platform powers enterprise teams to:

• Livestream engaging earnings calls and CEO briefings with cloud video production, including easy-to-set layouts that mix and match live, recorded, and screen share video with graphics and branding to keep it professional and consistent
• Record high-quality video and audio content from anywhere — straight from your phone, tablet, or desktop browser — Socialive’s remote recording capabilities ensure the highest quality content possible from any place with any device
• Record your broadcast live-to-tape so that the call maintains its authentic presentation, but with the ability to edit and audit for compliance before sharing
• Manage talent behind the scenes during recordings or livestreams and collaborate with presenters in a Virtual Green Room
• Reach the widest audience possible by livestreaming simultaneously to multiple channels in a simulcast
• Streamline content management with the ability to record, store, and then grant access to all video content in a secure, centralized recordings library — automatically transferred after each session

Our video creation platform is the fastest, easiest way to create, livestream, and publish your earnings call. Learn how we can help you elevate your CEO earnings calls and briefings today.

When prospects are going through their final evaluations ahead of the purchase, customer case studies and testimonials are among the most relevant and influential pieces of content.

The vast majority, 73%, of B2B marketers ranked case studies as the best content for accelerating leads in the mid and late stages (Demand Generation Report).

Hearing customers share their stories in their own words about how your product or service brings them value and how it moves their business forward is far more interesting than almost anything we can say — and what they have to say can seal the deal. Take it from us, creating a dynamic, multimedia case study beats a PDF every time.

You work hard to create customer advocates and use their insights in all parts of your business — so don’t let those learnings go to waste. Here are four best practices to keep in mind to maximize every opportunity to share customer stories and how video brings the story to life.

Select your top-performing customers

Recruit customers who are your biggest fans. You’re looking for customers who can showcase your company and product or offering in the best light. They are already passionate advocates because your company provides immense value. People who are passionate and knowledgeable about a topic can tell a powerful, engaging story and shine in videos.

Show success metrics and numbers

Wherever possible, add numbers to the customer success story. It’s not enough to tell a nice story; your prospects want to see some results. Whether it is in framing the situation or challenge a customer faced or, ideally, in the impact your product or offering had on their business, numbers add context and credibility to your story. If possible, showcase those numbers visually in the video to emphasize their importance.

Add supporting characters

Every story has a hero as well as supporting characters who help the hero on their journey. Bring one or two of your customers’ supporting characters into the video story. It might be a partner, a sales engineer, or a customer success representative who helped the customer get things done faster and more successfully. These guest appearances add interest and increase credibility.

Retell your customers' story everywhere

Customer stories aren’t just for prospects. They can be shared on social media to increase brand awareness. They can also be of interest to business reporters and to investors who want to understand the impact your company has on customers. When creating your video customer success stories, consider opportunities to create snackable video clips and share them across other channels.

Maximize impact of video case studies and testimonials with Socialive

Video is the perfect way to share your most impactful customer success stories and testimonials. At Socialive, we’ve made it easy for anyone to create professional-quality video, so everyone on your team can work together to quickly make branded, immersive customer stories that inspire, inform and engage. Socialive’s end-to-end video creation platform powers the enterprise to:

• Create compelling and authentic customer success videos within an end-to-end video creation platform, allowing anyone to create in a seamless, user-friendly workflow: just record, edit, and then publish
• Record HD video content from anywhere — straight from your phone, tablet or desktop browser —with Socialive’s remote recording capabilities to ensure the highest quality content possible
• Streamline content management with the ability to securely capture, store and access HD video in your cloud-based recordings library — every recording is automatically uploaded
• Interact with employees through live question-and-answer sessions
• Collaborate with talent behind the scenes during a recording session, asking questions, sharing talking points, and providing other direction through a Virtual Green Room
• Create snackable video clips from the final video to share across brand and marketing programs and promote the case study

Your customers have fantastic stories to share about your company and their experiences with your products or offerings.

Of course, don't just take our word for it. Check out our library of case studies to see how we've told the stories of our own customers — all created in Socialive.

Actively engaging employees through learning, especially in remote and hybrid work models, can be well worth the investments you make. In a 2020 LinkedIn survey, 94% of employees reported they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their learning and development.

