Associations. Education. Business.
7 Things To Do With Video.
Here are 7 fun things associations & organizations can do with video to reach and engage their members and supporters!
Our world has become increasingly mobile. People move for many reasons – to be closer to family, to live in a city they’ve always dreamed of, or to lower their cost of living.
While previous generations may have worked one job for 35 years, we’re doing well to make it one or two years before wanting a new challenge.
These factors add up to your having more competition than you’d expect at your next interview – particularly from candidates with vast experience. This can be intimidating for those new to the workforce or making a drastic career change.
A video on the resources, available mentors, and experience your association holds is a great way to show potential members the tangible need they have to become involved as soon as possible.
Broken printers and computer viruses aren’t the only challenges we face as working professionals. Sometimes the greater challenges are interpersonal relationships with clients, managers, and co-workers.
How do we gracefully handle trying moments while still communicating clearly? Make a video to show how networking within your association is a gold mine for discussions with people who truly understand both your job and the industry you work in as a whole.
Brainstorming within a membership community doesn’t just have to be limited to conflict resolution either – it’s a great low-stakes environment for tossing around ideas and getting valuable feedback and perspectives from others.
Combine these ideas with the potential of personal friendships and lifelong connections with other members, and you have a convincing pitch for why potential members need to hurry up and get involved.
Professional development is one way to stand out as a dedicated practitioner in your field regardless of age or experience. What better incentive for potential members to sign on than the idea that you’ll dish up all the professional development options they need to consider in a quick, easy-to-digest form?
Use video to show how painless sifting through the options will be when you’re guided by the experts in your association (social media updates, helpful virtual newsletters, etc.) and you’ll be flooded with new membership eager to save time and energy while still being informed.
Highlighting a valuable member in your association via video is a win-win proposition. The member feels appreciated and therefore interested in using the platform to share their workplace secrets.
How do they stay productive? Do they have advice for others trying to attain their position? When they share insights, your association is given credibility for having a knowledgeable individual using their time and money in your ranks.
It also casts a vision for young hopefuls in your field. Because where do they want to be in ten years? Right where your member is. So what’s the logical first step in attaining that career vision? Joining the successful person’s beneficial professional association, of course!
Whether your professional association is hosting a conference or you’re attending one relevant to your industry, this is a great opportunity to use video to display your expertise.
Your call to action could be for people to visit your booth at the ASAE conference. You could also use video to list five reasons why it’s worth the expense of your conference’s attendance.
These approaches add value to your brand because they present concrete examples of your knowledge, field experience, and involvement in the community of practice.
Anyone can talk on a topic for 15 minutes. What makes people excited is hearing someone’s enthusiasm about a topic. It’s magnetic!
I know nothing about physics, but show me a TED Talk where the speaker shows his or her passion and makes the topic engaging, and I’ll sit through the full 30-minute video.
You can spice up promotional videos by talking about why you love what you do. How has being in an association made your job better/easier/more fun?
People are engaged by stories, and you’ll have more success recruiting if you use narrative rather than a long list of potential services and capabilities.
In an age of endless options, what makes your association the best choice? Use a video to show individuality that highlights your strengths.
If you’re a creative group, make a virtual office tour featuring your well-decorated desks and quirky culture. Highlight company events that are unique and have an interesting backstory.
If you’re targeting practical members uninterested in pomp and pageantry, show your well-kept archive of webinars, meeting notes, and professional development opportunities for a value-add that sells itself.
7 Things To Do With Video.
Here are 7 ideas for fun and engaging ways your business can use video to connect with their market and potential employees, and everyone in between!
This option takes thoughtful review of your business practices. Do you aim for 99% customer satisfaction? Do you read Google and Yelp reviews and discuss how you can apply their comments?
Whatever your company values and goals are, the public should know about – and more importantly – understand them.
People may not choose your business simply because of low prices, but if you show the link between pricing and the company’s dedication to honesty in business practices, it makes you more than just a good or service.
Providing documentation of all policies could create an uptick in clientele interested in working with a trustworthy business.
It’s easy to feel alienated when dealing with automated answering systems, templated forms, and website dropdowns with no write-in options.
People like to feel they know the businesses they interact with, and highlighting the real people within your business is a great way to achieve that feeling of connection.
Why do they love their jobs? What’s their favorite thing about the company? Do their family and friends do business with you?
Include your employees in the creation of this video and they’ll share it with a sense of ownership and company pride.
Just because you can explain your company’s product in four detailed paragraphs does not mean you should.
Put on your training hat and think, “If a new employee walked in the door right now, how would I explain it without overwhelming them?”
