Mastering Learning & Training Videos: A Guide to Engaging and Effective L&T Content

THE LEARNING AND TRAINING VIDEO CHALLENGE

If you’ve been tasked with creating Learning and Training Videos for your company but you’re not sure where to start, we hope this article helps you get started on the right foot. We’ve created a ton of L&T content for our clients (some of it award-winning) with videos ranging from expert interviews to demonstration videos, and from animated explainers to live-action videos with actors, props and locations. There’s so much you can do to create effective training videos and we know that it can be a little overwhelming. Let’s look at some of the options and some examples below. You can also see more about our L&T services here.

TYPES OF LEARNING AND TRAINING VIDEOS

Animated Videos use animation, graphics, voice overs, music, on-screen text and typography, and visual storytelling to explain concepts, processes, or skills in an engaging and easy-to-understand way. Instead of relying on live-action footage, these videos use characters, icons, and motion graphics to simplify complex ideas, making them more digestible and entertaining for the viewer. Animated training videos are great for breaking down tricky topics, adding a fun element to learning, and helping to keep viewers' attention. They’re also highly versatile, as you can create animations for a wide range of subjects, from technical training to soft skills development.

With custom graphics your video(s) can match the branding of your company completely. We use colors, fonts, icons and anything else we can identify to make sure the content fits your brand’s identity.

Something to think about: If your team or audience is diverse, or if you have locations in multiple countries, you should consider adding closed captioning to your videos. This way you can use the same exact video content for multiple languages.

Expert Interviews/Talking Head Interviews are on-camera conversations with someone who has specialized knowledge, information or experience in a particular topic area. The goal with these interviews is to deliver insights, advice, or unique perspectives from the expert that can be valuable to the audience. Whether the focus of your content is new hires or current employees, this type of video is personal and speaks directly to your team. They’re very useful to deliver information about policies, compliance measures, procedures and customer service.

Demonstration Videos are perfect for explaining how to use a product, how to access a service, and how to complete processes found in the workplace. You can be as simple or as creative as you want to be with these videos. Simplicity may mean that you have one of your team members on-camera showing how to use your product. A creative demonstration video can have multiple team members, a built-in storyline, and even actors brought to play parts of customers, buyers or users.

Interactive Videos are a little like role-playing. While your audience watches your video they are given questions or options to choose from resulting in a correct, or incorrect, answer. The video jumps to a new scene based on their answers. These videos are sort of “gamified” and are similar to the “choose your next step” books you might have read. It’s a great way to keep people interested, and it’s a great way to train your workforce. Not only do viewers learn what the right answers are, they learn which answer are wrong and that’s really helpful.

New Hire Orientation/Recruitment Videos typically feature people from your team speaking on camera. The motive here is to introduce your new hires to the culture, policies and processes of your company. You can also include shots of your location (office, shop floor, warehouse, customer service areas, etc.) to give viewers a flavor of where they’ll be working and what’s it like to work at your brand. Orientation videos can be as creative as you want. For example, if you consider your company to be a fun place to work, have fun with your video and use humor and quirky music. To use a very specific example of being creative, if you’re a book publisher make your orientation video a story about a new person coming to work for you and the amazing things that happen to them along the way. There’s no limit on what you can do.

These videos can be used for both an internal-facing audience (employees, new hires), but they can also be used to show off your company and culture to the general public. If you want to create video content that speaks to both audiences, make sure there isn’t any proprietary information included that you don’t want the public to know.

Workplace Compliance Videos are usually very straight-forward. They involve a person, most often in some type of management role, speaking on camera to inform your employees about things like policies, procedures, emergency management, data protection and more. We help out by providing teleprompters during filming to make it very easy for the people who are on camera.

Compliance videos are almost always internal-facing because they contain proprietary and/or company-specific information.

Animated Explainer Video

Orientation Video

Product Demonstration Video

Workforce Recruitment Video

HOW TO GET STARTED?

One of the first things you need to do (any maybe the easiest one) is to ask “is your video content is going to be internal- or external-facing, or both?” A video can be both internal- and external-facing. For example, New Hire Videos are great to show new employees. But if they’re done right, they can also be used to introduce the public to your brand’s culture. Creating video content that works for both your team and the public is a great way to get the most bang out of your buck.

What is your budget? Each type of Learning and Training video requires its own budget size. An animated video using custom graphics that match your brand style will be more expensive than an animated video using stock assets. And a demonstration video using one team member is going to be more cost-effective than a demonstration video that used actors and locations. And while the type of video you create may be more costly, it pays off with branded elements, engaging content, creativity and sets your brand apart as unique, professional and trust-worthy.

How many videos do you need to create? If you want to show viewers how to use your product, one video usually suffices. But what if you have a long list of policies you need to discuss? A module of videos may be the way you need to go. Modules separate videos by topic and each module can build upon the previous one. They’re also a great way to make your content more engaging as your employees can watch videos one at a time and take their time watching each one. With a module system you can also track views, time on site and more. If you do go the route of video modules, you’ll need a back-end system to host your videos. This isn’t a big deal and the costs are pretty low considering that this is where you’ll host such important content.