Although your employee learning and development program may already contain a mix of approaches, including instructor-led training, virtual ILT, self-paced, on-demand, and much more, one critical factor that might be missing is community. A downside of our ability to work from anywhere is that employee engagement is plummeting. Finding ways to incorporate community back into work can help counteract the disconnectedness and isolation many employees experience. LinkedIn found that learning together powers employee engagement, fosters greater success at work for those who participate, and creates a sense of belonging for all involved.

To incorporate community into your learning and development approach, make sure you are using video to its full potential. Video is an ideal medium to create truly engaging, interactive learning for employees and set them up for success from day one.

Let’s look at how you might reimagine employee training and onboarding with video.

Powering employee training and learning with video

Whether you’re covering soft skills like managing teams or technical skills like deep-dive technical product overviews, video has something for everyone. With video, you can address different learning styles, whether visual, auditory or kinesthetic.

You can easily have anyone record their own video or you can set the stage for a livestream, providing both community time and self-paced content. You can provide on-demand access to recordings and videos that were livestreamed, so learners can review as needed. You can bring in multiple presenters in a panel or Q&A live chat, to share different perspectives and get everyone involved. You can share screens, presentations, and other supplemental content, or ditch the presentation format and engage directly.

Crucially, new employees can gain insights directly from the field as video powers peer-to-peer learning. Imagine a world where someone new to a role learns from someone with the same role in a different market rather than memorizing generic content that may or may not apply to their role. You gain a great deal of flexibility to meet the needs of your learners, and you can do it all with minimum disruption.

Successfully onboard employees with video

Much more than an employee orientation that lasts a week or two, companies that are most successful at improving employee engagement and retention invest in employee onboarding. Successful onboarding involves four key areas, according to Dr. Talya Bauer and the Society of Human Resource Management Foundation:

• Compliance, covering a company’s policies and processes
• Clarification, covering an employee’s role and responsibilities
• Culture, explaining the company’s values and norms
• Connection, helping a new employee create relationships and a sense of community

Video’s versatility makes it a critical component of a strategic onboarding program. You can use video to record training sessions or livestream insights, introduce leaders, share best practices, and open lively Q&A sessions with domain experts and team members. As with employee training and learning, video can help you create immersive experiences for new employees that help them quickly learn how they can contribute and forge deeper engagement faster.

Maximize employee training, learning, and onboarding impact with Socialive

The most successful employee learning and development programs present employees with relevant and engaging information that helps get them started and increases their desire to work for you long-term. Video is the most versatile, cost-effective, and effective way to deliver information and create the immersive experiences employees need to feel connected.

At Socialive, we’ve made it easy for you and your team to work together to produce unique, engaging video content for employee training that inspires and informs. Socialive’s all-in-one enterprise video content creation platform lets you:

• Livestream compelling and authentic employee spotlight videos with cloud video production, using preset layouts to mix high-quality live and recorded content with graphics and branding so everything looks professional and consistent
• Record crisp video and audio content from anywhere — straight from your phone, tablet, or desktop browser — Socialive’s remote recording capabilities ensure the highest quality content possible from any place with any device
• Streamline content management with the ability to securely record, store, and grant access to content in your recordings library — every session is automatically uploaded
• Interact with employees through live question-and-answer sessions
• Collaborate with talent behind the scenes to manage presenters, share talking points, and provide other direction through a Virtual Green Room
• Create snackable video training and clips to share on internal channels and even external channels in support of your learning and development programs

Video can transform your learning and development approach into a strategic advantage for your business, helping you attract, engage, and keep the best talent in the market.

Podcast popularity has skyrocketed and is expected to top 500 million active subscribers worldwide by 2024 (eMarketer). Popular podcasters have become big business, and major companies like Spotify pay top dollars for their content. Podcast listeners represent a demographically valuable audience for advertisers, with 54% of podcast listeners saying they are more likely to consider buying from the brands they hear advertised on podcasts (Edison Research).

Businesses create podcasts to share information, news, updates, and perspectives with a wide range of audiences, from internally-focused employee communications to customer-facing or business-to-business marketing. According to Deloitte’s research, enterprise podcasting is already mainstream, with nearly all of the 25 largest Fortune 500 companies hosting their own podcasts on their corporate websites.

For listeners, podcasts are convenient because they can be listened to anytime, anywhere — whether driving, at the gym, or in the office. Podcast listeners also love to discover new content and are far more likely to add podcasts than to remove them.

