Video is one of the most engaging forms of content in today’s world of short attention spans.
Videos on social media generate 12 times more shares than text and image-based posts combined (Wordstream). And creating videos with small teams and small budgets is always a struggle.
Without the resources of traditional marketing teams, creating compelling videos for recruiting and employer branding can be challenging. We all struggle with the same pressing questions: How do we get people to participate? How do we keep creating videos without telling the same story over and over?
Our team addressed this by creating a proven method for building an employee video library in only one day—with up to 15 short videos!
Here’s how you can create more employee video content, effectively and on a budget:
Figure out your challenges
Previously, we hand-picked employees to spotlight in our video content, selecting people based on word of mouth and referrals from our leadership. Then we reached out to gauge interest. A painstaking process. So we invented a new approach called the Casting Call.
Time: We schedule multiple employees in 20-minute increments throughout the day. Each person arrives at their scheduled time and we ask a few questions about his/her experience with our company on camera. Cap it off with some swag as a thank you and voila! We have our videos.
Budget: By scheduling filming all in one day, we save A LOT of money versus hiring an external videographer. Throughout the year, we just ask our team to edit one video per month, which also helps avoid using an outside resource.
Build excitement
We partner with the internal communication team and our business resource groups to attract a diverse pool of participants.
We send out an email that explains we are looking for employees who can represent UMB and help us attract people like themselves – the best talent in the market! We preview what we would be asking and where it would be published. We were pleasantly surprised the first few times we reached out by the need for an overflow list!
Create a plan to keep the day moving
We discovered it’s important to help employees prepare for their video shoot.
Before the big day, we ask participants to fill out a quick survey, jotting down their thoughts about the topics we hope to cover. Once each person arrives for their scheduled time, we remind him/her about the questions we would cover and help each person “warm up” by doing a practice run, because not every employee is used to being on camera.
We help prompt people while they are on camera by reminding them of phrases they used in the survey. This results in a much more natural finished product.
A few tips when the cameras are on: Keep it short! Ask specific questions that require specific answers. If you do this effectively, 20 minutes is more than enough time to capture plenty of footage from one person.
Make it meaningful
Ironically, we end up asking our video team to do minimal editing for most of our Casting Call videos, keeping the content simple. For example, if we need an employee video about career growth, we simply look through the footage, pick out a clip and ask the video team to “package” the video for social media.
This process can result in:
- Short, 30-second employee testimonials
- Team stories or regional features
- Highlights on key themes, like diversity & inclusion or professional development
Results
Sharing authentic employee video content has produced amazing outcomes for us that consistently outperform our other career content on social media channels.
As an added bonus, we quickly discovered that video career stories on social media encourage other employees to share their own experiences in the comments. Employees become active ambassadors for our employer brand in a public way, amplifying our reach.
Although less quantifiable, employees are becoming increasingly aware of our employer branding efforts too and want to be involved. Now, we even have people reaching out asking to share a story.
Overall, Casting Calls have been a great approach for creating quality employee video content in a timely and cost-effective way. I hope our case study helps formulate creative ideas for capturing stories about your employer brand in a way that resonates — isn’t that what it’s all about?
Simply identify your goals, ask the right questions and get your camera ready.
Check out UMB’s career stories by following us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter.
Connect with me on LinkedIn to send me your questions!