Take that approach and make it into a short video with the right graphics and accompanying footage and you can transform a formerly dull paragraph into a lightbulb in your customers mind flashing the words, “I need that!”
Related to the previous entry, showing how your product is made can add life to a seemingly simple topic.
This could also be a light-hearted approach if you show the process of working with your employees if your company provides services rather than a physical product.
Why tell people when you can show them? In theory, the process of making Twizzlers is boring, but how long did you spend watching the gif above?
Once you’ve read a few job listings they start sounding the same – professional, reliable, detail-oriented, etc. Next time you’re in need of new personnel, make a reusable recruiting video.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a buttoned-up professional group or Silicon Valley tech. Potential employees will have a feel for your people and environment and can apply accordingly.
Making this kind of video could even be proactive – leave it posted on YouTube and potential employees will come to you without any of your man hours being spent.
Sit down and do a quick SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of your market.
What do you notice? Take your “Strengths” and “Opportunities” and communicate them in a way that reflects your business’s character and advantages.
Once you create this video, you could reuse it for recruitment, an “About Us” page on a website, or a quick, engaging introduction to your business at conferences.
Brand recognition has a huge role in consumer selection.
We gravitate toward the familiar and shy away from the unknown.
This means there’s tangible money to be made in making your business recognizable to the average person on the street.
You don’t have to be the flashiest, most obnoxious competitor out there. You’ll win by having a consistent video design, tone, and brand characteristics consumers can quickly understand and explain to others.
7 Things To Do With Video.
From incorporating video into your lesson plan to engaging prospective students, here are 7 fun ideas educators can do with video!
Not every potential student will be able to visit your campus in person, so how can you acquaint prospects with your campus environment? An online video!
Take prospective students and their families on a virtual tour. Use an interactive map that encourages viewers to feel engaged with your physical layout.
You can further orient students to campus life by highlighting fun local traditions and landmarks. A series of shorter videos are great for browsing, and they allow you to use multiple faces and voices – maybe a popular campus athletes or faculty – to represent the people at the heart of your campus.
Video is a fun, engaging way to welcome students and show them what you have to offer.
In addition to sending an acceptance letter, engage your recruits with an acceptance video! The video can congratulate them on acceptance, let them know they are important to the university, and start them down the path to finalizing their admissions process.
You can include helpful presentations that show them how to find and applying for housing, enroll in courses, and engage with extracurricular groups on campus. Use this time to describe interactive classrooms, top-of-the-line science labs, and the many study spots available to fit each learner’s needs.
The videos will ease their concerns about fitting into campus life and will assist their transition into the next phase of their educational experience.
Videos are a great teaching medium. Faculty can use videos to open up time in class for more interaction and practice of skills.
Videos can help students reflect and prepare before discussions, show complex experiments or equations, and demonstrate intricate procedures.
Video walk-throughs of new concepts and problem-solving approaches provide anytime access to instructors in a format that can be watched as often as needed as students complete homework and work toward mastery.
Students are not just consumers of information and content. Many are excited to share knowledge and experiences as video creators. Expanding traditional written assignments to include a video component allows for increased student creativity and engagement.
Not only will students learn the subject matter, they’ll also discover how to present content in visually compelling ways. The process will increase their information literacy skills and add a bit of camera skills and video editing to their repertoire.
Video can be done many ways – complex, full production video, screen capture while solving a problem, or a simple interview recorded with a smartphone.
Students enjoy learning from other students. Transforming into a college student requires the cultivation of many new skills, and everyone needs a little inside scoop.
Let students tips with each other in short, fun video interviews. You’ll help reorient what can seem like an unmanageably large organization into easily negotiated pieces.
Faculty and staff can also share survival tips for everything from time management to where to do your laundry.
No matter how far and wide your alumni have traveled, video can keep them nostaligically back at their alma mater enjoying campus life.
With video, your alums can re-visit a former hangout, stay up with campus transformations, and even sing the fight song with students in the quad before the big game. Encourage your alums with video to take an online class from a favorite professor. Show off the great research your faculty are producing.
Perhaps most importantly, the right video can acquaint alumni with current students, showing them the remarkable recruiting potential and talent base at their own alma mater.
Potential students want to know about the new town they’ll call home. Where will they eat dinner when their parents visit? What’s a good place to enjoy a refreshment with friends after studying? What are some of the big and small entertainment venues?
With a series of short videos you can bring the local culture to life by showing landmarks and discussing the history of your town. Fill students in on campus haunts, volunteering opportunities, and the places and people that make your college town unique.
Whether you’re discussing the weather or listing the ten most popular local fashions, these videos will show potential students the wider community they’ll inhabit.
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