For corporate marketing teams, creating podcasts from video content offers a fast, easy way to scale content quickly, extend reach further, and maximize your ROI from existing video assets. With such a low barrier to entry, podcasts make excellent tools for targeting niche audiences and for experimenting. And, much like video, they are endlessly repurposable, so you can continue to remix and reuse audio content as you go. Your imagination may be the only limit. Here are a few ideas to get started.

Share thought leadership with enterprise podcasts

Podcasts offer a nearly perfect format for sharing your company’s thought leadership. Create a weekly or monthly series featuring an internal subject matter expert as host. Invite an industry influencer to participate as a guest in each episode.

You can create a video recording of the session, or choose to livestream it in real-time, and then create your audio podcast from the recording for on-demand listening. You’ll raise the profile of your host, your guests, and your company while reaching more audiences.

Tell customer stories with video podcasts

A customer showcase podcast lets you shine a light on customer successes in a fun, engaging way. Paired with a host either from inside your company or an industry expert from outside, your customers can share their insights and tips for success.

Including your customers in your content generates wider interest in your products or services in an organic, authentic testimonial. It's an easy way to prove your worth to prospects in a fraction of the time it takes to create an approved case study.

Target your niche with account-based podcasting

In the same way that account-based marketing targets your message to a specific audience, your podcast can deliver highly personalized information to coveted buyer personas. Leverage your field and sales teams to provide expert guidance on topics and guests of interest to your audience to help you fine-tune your content.

After each episode, you can then create personalized experiences for your marketing and sales programs using clips from the podcasts you create. Add them to emails based on the specific interests or needs of targeted customers or prospects to connect more deeply and provide value.

Socialize your story with podcast clips

Creating snackable, shareable audio clips to post on social media lets your listeners experience your podcast directly from their feed. It’s an engaging way to draw in new listeners and create viral exposure for your brand. Create, promote, engage, repeat.

Fast, flexible, scalable video and audio podcasting

Podcasts are a growth medium, and enterprise podcasts offer organizations a fast and flexible way to reuse and repurpose video content to engage buyers across a number of mediums.

At Socialive, we believe everyone should be able to easily communicate with buyers through the multimedia formats they crave. Regardless of your team’s experience or skills, we can help you produce experiences that truly inspire, inform, and engage.

With Socialive’s end-to-end video creation platform, designed specifically for enterprise companies, creators can quickly create professional-quality, branded, immersive podcasts at scale with the team you already have:

• Easily record and share HD video and audio content from anywhere — straight from your phone, tablet, or desktop browser. Socialive’s remote recording capabilities ensure the highest quality possible. No manual file transfer required, and the content doesn’t live on your device, so you don’t have to worry about using up storage or tracking down files.
• Create professional-grade livestreams and recordings that make for dynamic podcasts with cloud video production. Build within preset workflows to mix and match live feeds, pre-recorded videos, and screen shares. Dynamic layouts and branded graphics help you keep everything professional and consistently branded.
• Manage talent behind the scenes with a Virtual Green Room, sharing talking points and collaborating with presenters, making both livestreams and recordings a seamless experience for guests.
• Quickly create snackable, shareable clips to promote audio podcasts and repurpose your content across channels and programs.

Companies from the Fortune 1000 to high-growth startups across every industry power their business with audio and video content created in Socialive. Now you can, too.

What is it like to work at your company? If I do business with your company, will I like the people I deal with?

Job candidates, prospective customers or partners, and even potential investors — they all want to know what it’s really like inside your company’s everyday operations. And your employees are one of the most impactful barometers people have when it comes to evaluating your company and its culture.

Employee spotlights are a type of content that lets your employees share their stories, experiences, and perspectives in their own authentic voice. And video is the most natural way to showcase these stories. With video creation platform, it’s easier than ever to equip teams to create professional-grade employee spotlights straight from a mobile device or computer, no matter where they are.

The importance of employee recognition

Employee spotlights aren’t just a great way to show the outside world what your organization values. They can also be a strong component of a robust employee retention program.

Recognition at work is one reason employees often cite for choosing to leave a job. In fact, 74% of employees say they want more recognition for their work. And employees are four times as likely to be engaged at work if they strongly agree that they get the right amount of recognition.

Spotlighting employees with video shows that your company recognizes and values individual contributions. Fostering a sense of belonging is another critical factor in employee retention, and video spotlights can help connect and inspire your employees.

Why employee spotlight videos?

From job candidates to potential customers, everyone wants to work with a company that has employees who are engaged, connected, productive and fulfilled. Guest blog posts, interviews, and testimonials can all be good ways to showcase your employees.

