How to Use Online Video for Enterprise Community
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Remarkable content is essential for establishing successful enterprise community-- publishing content that will attract & retain members, increase participation and drive valuable knowledge sharing. This deck is from the Sun Microsystems SLX webinar "How to Use Online Video for Enterprise Communities". It covers how you get started with online video, video podcasting, live streaming, and viral videos. Learn how to use online video as part of your workplace community and help increase productivity & collaboration between employees, partners & customers. Visit SLX at www.slx.com Subscribe to the Video Community Blog at: http://www.slx.com/video-community-blog/
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How to Use Online Video for Enterprise Community
- 1. How to Use Online Video for Enterprise Community Sun Learning eXchangeValue Proposition Gary Lombardo Marketing & Social Media Strategy, SLX Twitter: @garylombardo Email: gary.lombardo@sun.com Gary Lombardo February, 2009 1 Sun Confidential: Internal Only 1
- 2. Community Makes Up The Social Fabric of Society
- 3. Community in the Workplace is Broken
- 7. SupportEnterprise Security WorkplaceCommunity Your Company Customers Partners Employees
- 8. Video Has Transformed How We Express Ourselves
- 9. Online Video Community Building
- 10. Online Video Community Building
- 12. Picking the Approach Find the right balance Entertaining Informative Interviews Broadcast Webinars Demos Comedy Music Video
- 13. Tips for Creating More Effective Videos Keep it Short Keep it Simple Have a Clear Message Keep Editing to a Minimum Be natural Try a screen capture
- 14. Camera Webcam v camcorder No need to spend a lot (under $300) Digital (HD optional) Hard Disk Drive (HDD) preferable External microphone jack 640 x 480 pixel resolution 4:3 aspect ratio
- 15. Other Gear Tripod External Microphone(s) Lighting Screen capture software Built into SLX CamStudio (free open source) Other proprietary options
- 16. Editing Software Free software is fine Windows Movie Maker or Mac iMovie Other inexpensive options exist (<$100) Adobe Premiere Elements, Nero Ultra, Pinnacle Studio, others Nero Ultra Edition More expensive options exist, but are unnecessary Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Studio
- 17. What to Watch Out For Poor or distorted background lighting Background noise Unnecessary panning in and out Pinstripe effect Not enough pre-roll
- 18. Video Formats .WMV Microsoft Windows format for web publishing .MOV Apple’s format for web publishing .AVI Widely used (Windows only) .MP4 Perhaps most widely used today (MPEG-4) .M4V Apple (MPEG-4) format for iPod, iPhone, iTunes Flash Widely used for posting on web
- 19. Tips on Publishing Enterprise Community Systems Record in any format Upload Embed Your Blog
- 21. Online Video Community Building
- 22. Engagement- Title, Thumbnail, Description What You Oughta Know About Cloud Computing Title Thumbnail Description
- 23. Engagement- Tags & Categories Tags Help with search Categories -Helps with browsing
- 25. Engagement- Commenting & Rating Controversial is good Encourage people to rate & comment
- 26. Engagement- Channels Develops followers to your content Keep content fresh
- 27. Engagement- SEO on External Sites Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Important when publishing to third party sites for marketing reasons Considerations for video SEO Title & Description Tags Comments & Ratings # of views Embeds
- 28. Engagement- iTunes Title Compelling Photo Artist Clear Description
- 29. Online Video Community Building
- 30. Tap Your Video Community Notifications Email Featured
- 31. Notifications On new videos by channel, user, category On comments, other activity
- 32. Community Email & External Email External email Community email (inbox)
- 33. Get it Featured!
- 34. Tap Other Communities in the Enterprise Intranet LMS CRM
- 35. Tap Your External Community
- 36. Twitter Tweet from personal account Encourage company/product to tweet/retweet Include URL shortened link
- 37. Facebook Post it to your status Post it to fan page status & videos Post it to your group
- 38. LinkedIn Post it to your status Post it to your group
- 39. Digg, Stumbleupon, others Submit video as a link Encourage others to vote/digg
- 40. Blog Embed in your blog Encourage others to embed in blog
- 41. Online Video Community Building
- 42. Analyzing Your Video’s Effectiveness Who is watching What are they watching What are they finding most engaging Where are they coming from?
- 43. Who is Watching? Within the enterprise: role (employee, partner, customer, prospect), job title
- 44. What Are they Watching? What channels, individual videos Top Views
- 45. What are they finding most engaging?