Once you’ve answered the above items, the script is the very first step in the actual pre-production process and is the foundation of all videos. Nothing can happen without it. It’s so important that you may need to make it a group effort on the part of your company, or hire copy writers or your video production company to create it. The important thing is to make sure you are writing the script to be engaging but also informative. The information in your video is very important and you want to make sure viewers stay engaged.

At this point, you’re ready to take-off. But before the cameras roll or the animations get created it’s time to:

• Choose the team members who are going to be on camera, or find and hire actors to take part in your videos.

• Find locations for your videos (your office, a conference room, an outdoor space, etc.) that match the dialogue that viewers will be listening to.

• If you’re doing live-action videos (not animation) it’s time to schedule dates for filming.

WHY STORYBOARD MEDIA GROUP IS YOUR PERFECT L&T VIDEO PARTNER

We’ve worked with clients in all types of industries to create L&T content: tech, healthcare, education, lifestyle. We’ve created L&T content for include Raymour & Flanigan, Chelsea Piers, Port Authority of NY/NJ, Mercedes, United Technical Institute and The State Bar of California in Los Angeles and San Francisco. We’ve created content that has helped our clients win Brandon Hall Awards for Excellence in learning and training programs. And we’ve partnered with one of the largest L&T development brands in the world to produce live-action training videos for their clients.

We provide full-service including script writing, concept creation, finding and hiring actors, finding locations, production teams, storyboarding, editing and more. If you want to be sure your video production company can tick all the boxes on your list and create the content you need, look no further than Storyboard Media Group.

Issues That Can Lead to Hidden Costs in Video Production

On our blog we talk a lot about how-to, why-to, where-to, what-to and who-to. OK, maybe more than one of those is made up but we hope you get the point. All the advice we give here is from years of producing video and marketing content for your clients. Sometimes we’re in the driver’s seat 100% - meaning the client tells us what they need and we plan, execute and deliver. Other times we’re given a script and our client comes to set to help direct the shoot. We’ve learned from our trials and tribulations, and our challenges and successes, how to execute a project as efficiently and as smartly as possible.

Our advice to you, before you take the dive (please see GIF below), is that you should be sure you are exercising proper planning. This will help you to address any hidden pitfalls and costs that may arise during video production. In other words, you want to be aware of the challenges you may have to face before they end up costing you more money than you expected. The following are some issues that can lead to hidden costs in video production and what you can do about them:

Lack of Focus

If you have too many ideas floating around, you may have too many hands in the cookie jar. This kind of interference can seriously mess with focus. It will extend the length of production and lead to more costs all around. In addition to proper planning, you must be attentive and delegate accordingly so that no one is overshooting the goal. And if you can do it, identify just one or two people on the team who know your project inside and out. They can provide feedback quickly and clearly to the creative team you're working with.

Stakeholder Buy-In

Is everyone on board (you know, the most important people AKA the people who have ‘final say’)? Are you sure? The very first step in establishing any video marketing plan is a very important pre-production tactic - ensure you have proper stakeholder buy-in for the project. If everyone is signed off on a budget, you should have no issues with costs down the road. That includes any hidden ones that may come up. And if everyone is on the same page with goals, messaging and outcomes that makes sure that re-dos don’t come up at the end of the project.

The better you can communicate with your investors AND your video production team, the fewer surprises you will have. You should never have to worry about a lack of stakeholder buy-in if you’ve put all your ducks in a row. Just remember, stakeholder segmentation will kill your budget every time. So, don’t be afraid to speak up in the beginning about all of your needs.

To make sure you address any possible hiccups, make time to revisit the budget every week/month and adjust accordingly. Not only does this demonstrate to stake-holders you care about their money, it will allow you to keep a closer eye on the production process. This also means you can better identify issues before they become serious problems.

Improper Planning

There should never be any “winging it” with video production. There are just too many things that need to be done to prepare for a shoot. Lack of direction and a plan will always lead to the most hidden costs. So whether you do these things yourself, or you hire a full-service video production team make sure you keep these pre-production tasks in mind:

• Delineate your business objective for the video.

• Define your audience and create buyer personas.

• Develop your message and write any scripts.

• Hire any talent needed.

• Establish a budget with ALL stakeholder buy-in.

• Set up marketing and sales strategies.

• Pre-production meetings and approvals.

• Schedule a professional video production team.

By far, the most important step you can take before hosting a video production team is to plan accordingly. There should be no surprises the day of the shoot. Of course, nothing ever goes 100% as-planned, but when you are well-equipped, those hidden costs will be a little less hidden. Or better yet, they won’t exist at all.

If you have any questions about avoiding the issues and hidden costs of video production, give us a call. We can help you work through any concerns you may have and help you establish a killer video marketing plan in no time.