But the best way to understand an employee’s experience is to actually see and hear them talking about it in their own words. And to do that, you need an accessible, scalable, and cloud-based video creation platform.

With Socialive’s end-to-end video creation platform, employees can easily record up to 4K video from anywhere, using the devices they already have on hand. Intuitive features enable users to edit scenes within drag-and-drop layouts, add branded graphics, and upload audio and video overlays, so your content is sure to stand out.

Once you’ve finished editing, it’s simple to publish the spotlight video across channels like social media, newsletters, your website, and internal communications platforms. Socialive’s one-click integrations make it super simple to share videos across the workplace applications you’re already using, like LinkedIn, Slack, Frame.io, and Google Drive.

Plus, every recording is automatically transferred to your secure, centralized library in the cloud for storage, viewing, clipping, and editing or publishing later.

Employee spotlight ideas

Not sure where to get started? You can use employee spotlights across every stage of the employee lifecycle:

Employer branding

Your people are your brand. Your employees, therefore, may be your most engaging influencers. Sharing video employee spotlights in your marketing channels can strengthen your company’s story, support your marketing programs, and turn followers into advocates and even potential job candidates.

Recruiting

In a competitive job market, showcasing why candidates should put your company at the top of their list can really make you stand out. Video employee spotlights paint a personal picture of the culture, company values, and day-to-day work experience for candidates that want to visualize their future there.

Onboarding

Likewise, you can build employee spotlights into your onboarding process. Instruct each new employee to record a short video introducing themselves, what role they’re performing, and a few fun facts. These spotlights are an engaging way for existing employees to learn more about new hires. And new hires can look back at videos of existing employees to get to know their colleagues.

Employee engagement

Instead of the typical press release or company-wide email, consider leveraging video to highlight your DEI initiatives. You can feature members of ERGs sharing what projects they’re working on and why they’re passionate about them. You can also give employees the stage during Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and more. Not only do these initiatives help you tell your diversity story more authentically, they also make employees feel more engaged and connected with their peers.

Retention

Delivering praise one-on-one or even more publicly in an all-hands meeting is certainly rewarding for the employee. But you can take that recognition a step further by recording a short video message your employee can look back on. Taking a few extra minutes to go above and beyond the standard shoutout can yield higher employee happiness and ultimately retention.

Amplifying diverse perspectives

Your employees have fantastic stories to share about your company and their experiences working there. Video employee spotlights are the ideal way to share these authentic, personal stories.

Take a quick, self-guided platform tour to discover how we can help you amplify diverse perspectives and drive business results.

The past few years have shown that remote and hybrid work environments aren’t going anywhere. Virtual events and webinars are crucial to keeping employees and customers connected and engaged in these operating models. It’s no surprise, therefore, that the global virtual events market size is estimated to reach $657.64 billion by 2030, growing at a compounded rate of 21.4%.

And even though in-person events have returned after 2020, they tend to be a more exclusionary option. Many have found they prefer the convenience and cost-effectiveness of attending virtual events. Likewise, many organizations recognize that virtual events have the potential to reach far wider audiences than in-person events.

Hybrid events help provide the best of both worlds. Combining a “live” in-person experience with a virtual component enables attendees to pick their preferred format while allowing businesses to maximize their reach.

But executing an engaging, professional-looking virtual event is easier said than done. To provide the best experience for people in the room and virtual guests, leading organizations have turned to video creation platforms.

Combine pre-recorded and live content

Webinars, virtual trade shows, earnings calls, online conferences, digital job fairs, and fireside chats — all of these virtual events are ideal for companies to connect and engage with audiences of all kinds. But challenges like building a run of show in the video platform to match the event agenda, technical issues, and on-air speaker mistakes create added pressure for the teams behind these events.

To reduce day-of stress, consider pre-recording some of your event content. With Socialive, teams can remotely record and produce content before the live event. These recordings can then be seamlessly added to preset scenes that follow your event program.

Of course, you’ll still want to include some live content to provide the full event experience. Socialive’s platform can help reduce stress here, too. The digital version of a production studio, our Virtual Green Room is the perfect environment to conduct dry runs and technical checks before showtime — all behind the scenes.

Let’s say your company is hosting its annual industry conference. You could record all of your keynote speeches ahead of time, no matter where in the world your speakers are, then broadcast them live during the appropriate time slots. Each session could end with a 15-minute live session, like a Q&A with the audience, a customer story, or remarks from an expert on the topic.