- 46. Where are they coming from? Top Referers
- 47. Thank You! www.slx.com Demo: www.slx.com/demo Blog: www.slx.com/video-community-blog Gary Lombardo Marketing & Social Media Strategy, SLX Twitter: @garylombardo Email: gary.lombardo@sun.com
Editor's Notes
- A community is a group of people defined by a common interest. Communities have existed since the dawn of time and make up the very essence of our lives — from the neighborhood we live in, the clubs we belong to, the sports and civic organizations we participate in, and yes, to the companies we work for. A company by definition is social—functional departments, task groups and teams — all making up the social fabric of your organization…..
- …the question is…why don’t most of us feel like we are in a community at work? We tend to work in siloed areas, focused on individual tasks and in isolation. Yes, the hallway conversations, conference calls and email exchanges still occur, but they happen in isolation– typically in small groups or between individuals, without the larger whole being able to participate and benefit. You can’t tap that conversation between Jim and Sally if you never knew it occurred.
- However, in the past few years, that has begun to change with the rise of social technologies. Communities, in particular online communities within the workplace have provided a vehicle to tie these conversations together. While social media tools have proliferated the consumer world– blogging, discussion forums, microblogging, social networking, and other technologies– and have provided a way for more frequent, direct and content-rich conversations, they are just now becoming more widely adopted in the workplace, providing a means to tie isolated conversations together & bring employees, partners and customers together into a community. Online communities are addressing core needs, such as market research, product innovation, employee on-boarding & training, among others.
- Video in particular plays a crucial role in community building. It has transformed how we express ourselves in the workplace. Video is much more engaging and whether streamed live or played back aschronyounously from an archive, it serves as a way to get communications out quickly and effectively, share knowledge & training, as well as to drive thought leadership & personal branding. The technology has evolved as well to make it real accessible by anyone (like this little kid) to record & publish to the web. Almost anyone today can create their own YouTube videos, and the same hold true in the workplace.
- So, let’s talk about how you can use online video to create community in the workplace and impact core business challenges. I’ll be walking through the four mains steps for doing so: publishing content, making sure that content is optimized to engage your audience, how you can promote that content and finally the important things you need to do in analyzing the effectiveness of that content.
- Let’s start out with what you need to know for publishing videos…..
- First, let’s talk about what you want to publish. The format of your content can take many different forms:Product Presentations & DemosCustomer TestimonialsInterviewsExecutive speeches/updatesWebinarsWhat format it takes will depend upon the goal you are trying to achieve and how comfortable you as the content creator/author are with the format. For instance, if you’re a product marketing person and you want to tell customers about the latest & greatest features of a newly released product, you could do a product demo, or possibly interview the engineering & product management team around what the new product entails.Formats types- it ain’t just video:VideosScreencastsPresentationsDocumentsAudio/PodcastsPhotos
- Where you publish will depend upon first and foremost where your audience is (where do they interact with video content?) and what your goals are (if it’s more marketing content for prospects, you could look to sites like YouTube. If it’s more focused on your internal workplace community, a platform like SLX is the way to go. You’ll also see that I’ve got Twitter, Slideshare, and Flickr up here– this is because if your audience goes to sites that aren’t traditionally video sites, you should definitely seek to publish & promote the content there. Basically, you want to publish it everywhere your audience is!
- You also want to find the right balance in your video content. That balance will depend upon you and your style, and again your goals. Generally, it’s hard to be both informative and entertaining at the same time. Ideally, you can do both. (By the way, informative does NOT mean boring!). Informative video content is best when you want to show someone how to do something, or are interviewing someone for some key information. Entertaining on the other hand is
- Keep it Short- An easy way to assure that no one will watch your video is to make it too long. Viewers today, especially online (whether at work or otherwise), have a very short attention span. It’s critical you keep it short. How short? It depends upon who you ask and what the content is, but typically 2 to 3 minutes is maximum, preferably shorter. Videos longer than 3 minutes don’t have a big viewership. Under 3 minutes, people have a better chance of sticking around. Keep it Simple-You don’t have to spend a lot of money or time for a video to be effective. In fact, doing so often results in a big, overproduced montrosity. For most communication in workplace communities, a person or a couple people talking into a webcam or filming with an inexpensive portable video camera is suffice.Have a Clear Message- Make sure that your viewers will walk away with a clear idea of what you are communicating. This begins before they even click on the video, so make sure you have a good headline and description. The message in the video itself must be clear. A good way to test this is to show it to a friend or colleague and ask them to proivde you a one sentence summary of what the video is about. If they can’t do it, retake!Keep Editing to a Minimum- Don’t burden yourself with needing to do a ton of editing. Video, and live video in particular requires very little editing. It’s okay if little blips or mistakes come through– that will actually add to the authenticity. Be Natural- Just be yourself! Don’t read from a script or practice & rehearse too much. In general, when you go to film a video, take some time to think about what you want to talk about in general & put it down in bullets as talking points, but don’t do more than that. That should be plenty to begin getting your message across & will allow you to come across as your natural self.Use screen capture- If you’re camera shy, that’s okay. Do a screencapture instead (a screencapture is when you record what is directly on your computer screen, including audio). There are plenty of screen capture software on the market, including free ones, which I’ll mention a bit later.
