There are lots of different video training experiences out there. You’ve got your snazzy, dynamic, corporate marketing partner hacks videos. You’ve got those overly bright medical videos with the non-descript lounge or elevator music in the background. Everyone always seems to have teeth that are way too white in those videos.
You’ve got your incredibly awkward ‘80s videos with seriously bad acting, you know, like those sex-ed videos your high school biology teacher made you watch because she felt too uncomfortable going over the details in front of a bunch of teens. You’ve also got those “don’t do drugs” videos with the awkward disco dance scenes.
You also get a lot of short and informative TikTok videos nowadays about stuff like “the internet of things” or “enterprise content marketing”. Kids are smart! They make TikTok videos, and then people see the videos and give them the thumbs up. Next thing you know, they’re all over the internet, and your mom’s sending you tons of the things, totally blocking up your memory stick! But they’re good. They’re smart.
Advantages of video training
Image source: Accelerate Agency
So learning about the world through video is kind of what a lot of us have been doing since movies were invented. If it wasn’t for Baywatch, how would any of us know how to swim? But seriously, we learn a lot from TV, like what best partner relationship management software is all about or who the Chicago Bears are. They’re not caniforms. We’ll tell ya that. They might eat fish, though, being so close to those big ponds.
There are lots of advantages of video conference training, like:
- Seeing someone do something instead of just explaining it in words
- Being able to rewind and replay. You can’t do that with real-life presentations
- Being less expensive than hiring someone to train you. It could also be a business instant messaging for your company
- Needing only one video that everyone can watch at their leisure
- Being more laid back than some other training styles
Disadvantages of video training
It ain’t all sunshine and rainbows, though. While the video world might seem all glitz and cocktail shrimps, there’s a dark underbelly to it all, such as:
- The videos can’t answer questions. They’re not sentient
- The videos need to be re-edited and updated every time something changes
That’s about it. Guess it’s not such a dark underbelly, after all. You can go ahead and do online referee training with video from VIDIZMO EnterpriseTube if you want to see an example of video training.
Where can we get a video?
The next logical question, now that we’ve covered the very extensive pros and cons of video training, might be, “Where can we get a hold of one of those video thingamajigs?”
We have three answers for you:
1. Find an existing video for your particular product
If you work for a big company, it’s possible that someone’s already made a video about blog branding that they’d be willing to share in exchange for some home-baked cookies or some useful techniques on how to manage inventory on shopify. If your branch doesn’t have such a video, maybe another branch does!
Even if your particular company doesn’t have a video for your product, there could be other companies that have similar products that work in the same way with the same mechanisms that you could borrow from. It’s also worth scouring YouTube to see what’s available there. There’s no point in reinventing the wheel if the video is only meant for internal training!
2. DIY it
If there is no writing and reading an affiliate network script video guide for your company or online, you could dust off the old camcorder and make one yourself! If you follow this route, you have a lot of fun ahead of you. You’ll want to cover all kinds of things, like how the product works, frequently asked questions, maybe some backstory about how it was developed and why.
You can get someone in the office who’s handy with video editing software and understands how video content moderation works to make the video or just make a PowerPoint presentation-style video with a few shorter clips of actual footage.
3. Hire a professional
If you have the dinero, you might consider hiring someone external to make the video, but you would still need to supply them with all the necessary information to make it as useful as possible. Hiring a professional might just give it a bit more of a sophisticated finish, some pizazz and just like hiring a tech QA agency it would make things easier for the company
How to use the video
So now that we have our video and we’re convinced that using it is a good idea, what are we gonna do? Just stick it in the VCR player and hit play, or as kids these days would say, “stream it”? It’s a little more interesting than that.
Here are some things you can do alongside playing the video:
Include quizzes!
Everyone loves a pop quiz! You can get everyone into the spirit of learning by informing them that ,at the end of the session, everyone will be split into teams and quizzed on what they have learned. Maybe the winning team gets to win that leftover champagne from last year’s Diwali party. Maybe they get nothing but the smugness of a win. Maybe they get champagne. Go with champagne.
You can also take breaks to do multiple mini quizzes to break up the learning and give people a chance to absorb the information.
Handouts
While we might want to move away from paper overall, especially if you work in a paperless law office, sometimes it’s useful to have a synopsis of the information you’re learning on a physical piece of paper. This allows you to add notes where needed, highlight things, and, most importantly, doodle.
People have different learning styles, and some might find it helpful to have both a video and a written transcript or synopsis of the video.
Question time
No training session is complete without the chance to ask your trainer/manager / poor unsuspecting colleague a barrage of difficult and only semi-relevant questions about the course. You want to make sure to leave time at the end of the course and throughout for questions. You can write answers on a whiteboard for people to be able to easily refer back to.
You should also keep a record of the questions to incorporate answers and explanations into any new versions of the video and write up a list of FAQs so that you don’t have to keep repeating yourself or hunting for the same information.
Games!
By games, we don’t mean taking an imaginary drink every time the presenter says the words “but um” (sorry). You can have brainstorming sessions where, in your teams, you come up with the taglines for the product and then vote for the best one together. You could also include a crossword puzzle.
You could make a rap about the product using all of the facts you learned about it or a haiku if you’re better at syllables than rhymes. You could play two truths and a lie and guess which statements are lies. There are many possibilities!
Prizes
How fun is learning if you don’t get a gold star, chocolate, or an all-expenses-paid trip to Duluth, Minnesota at the end of the session?. Rewarding your colleagues with something for their efforts will make learning much more enjoyable and memorable than a dreary, joyless morning in a small, stuffy office room with the window blinds drawn and the nagging sense of existential dread drawing steadily closer with every comic-sans clad factoid.
Role-playing (ooh la la)
Are you the irate customer shouting down the line about how the fan you sold them didn’t come with batteries (even though it’s got a USB connector)? Are you the confident customer service agent with a steady, soporific tone who lulls them into submission?
A little bit of role-playing can be a fun way to break the ice and practice your customer service skills and newfound knowledge in a relaxed and supportive environment. One of the fastest ways to learn a new skill and put new knowledge into practice is to do so via the medium of play and acting.
Snacks
You need to keep those brains alert and serotonin positive if you want your colleagues to pay attention and learn a lot about the reasons behind online shopping cart abandonment. Make sure you have a bunch of healthy snacks available and some unhealthy ones in moderation, as well as water and green tea! Everyone can use a little energy boost from time to time, but hydrating with water is key to feeling awake and alert.
For healthy snacks, choose something with low amounts of sugar, like strawberries and other pieces of fruit. Too much sugar will get everyone high at the start and crash at the end. Anyone with toddlers knows what we’re talking about. What you want is an even keel of energy and activity throughout the session before sending everyone home for their well-deserved nap.
One final quiz…
Once your colleagues have finished their training session, you can follow up a week later with one final quiz to see what they’ve retained from the session and, hopefully, transfer their knowledge from their short-term memory into their long-term memory.
Training videos can be a wild ride
The most important thing to remember when delivering video training sessions, whether it’s energy training via video or something else, is to keep them fun, lighthearted, and engaging. Making them interactive will keep people’s attention spans from waning, and following up with a quiz a week later will help them retain the information in the longer run.
So, are you feeling inspired to make some funky new training videos?