This approach not only streamlines the creation process for virtual events, it also provides a more balanced experience for both virtual and in-person attendees. You can also use snippets from your pre-recorded content to create promotional content leading up to the event — engaging your audience well in advance of the event.

Enhance production value for virtual events and webinars

Still broadcasting a slide deck over a virtual conferencing platform? We have some bad news — your audience is bored. There are tons of virtual events and webinars they can choose from, and you’ll need to add more production value for your content to stand out.

The good news — Socialive’s intuitive cloud platform makes adding dynamic effects straight from your browser easy with a few clicks and drags. Custom graphics such as logos and automatic name tags are a simple way to uplevel production. Add audio and video overlays to take your content from static to dynamic. Effortlessly transition between different layouts with our drag-and-drop scene builder.

Best practices for virtual events and webinars

As event planners know, there’s a lot more to consider than just the day of the event. The tips below will help you flesh out your strategy before, during, and after the event.

1. Expand audiences, engage your people

Virtual events and webinars aren’t just marketing tactics. You can use this professional-grade content to engage your employees, stakeholders, customers, and job candidates. These audiences are just as vital to connect with as the prospects in your pipeline. Look at your strategic business goals for the next year and consider whether there are any opportunities to use virtual events for even greater impact.

2. Think human

If you think a virtual event is a one-hour webinar that pushes content in one direction, you may be missing the point. Remember that virtual events are about people. It’s easy to become distracted by the technological bells and whistles or get sidetracked by technical glitches. Even though the event is virtual, real humans on the other side of your screen want to connect with you. Look for ways to include them, such as live quizzes, Q&As, polls, and other interactions. Coach your presenters to develop an online presence that is personal and inviting.

3. Maximize content, drive engagement

To get the most from your virtual events, look for strategic ways to repurpose your content. Create snackable videos to share in social posts, newsletters, blogs, and campaigns. Download the MP3 file and turn it into a podcast. Reuse footage in future events by building a run of show featuring pre-recorded video to simulate the live video experience. Use recordings to build a marketing video that promotes your culture. The more you can do with what you create — and the less time, effort, and money it takes — the greater your ROI.

Scale your virtual events and webinars

Going fully virtual or providing a virtual component can increase the reach of your webinars and virtual events, elevate the experience for attendees, and boost their impact on your business. And you don’t need extensive investments in studios, equipment, and talent to turn your virtual events into immersive experiences.
Socialive is the fastest and most cost-effective way to create professional video content. Anyone from a newcomer to video or a video expert can use the platform to easily produce high-quality, branded, engaging virtual events and webinars right from their web browser. By using talent’s browser, mobile device, or professional camera to record and then the producer’s device to edit, publish, and livestream, the entire process is faster and easier than ever.

Take a quick, self-guided tour of our platform to see how Socialive can transform your virtual events and webinars.

Dating back to the 1930s during U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s tenure, fireside chats are still a valuable way for executives to connect with audiences in an authentic and interactive way.

Of course, a lot has changed since Roosevelt delivered his first fireside chat nearly 100 years ago. Now, these communications are no longer delivered via radio, but virtually via video.

While video has resulted in more opportunities for digital connection, today’s C-suite executives are busier than ever. Finding time to prepare for and participate in virtual discussions can be very challenging. That’s a problem because virtual fireside chats have only grown in popularity in recent years as workforces become more geographically dispersed.

Adding fuel to the fire, the overabundance of digital content made them lose their shine. To make these experiences feel as intimate as they were when Americans first cozied up around the radio to hear Roosevelt’s unprecedented broadcasts, leaders need to continue evolving the medium.

A video creation platform like Socialive enables corporate communications teams to remotely record leaders on their own time, which is critical for coordinating around busy schedules. Plus, intuitive drag-and-drop editing tools make virtual fireside chats more dynamic and engaging than ever — without delaying your timeline.

The value of virtual fireside chats

Virtual fireside chats and interviews have become a staple for business executives who want to be more approachable with employees and promote greater transparency about their business. They use fireside chats to informally share their insights and perspectives on the company or industry.

Virtual fireside chats and interviews give busy executives and companies with geographically distributed or remote workforces a high-impact way to engage with employees, share vital company information, and rally teams with a personal appeal by video, whether recorded and edited or livestreamed.