- Now let’s talk briefly about what you will need for a camera.Webcam v camcorder- For a lot of the videos you create, webcams will work fine. Most computers today come with webcams or you can purchase one inexpensively. Webcams are ideal for creating quick, ‘intantly-publishable videos. This is especially true if you’re creating a video for your blog or a video is your blog (vlog), traveling with your computer, or need to quickly respond to an issue. For all other occassions, you’ll want to invest in a camcorder. A camcorder will produce higher quality videos. A consumer grade camcorder is fine. Most consumer grade camcorder produce professional quality video and you don’t need to spend a lot– under $300 will get you a long way.Digital (HD Optional)- almost all camcorders today record in digital. You don’t want anything else, unless you feel like spending time converting from analog to digital, which isn’t worth the hassle. Record directly to digital, which is easiest for web publication. High Definition is not required on the web, and in fact is not supported on many sites.Hard Disk Drive (HDD) preferable- You’ll want a camcorder with a hard disk with lots of memory (4GB= 1 hour of standard def video). This means the camcorder records to a disk directly built in the camera, as opposed to a piece of media, such as DVD or MiniDV. This will make it a lot easier for you to transfer to your computer and publish.External microphone jack- most camcorders have an external microphone jack, but you want to make sure. You’re going to want to supplement the internal mic with an external one and will need a mic jack to do so. 640 x 480 pixel resolution- Shoot your video in 640 x 480 pixel resolution, which is high quality and where most video platforms on the web either are or eventually will migrate. SLX currently supports 640 x 480 resolution (YouTube supports only 320 x 240, but if you record in a higher resolution you’ll ‘future proof’ your videos on YouTube). 4:3 aspect ratio- a 4:3 aspect ratio is what most standard definition video is shot in and is what is supported on the web for the most part. Shooting in a 16:9 aspect ratio is not recommended since it will display letterboxing (black bars on top and bottom).
- Tripod- An easy way to turn a good video into a mediocre one is to shoot it without a tripod. Video shot wihtout a tripod will be wobbly and hard for the viewer to view (unless you’re trying to achieve the wobbly effect). You will obtain better results with a tripod.External microphone(s)-all camcorders have built-in mics, but these mics typically don’t record high-quality sound and it’s not possible to put the mic directly on your subject your trying to record, which you will want to do Invest in an external mic (shotgun (mounted) or lapel mics are ideal).Lighting-Nothing ruins a video like poor lighting. You’ll want to invest in some low-cost lighting– free-standing lighting that you find at Walmart or Target would suffice. Screen capture software- Another thing you’ll want to have is screencapture software.
- Free software is fine- lots of free video editing software exists out there. The ones bundled with your operating systems work fine– Windows Movie Maker or Mac iMovie. Both will do a descent job for 90% of what you are looking to do.Other expensive options exist (<100)- if you’re looking for increased sophstication, I’d recommend some inexpensive options that will give you more special effects and greater control. Adobe Premiere Elements is probably the most widely used, with others such as Nero Ultra and Pinnacle Studio as well.More expensive options are unnecessary- Unless you plan on doing some high-end, professional video production, the more expensive options are unnecessary.
