Improve Video Adoption
Want to improve video adoption? Read on for ten ways you can put internal influencers to work and boost your corporate video strategy.
Due to current events and a push for most to work from home, video adoption is on the rise. In today’s blog, we take a look at how to boost your corporate video strategy by putting employee influencers to work.
A Business Imperative: Employee Engagement
It’s no secret that engaged employees are more productive, less likely to leave your organization, and have an increased propensity for outperforming their peers. A recent study by Vimeo reiterates just that, saying engaged employees are 31% more productive, help to sell at a 37% higher rate, and outperform their peers by a whopping 202%. Thus, there’s no argument you want to keep your employees engrossed in your business, at every turn.
Given that 46% of the workplace is expected to be Millennials this year, with 49% of those workers preferring social tools for workplace collaboration1, video is one of the best methods for delivering a highly engaging experience. In fact, 74% of corporate video viewers describe it as a “very effective” tool for communicating work-related information.2 So, a clear strategy on how to encourage video adoption across your business, can be an important area of focus.
At the start, the quality of the videos you produce is an extremely important element.
Beyond QoE
Quality comes in a number of different shapes and sizes. For example, the delivery of your content via a high-bandwidth channel so there’s no lag and a clear picture. Or the type of content or stories you’re delivering to keep watchers interested. The delivery mechanism itself via a charismatic or intriguing video “influencer,” can also be a huge differentiator and driver of adoption.
So, let’s talk about that for a minute.
What is an Influencer?
Influencer marketing has become one of the largest external marketing priorities for many brands, because it works. The audiences those brands are working to reach find something in common with the influencer and become more likely to buy.
The same concept can also work in a corporate environment, where you identify, groom and promote internal influencers to help build and grow your employee audience, keep them engaged, and work to build enough trust that those employees will share your message with customers, partners and other key stakeholders outside of your organization.
In an external marketing scenario, influencers are more easily identified, as they have promoted themselves and become celebrities in their own rights. They are able to command fairly large fees (some of them in the millions) to promote a company’s products or services.
In an internal or corporate environment, influencers may be harder to come by. But, with the right strategy, you can not only identify the right company evangelists, you can work to develop even more of them organically, from all different walks of your organization, to help drive even more engagement and video adoption.
Workers who see video in action are more likely to identify ways they can use the technology to address their own day-to-day business objectives.3
Steve Vonder Haar, Wainhouse Research Senior Analyst
Using Influencers to Drive Video Adoption
The concept seems simple enough. So how do you translate this perfected marketing tactic. Here are a few tips on how to use influencers to drive video adoption across your organization:
1. Build your strategy and process first.
You will need a process in place for how you want your video strategy to be managed. You’ll need to ask yourself a few questions. Like do you want your videos to be professional or more casual? How many influencers do you want to manage? Who creates the videos in your organization? How will they create videos? How often? And when and where are videos distributed, so it doesn’t become a disorganized ‘free-for-all?” Establishing a solid work process early on, that includes corporate guidelines, content calendar and a content library, will make a significant difference in the success of your influencer program.
2. When identifying influencers, don’t always start at the top.
You are looking to identify video influencers inside of your business who will help develop trust among the ‘masses.’ Who better to do that than someone within their own employee group?
If you already have a team of internal culture champions, that might be a good place to start. If not, ask around and find the people within your organization who already have influence or who are trusted. This is a great place to start.
You may want to start small and build your group of influencers from there. Some companies have many influencers from within. While others maintain a small group.
By showcasing video webcasting working at its best, organizations essentially give license to other workers interested in trying their hand at video content development.3
Steve Vonder Haar, Wainhouse Research Senior Analyst
3. Don’t worry too much about the medium.
Not every business has a budget, the technology or experience to produce professional video, but that shouldn’t be a hindrance. The only tool you really need to shoot quality video is likely in your pocket—your smartphone. And, keeping in line with being authentic, your viewers will appreciate more off-the-cuff productions. Not to mention, removing barriers like the need for fancy equipment can speed video adoption. With just a few tips and tricks and a little editing, smartphone videos provide a great way to get your messages to the masses in a quick and simple manner.
4. Allow influencers to share freely (within reason).
Influencers should be passionate about their causes, industry or your offerings. They should share their subject matter expertise freely with employees, always staying within corporate guidelines (i.e. not sharing sensitive information). They are the subject matter experts and people want to hear about their experiences, so they can learn from them and adopt new best practices to help them do their own jobs better.
5. Develop content that will resonate with your audiences.
Make sure your influencers always begin with your audience in mind, and create generously for them. By generously, I don’t necessarily mean a lot of content. I mean creating content and telling stories that benefit them and give them positive experiences. Influencers should start a conversation or build a story they can contribute to. We live in a connection economy. So, influencers should tell stories that will resonate with individuals, versus simply reaching the masses.
6. Make sure your influencers are keeping it real.
In this day and age, where information is available everywhere and nothing seems hidden, your influencers should take the same approach to videos. As they develop their narratives, keeping them transparent, authentic and honest will help humanize the content, gain trust and better build their following.
7. Let your influencers find their unique voices.
The key difference between the influencers who “make it”—even in the corporate world—and those who don’t is rarely the volume of content they produce or how much they work. It always comes down to having a unique voice. So, let your influencers find theirs and showcase their unique personalities through their videos. That means they can also get creative in terms of the locations from which they shoot, the backgrounds they use, their tone of voice and other creative elements.
8. Don’t forget your leadership.
While you don’t always have to start with your leaders, given time constraints and such, getting support from the corporate suite never hurts. Executive influencers are always important for delivering your most critical messages that need to reach your organization as a whole. If top executives in your organization agree that driving video adoption to engage employees is a critical piece of your cultural mix, encourage them to lead by example and use video as their main medium to communicate their key initiatives.
9. Focus on metrics that matter.
One of the most important steps in any major project is to set goals and KPIs first. In other words, define how you will measure video adoption. While your influencers may be most interested in building the largest audience possible, don’t forget the most important things to measure are engagement and return on investment (ROI). Are you staying above average in the number of followers engaging with your videos or posts, which indicates more passion and relevancy? And are you understanding and delivering the specific results your company is ultimately looking for? Is the sentiment coming back from viewers positive?
10. Choose the right technology.
Beyond putting your plans in place, think about how you’re delivering on them. Make sure you choose an enterprise streaming platform that meets the needs of your organization as a whole. Also, don’t forget about your network. Video uses a significant amount of bandwidth, and most networks aren’t sized to handle hundreds or thousands of video streams at one time. The more you use video, the more it can tax your network. And if people have a hard time watching your videos, they probably won’t bother—i.e., video adoption goes out the window. So, choosing the right network distribution solution can make all the difference.
Today’s businesses face the challenge of inspiring a restless, potentially disengaged mobile workforce. Of all the tools they have at their disposal to undertake this task, video might just be the most important. It facilitates collaboration, delivers information the way employees prefer to consume it, and provides a powerful medium for sharing inspiring stories. Enlisting influencers to help bolster engagement and build your internal brand can be a great strategy for ensuring your company and your employees are leveraging video to its fullest potential.
Want more tips on how to convert today’s video awareness into long-term video adoption? Wainhouse Research’s Steve Vonder Haar has 10 Strategies for perfecting your enterprise video strategy as employees return to the office.
1 Queens University of Charlotte
2 Survey Insight: Gauging the Effectiveness of Video as an Enterprise Communications Tool
3 Converting New Video Awareness Into a Lasting Video Advantage