Virtual fireside chat format

The goal of a fireside chat is to have an organic discussion that feels open and natural rather than scripted or forced. That doesn’t mean, however, that you shouldn’t plan your virtual fireside chat.

Your program should typically include a moderator and one or two guests from your C-suite leadership team. Your moderator can be a member of your corporate communications team or a willing employee from rotating function areas, which can foster inclusion, cross-team collaboration, and transparency.

Often, a virtual fireside chat is delivered in a question-and-answer format, where you develop and share talking points or a discussion guide with your moderator and guests in advance. These questions can include pre-submitted inquiries from employees. This allows everyone to prepare well in advance so they can be sure to cover the most relevant and impactful information.

The moderator’s role is to help guests feel relaxed and keep the discussion focused. But they can also keep the content engaging by creating rapport and prompting conversation through commentary and follow-up questions.

How to take your virtual fireside chat to the next level

Transformative communication — or the evolution of your communication style to meet shifting needs and ways of working — is critical to the modern workplace. Despite their transition to video, fireside chats are not exempt from continued digital transformation.

As remote work becomes more common, traditional ways of creating video are no longer feasible. Creating content in a studio requires expensive equipment, on-location travel, extensive resources, and months of preparation.

On the other end of the spectrum, meeting platforms like Zoom and Teams don’t provide the quality or production value required to make these programs stand out, let alone meet the branding expectations of the enterprise.

Today’s teams need a solution that provides the quality of a production studio with the ease of use and remote capabilities of a virtual conferencing platform. Socialive sits at exactly that intersection. Our all-in-one cloud video production platform lets organizations:

• Record up to 4K quality from anywhere — straight from your phone, tablet, browser, or professional camera.
• Set up templates to mix and match live content, recorded videos, graphics, and screen shares in dynamic layouts with B-roll, music beds, and branded graphics.
• Manage your guests behind the scenes with your host and guests through a Virtual Green Room to ensure everyone is relaxed and prepared.
• Boost audience engagement with tools for live quizzes, Q&As, polls, and other interactions with your viewers.
• Publish simultaneously across channels, including social, digital, conferencing, and event platforms, with one click.
• Streamline content management with the ability to store and access video in a centralized, secure cloud-based recording library. No manual file transfer required.
• Edit your content, then pull audio files and video clips from your recordings for marketing, internal communications, learning and development, corporate training programs, and more, extending the life and value of your content.

One highly effective way to boost employee sentiment and truly get buy-in is through engaging company town halls.

Much more than a problem of low morale or behind-the-scenes grumbling, disengaged employees cost the world a jaw-dropping $7.8 trillion in lost productivity in 2021. That was 11% of global GDP. According to a 2022 survey from Gallup, nearly one in three employees is disengaged at work. On the flip side, companies with successful employee engagement realize about 23% greater profits.

Company town halls can help keep your employees connected and engaged, especially in dispersed work environments.

What is a company town hall meeting?

A company town hall is typically an all-hands meeting in which the leadership team looks to connect with employees, present critical business information, recognize employee efforts, and promote company values. These meetings can be held in person, virtually, or in a hybrid format. The main goal is to increase transparency and give employees a direct line to leadership — no matter the size of the organization.

Unfortunately, the challenging logistics of travel and planning an in-person town hall prevent many companies from holding them. This is especially true for companies with large-scale workforces and multiple business locations. Virtual town halls provide an effective, scalable solution for bringing employees together.

The value of a virtual town hall

While in-person meetings will always provide value in certain situations, video is the ideal medium for company town halls for a number of reasons:

1. Sense of community: At their core, company town halls connect employees and leaders, fostering a greater sense of community in your organization. If you have a large company with several offices, making these meetings virtual is a great way to boost camaraderie across different geographies.
2. Better reach: Akamai’s Senior Global Events Manager, Simon Gerzina, saw how his team dramatically expanded their reach with virtual town halls, switching from a process of flying executives from office to office. “As a virtual program, we had much better adoption because we could actually include everyone. We went from only being able to get in front of maybe 50% of our population, to being able to get in front of 100% of our people with the recording and 80% live.”
3. More inclusive: Greater reach yields greater inclusivity. Virtual company town halls provide better accessibility to employees who work remotely, manage caregiving duties, have a different learning style, or are unable to come into the office due to an illness or disability.
4. Flexibility: Video recordings enable employees to watch your company town hall on their time. For example, some employees may have conflicts during the originally scheduled meeting. Others may want to reference the recording later. Company town hall videos also make great onboarding resources.
5. Audience engagement: Many employees don’t want to speak up in front of their entire company and therefore remain silent during large, in-person meetings. Virtual town halls, however, allow for chat and polling functionality, creating a lower-stress audience engagement option. Employees can even pre-record messages of themselves to play during the town hall.