- Poor or distorted background lighting- Lighting is key as most webcams and camcorders don’t handle dark sitations very well. Avoid shooting in poorly lit areas. Also be sure to center the light properly. Don’t shoot in front of a window or with the light to someone’s back. That will result in a silohuetted image or darkening of the subject. Have the main lightsource in front of the person.Background noise- most mics, even built in ones, will pick up all background noise. Make sure you turn off noisy mechanical devices like fans, coffee makers, copiers, printers, etc.. Unnecessary panning in and out- Leave that zoom in and out feature alone while your filming! Panning in and out is unnecessary, will cause distraction and doesn’t broadcast well. Pick a perfect zoom level, then leave it there.Pinstripe effect- Pay attention to the clothing the person being filmed is wearing. For some reason pinstripes and other patterns don’t do well on camera. Solid, darker colors typically work best.Not enough pre-roll- All cameras require a bit of time before they start recording. If you start talking right when you hit the record button, you’ll more than likely get cut off and lose the first sentence. Wait about 5 seconds before speaking to ensure you capture all the audio.
- Record the video in whatever format works with your camera and software. Then you just upload it to your enterprise video platform, such as SLX. The platform will convert the file format into Flash, which is the standard for publishing on the web. You don’t have do anything– just upload & the conversion is taken care of for you! You can then embed the video from your video community platform like SLX to other sites, such as your website or blog. Other sites could also include other enterprise sytems, such as collaboration portals (Sharepoint), LMS, or other places where your organization shares content. You do this simply by taking the HTML code or URL link provided by the platform and placing it in the content you created on your other site.
- Depending upon your goals, you may decide to publish the videos to third party video sharing sites. This typically is the case when your trying to hit prospects or more consumer-oriented goals. In this case, systems such as Videmetrix (by Visible Measures), and Tubemogul make it easy by allowing you to load directly to their platform, then publishes to your accounts on other systems, such as YouTube, Vimeo, etc.. Just 2 weeks ago, blip.tv started doing something similar, providing an option to publish your content on blip.tv directly to YouTube.
- Once you’ve published your video, you need to make sure you’ve optimized it for engaging with your audience. Simply publishing the video is not enough if you want to increase viewership of your video. Let’s talk about some ways that you can help drive engagement…..
- First off, you want to make sure the title and description of the video are compelling. Most people are going to decide in less than 3 seconds whether they will view your video or not and your title, thumbnail and description are most important in helping them decide. Title- Your title should be compelling & rich. It should be about 64 characters or less. This will keep is short & sweet and ensure the title doesn’t get truncated when pushed out by most systems (email, etc.)Thumbnail- You want to make sure the thumbnail of your video is compelling and will encourage people to view your video. In most platforms, your video will be given a default thumbnail (typically within the first few seconds of the video). This may or may not be a compelling thumbnail. Most systems give you an option to choose a different thumbnail, which you should do until you find one that you think is most likely to draw viewers in. This is something you should be thinking of when filming your video.Description- The description of the video should be just as rich as your title, and be about 200 characters or less. Include your email, phone number and web address as part of the description. This will help people follow up with you if they would like, as well as help with search (and SEO if you push it externally). If you know that you’ll be pushing the video outside the enterprise to YouTube or another site, you will wan to incorporate as many of your keywords as possible as part of your description, which will help with SEO.
- Another important factor for engagement is applying the appropriate tags and categories.Tags- Choose tags that are descriptive and align with the most common search terms for the subject matter. (if sending externally, this is very important for SEO reasons- choose tags in line with your main keywords). Try to keep your number of tags to be 6 or less, with perhaps 8 being max. Categories- Pick categories that will allow users to find your video most quickly. Never leave a video uncategorized– most platforms require a category to be selected. Categories in particular are important in mobile browsing, such as we see here with SLX iPhone browsing….
- ….the default view for browing is by category, so you’ll want to make sure to select appropriately.
- A good way to engage is through comments & ratings. Controversial is good- You want to be provocative with your content, which will help drive comments & people to rate. Controversial doesn’t mean in a bad way, but rather in a way where you take a position on something one way or the other or show content that will make people talk. You have to be ready to take ratings and comments that are both favorable & unfavorable. Be sure to reply to comments.
- Channels are a fantastic way to engage your audience and build a community. Channels are essentially your personal page and way to broadcast out your content, usually around a particular topic. You want to make sure your channel (like your videos) has a compelling name, description, and perhaps most importantly, that the content is kept fresh. People will begin to follow you & will come to expect good content regularly. <insert example>. This is no different than other social media technologies, such as blogs.