Finding the right virtual town hall platform

Employees have grown increasingly fatigued with the standard video conference experience. To keep them engaged, video meetings need to become more intentional and dynamic.

The right virtual town hall meeting platform should strike a balance between a professional look and feel and ease of use. Socialive’s end-to-end video creation platform, for example, provides intuitive tools that make it easy to create content for any business use. Especially for anyone who’s responsible for managing the town hall (who might not be a video expert), Socialive enables anyone in your organization to easily create branded, immersive town hall experiences that inspire, inform, and engage employees.

Once the meeting is over, one-click integrations ensure you can send the recording directly to anywhere you want to publish it — from social media accounts, meeting and event platforms, and file hosting sites to marketing automation platforms and video editing tools. This makes it easy to keep the meeting as an on-demand recording, clip the best parts for highlights or public consumption, or edit portions into new content.

Tips to improve company town hall engagement

Now that we’ve covered the importance of company town halls and what to look for in a virtual solution, here are a few tips to make the event robust and thrill your employees:

Pre-record content

Eliminate on-air stress and give yourself ample time to add finishing touches by remotely recording your content in advance. Not only does this method better accommodate executives’ busy schedules, but it also enables you to hear from more voices across the organization.

Include interactive live components

Socialive integrates with audience engagement tools like Pigeonhole to add live chat, polls, Q&As, reactions, and more to your company town hall program.

Amplify diverse voices

Source pre-recorded content from your employees, which can be seamlessly interspersed with live and other pre-recorded videos to showcase more perspectives across your company.

Prep your presenters

You might assume leaders are naturally good on camera, but they can often use a little coaching to make sure everything goes smoothly.

Consider live-to-tape or other formats

Psst! Your company's town hall doesn’t need to be live. Experiment with the way you deliver your presentation to see what resonates best with your employees. For example, you could pre-record the entire town hall for employees to view a simulive event, then set up a 30-minute true live Q&A session to answer any questions employees might have after they watch the recording. Or, you can send the first portion of the event as an asynchronous recording to be viewed on their own time ahead of the Q&A session.

The business impact of company town halls

Working to improve employee engagement through an engaging company town hall delivers enormous business impact. Virtual town halls can help you maintain strong connections with your people, engage your employees in an open and authentic format, and get everyone to buy into your corporate goals and your company’s mission.

Take a quick, self-guided tour of our platform to see how Socialive can help you easily create professional company town halls that keep your team connected and engaged.

Traditional communications is dead.

With the necessary shift to a remote working environment, businesses simply replicated the traditional in-person meeting through virtual means — it’s not working. While they can be useful in empowering people to communicate and collaborate remotely, 38% percent of professionals in a recent study reported experiencing video call fatigue (from Robert Half).

But it's not just in our business life. Social media has transformed how we communicate, and the enterprise must adapt or else be left behind.

It's time to explore how powerful video can be when it is used to deliver short, pre-recorded messages, also known as snackable video.

What is personalized snackable video?

Unlike other forms of asynchronous communications — "taking it offline" — such as email or chat messages, snackable videos put a human face on your communication. Typically friendly and brief, these videos can convey your message with the context and clarity that is sometimes missing from written communication. They can be shared and watched whenever, wherever, on your audience’s own time.

How to use snackable video

Best of all, personalized snackable video is endlessly versatile. Here are just a few of the many ways you could use them:

• Explain an assignment to supplement your learning curriculum
• Deliver a small, consumable chunk of course content between classes
• Prepare a team for an upcoming meeting by explaining the agenda and any pre-work you’d like completed beforehand
• Celebrate a big win with your team
• Quickly and personally introduce yourself when a sales prospect has reached out to you for more information
• Do a coffee chat with a co-worker you haven’t seen for weeks because you’re all working remotely
• Send a quick follow-up after a meeting, outlining the next steps
• Share a project status in between check-ins
• Explain a product feature or how to do something to a customer
• Explain a process to someone you’re onboarding

Not every communication requires a full-blown video meeting. When you start to think outside that box, you’re likely to uncover many more ways you might use personalized asynchronous videos.

Personable messaging through snackable video in CreatorSuite

Personalized asynchronous video can elevate voices in your organization, humanizing communications and freeing everyone to watch them on their schedule. With Socialive’s end-to-end video creation platform, enterprise companies easily create professional-quality, branded, personalized videos with the team they already have:

• Record crisp-quality video content from anywhere — straight from your phone, tablet or desktop browser — with Socialive’s CreatorSuite to ensure the highest quality possible
• Create a secure, permissions-based, centralized library of all your personalized asynchronous videos — automatically uploaded at the time of recording
• Enrich your message with our drag-and-drop editor, which includes preset layouts to combine previously recorded videos, newly recorded content, screen share video, and other media with branded graphics to guarantee a professional look and feel
• Create snackable video clips from other recordings so you can repurpose content that efficiently gets your message across

At Socialive, we believe that everyone, regardless of experience or skills, should be able to use video to easily communicate and collaborate across your business. Discover how we can help you personalize asynchronous videos that elevate your message.

Did you know that learning and educational content drive over a billion views a day on YouTube?

That is a jaw-dropping number — and it shines a light on a tremendous opportunity for companies that want to connect and communicate with people. Instructional videos, sometimes called how-to or explainer videos, should definitely be in your media mix.

Video appeals to both visual and auditory systems in the brain, making it an ideal medium for learning things. How-to videos are simply videos that explain or instruct.

How-to videos can be snackable, a lengthy recorded series, or even delivered in a livestream. They can be highly personalized or target a broad audience. They can be purely educational, educational with some entertainment, or even educational with a tiny bit of marketing to encourage viewers to consider purchasing (though it is extremely important that these videos never feel sales-y to viewers, which can be an instant turn-off).

These kinds of videos can provide step-by-step instructions for completing a specific task. They can also provide extensive background about why and how a product was built and explain how to tackle a complex, multi-stage process.

Below are four tips for producing educational and engaging how-to videos.

Make your videos relevant

Think like a search marketer! Consider your audience and how they look for answers. Imagine them typing, “How do I…?” into Google. What is of immediate interest to them? What educational information could you share with them that would be engaging and consumable in a short amount of time? How does it relate to your products or offerings?

Prioritize pragmatism

You don’t need to spend much time explaining why or what — most of your time should be spent explaining how. Get to the point quickly and focus on showing how. Eliminate any information that isn’t essential to the “How do I…?” question you’re answering.

Keep videos snackable

While long-form instructional videos have their place, the ideal length for how-to videos is less than three minutes. Focus on answering just one very specific question. If the topic you have in mind can’t fit into a short video, it’s likely not a good match for an explainer.

Be both educational and interesting

Yes, these are instructional videos, but you want to engage your audience while you educate them. Look for ways to introduce something lighthearted or even humorous to keep things interesting.

Educate and engage your audiences with how-to videos

Instructional videos, such as how-to and explainer videos, can help you provide answers to people’s questions while also establishing authority, building trust, showcasing your product, attracting new audiences, and so much more. At Socialive, we’ve made it easier than ever to create professional-quality video, empowering everyone from video producers to marketing staff to easily create branded, immersive experiences through video. Socialive’s end-to-end video creation platform powers the enterprise to:

• Record video content from anywhere — straight from your phone, tablet, or desktop browser — with Socialive’s remote recording capabilities, ensuring the highest quality content possible
• Create dynamic and engaging educational content with our drag-and-drop video editor, which includes preset layouts to mix and match video content, screen shares, and branded graphics to create the perfect video
• Reach the widest audience with one-click video publishing for recorded videos, or livestream an interactive session to a number of destinations simultaneously
• Streamline content management with the ability to record, store, and access HD video in a secure, centralized cloud-based recording library — with no manual file transfer required
• Manage talent behind the scenes during video recordings or livestreams, sharing talking points and other directions through a Virtual Green Room
• Produce a brilliant live session with the ability to set up scenes in advance, create a run of show, and add a professional look and feel in just a few clicks
• Repurpose educational content in multiple ways as snippets, clips for other videos, or more to share in marketing, sales, and training programs so you can extend the life and value of your content

How-to and explainer videos can be a crucial addition to your media mix, helping you to inspire, inform, and engage viewers. All you need to do is record, edit, publish, or livestream answers to your audience’s questions.