- If you plan on publishing video on third party platforms and want it to reach the maximum audience possible, you need to have an approach with optimizing for search engines (SEO). This is a whole subject in itself that we could spend hours dicussing, but I thought I’d point a few things you need to consider. I’ve already mentioned the importance of title & description, tags, and comments & ratings….a couple other things you’ll want to consider are # of views and # of embeds or inbound links. # of views- if your video is viewed heavily, it will receive greater promotion and hence be given higher ranking by search engines. Embeds- if your video is cross-linked or embedded in other sites, this will help boost your SEO because search engines factor in these links as part of the algorithm in determining search rank. Many video sharing platforms will allow you to track in-bound links and embeds.
- Once you’ve gotten you’ve optimized your videos for engagement, you should do some pro-active engagement within the community and elsewhere to promote your videos. This will help drive viewership & deeper engagement.
- You should start off by promoting your videos within the community. There are many ways to do this, but the most common are with notifications, email (inbox community mail) and featured content.
- Probably the easiest way to promote your videos is to utilize notifications that exist within the community that may exist. Typically notifications occur around particular activities, such as:New content posted to the channelNew content posted to the community by a particular userNew videos posted on a particular categoryComments made on comments, other activities in the community- this will send notifications to people which will push further engagementOften the notifications are turned on by default, but are ultimately controlled by end users (they can turn them on/off). Some systems also allow a level of customization to the notifications that come out, such as text or images that could be included– you should try to personalize them as much as possible.
- Be sure to tap your community as well as your company. Within the community, you can typically send out emails to other community members (your friends, followers, subscribers, etc., and even all members depending upon privacy settings), which will send emails to their community inbox, and usually pushes them to their individual email accounts as well. You should take advantage of that by promoting any new videos that you post. You can personalize the email, providing context and why it would be interesting and important to them. You can also ask them to promote it themselves via other channels.Also, leverage your whole company, or at least the colleagues you associate with closely on the product or services you work on. A simple email letting them know a new video was published goes a long way to promoting the content. Be sure to include a link (which you can get from the video sharing platform), as well as easy ways for them to share it and view it in other places, such as Twitter, or on your blog.
- Another great way to promote your content is to have get it featured in the community. Often times this is main way that community members will look for content. Typcially this would require you contacting the community manager/admin (if that is not you) to have them feature it. Whether they choose to feature it or not will depend upon what the criteria is for featuring.
- Often time, organizations have other places where people collaborate and content can be shared. If you’ve got access to these systems, you should promote your videos there as well. The systems will need to have ability to embed links or HTML code of the video. Often time these systems include your collaboration portals or intranet (such as Sharepoint), LMS systems, and CRM systems.
- Depending upon your goals, you could also promote your videos through your external community and followers. There are lots of social media tools that allow you to do this, such as Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious and others. Let’s take a look at a few.
- Finally, it’s important to understand how your videos are doing in the community so that in the future you can target your content to what is working well, and understand what is not…..
- There lots of things you could analyze, but I’d recommend focusing on four:Who is WatchingWhat are they watchingWhat are they finding most engagingWhere are they coming from?Most video sharing platform will provide you means of analyzing this information.
- You’ll want to understand who is watching the videos you’re creating. By doing so, you can better understand the type of audience that is engaging with your content. In the enterprise, understanding whether it’s employees, partners, or customers is important, as well as what part of the organization they are coming or what role they play. If you’ve distributed your video outside of the enterprise community, you’ll want to understand the demographics of your audience– such as age, gender, etc.. Understanding this will indicate to you what type of audience your videos are resonating with, and allow you to understand if it’s being viewed by the audience you were targeting (such as Sales, Marketing, etc.).
- You’ll also want to understand what they are watching. This means what channels are most popular, as well as what individual videos within those channels or across the community. Having an understanding of what videos are being most viewed (total # of complete views) is important….
- ….and perhaps more importantly, what level of engagement the audience had with the video. Understanding at what point in the individual video the collective set of users attention will help you measure what content they found most compelling….
- Where your views are coming from also will help you understand how the video is being distributed & consumed. Knowing if your video is being consumed within links (from the community discussion board for instance) or embedded player (in the blog) or is sent in links by email, IM, etc. within the community gives you a sense of how ‘viral’ or widely disrtibuted the video is. This of course also applies external to the community and the enterprise– i.e. who is consuming it via Twitter, external links and embedded players ouside the community, etc..