Category: Thought Leadership

Streaming videos has become a way of life these days. From YouTube to Facebook, Hulu and Netflix, streaming videos are everywhere. But the thing with streaming videos is the fact that you need to be online to do so. You could argue that everybody is always connected via their smartphones and tablets or the fact that Wi-Fi is now offered practically anywhere, but the truth is, there are times when people don’t have Internet access, which is why bigger brand streaming companies are offing offline video access and you should, too!

People either don’t want to use their own data for streaming videos or are on the go and can’t always get Wi-Fi, which means offline video access is still an important feature people want. Netflix, Hulu and even YouTube offer offline streaming, allowing customers to enjoy downloaded videos and movies to watch later when they’re not on a network.

Since there’s still a demand to watch movies without any Internet connection, you should think about offering offline video access for your own customers or employees. Videos can really take up a lot of data, especially if they’re in HD or 4K, and many users are careful about how much data they use, which is why offline videos are preferred by many who would rather save their data.

If your company uses videos for training, communication or knowledge sharing, you might want to include offline video access for employees who aren’t always connected. CircleHD is a powerful and user-friendly enterprise video solution that offers superior offline support. Those using videos for educational purposes can take your training course videos offline using the handy CircleHD mobile app. This means they can learn anytime, anywhere and don’t need to be online near a computer to do so. And the app will track their progress and update their portfolio when they get back online, syncing everything they’ve seen offline so that they can continue where they left off.

Although it might seem like everyone’s online all the time, the opposite is true, which is why offline video access can be very beneficial for your enterprise and its employees!

Creating a custom and specialized intranet for your company can help make everyday processes much easier and run seamlessly. This way every employee has access to important company documents, information and more in one convenient place. But a digital transformation isn’t always easy to implement. To make sure your digital transformation initiative is successful, you’ll need to have everyone at the company on board. This way the project can gain traction and then other KPIs will then follow to justify your ROI. So what can you do to make sure that everyone adopts this new too? Read on for some useful strategies that will ensure the success of your Intranet platform by all:

Promote Change Gradually

Even though the new digital tool will help everyone do their job better, there will still be some staff members who won’t buy into it. They think that the old way was better and will continue to do it the old way. In order to combat this, make sure that you aren’t bringing on this change all of a sudden. Make sure you do it gradually, letting employees know months in advance before the final adoption so that they can prepare themselves for the upcoming change. Continue to inform them about the new tool so that by the time it rolls out, they’ll feel more comfortable using it.

There’s A Bell Curve For Adoption

Just because there were no challenges when the new tool launched doesn’t mean there won’t be challenges in the near future. The adoption curve is bell shaped, so when you first roll it out, you’ll get lots of traction, but over time, the curve will go up and then down as more people spot problems in the new tool and change their might about accepting it.

Know your workforce

More than likely, those who are younger will adapt easier since they’re naturally more digitally savvy, while older generations might struggle with getting to know the new intranet. To help bridge the gap, always provide proper training for all. When you incorporate CircleHD into your enterprise, you’ll get the proper training so that all can easily use it. The online help center provides answers to a number of questions and a specialist will always be on hand to answer anything else.

Creating an inclusive work culture when you have a large organization can be tough, but it’s an even greater challenge when you have several offices across the globe. The norms and traditions are different in each country your company has an office in, which Can make it tough to build that inclusive culture across your entire worldwide organization. But creating an inclusive work culture is important for the success of the enterprise since it allows employees to feel more comfortable and engaged with your company. Although it’ll be challenging, you can still create that needed inclusive culture with these useful tips:

Look For The Gaps

To be more inclusive all across the board, it’s important that your company find the caps in your company’s workforce so that you can see what sort of trends there are for an inclusive culture and equal representation for all sites. Maybe you need more women in leadership or minorities in your company’s workforce? Finding these gaps will provide you with the answers needed to create that inclusive culture. Because the company is so large and spread across the glob, it’s crucial to look for things that might be under the radar and that you’re not aware of.

Give Your Leaders Inclusion Training

Your workforce most likely is comprised of employees from different backgrounds so it’s important that your company fosters an inclusive culture. Training your leaders how to respect and include other cultures will make employee feel as if they are part of true team that treats them fairly. Give leaders the right tools so that they can go out there and represent for your company as they promote inclusivity to all employees under them.

Make Diversity Important For The Whole Company

Diversity and inclusivity shouldn’t just be a task you place on your company’s HR team, but something that everyone needs to foster. Make your company a place where all employees at every level and at every site can do their best work. An inclusive workplace is the responsibility of everyone in the company – from executives to leadership and new hire.

A strong company culture can make all the difference when growing from a mid-size to large-size enterprise. With the support of all your employees, your company can obtain massive success, which can allow it to expand and grow in ways you never thought possible. But in order to do this, you first need to build a corporate culture and infrastructure that makes your employees go above and beyond for your company’s success. Without their support and backing, your company will stay stagnant as a mid-size enterprise and will never reach its full potential. Here are some tops to build that corporate culture and infrastructure for your business:

Find Ways To Measure Transparency and Trust

Try to find ways that will allow you to measure how trust and transparency flows inside your business so that executives, mangers and leaders within your company can be more connected to the existing culture and see where they can expand and grow. This can be done via leadership interactions or employee surveys to see how your employees are connected to the company’s goals and values. Take those results and utilize them for the success and growth of your business.

Highlight Those Who Live Up To Your Company’s Core Values

If your company doesn’t have core values, create some and let your employees know what they are. Then highlight individuals who live up to them so that others will want to do the same. And remember that’s it’s also important to reiterate those core values and represent them yourself.

Hire Right

The best way to have supportive employees of your company’s culture is to hire right. Although you can easily train someone to fit the skills of the position, you can’t change their attitude, which is important in building a positive and successful company culture and infrastructure. So make sure that your company is hiring the right people who will fit well with your business’ long-term vision of growing to a large-size enterprise.

Know your employee

As a leader in your business, it may be hard to really interact with all of the company’s employees, but if you want the right culture, this is imperative. At least try to remember the names of all the employees and get to know some on a personal level so that they see that you genuinely care about their interest and well being and think of them as just an employee.

Employee-Generated Content (EGC) is an effective way to spur brand awareness and engagement with potential customers. Employees serve as advocates of your brand and share their experiences with a wider audience. With the help of social media platforms, sharing content has become very convenient and interactive.

If you are still having doubts about whether to pursue EGC, we’ve listed out three main reasons why you should consider it.

Employees are effective storytellers

Your customers will find your content more appealing when they associate it with an actual person they can relate to. Employees sharing real stories and personal experiences make your content more authentic and relevant in the eyes of your target market. Your employees are seen as credible sources of information since they have better knowledge of your products and services.

It streamlines your content creation

Your workforce is a great source of content and can serve as a reliable content creation mechanism when harnessed properly. They can provide you with fresh and out-of-the-box perspectives that you may not be able to get with your usual content creation process. They are also closer to where your customers are and can give clearer insights on what they need. Your employees can also help you monitor what the public is currently saying about your brand.

It can increase your revenue

EGC allows you to have new sources of content without having to allocate additional funds for marketing. Even though you still need to spend for the time your employees take to create content, the cost is still significantly lower. The engagement that the EGC brings in also contributes to improved sales figures.

It makes your employees happier and better engaged

When allowed to contribute to the company’s content creation, employees feel valued. They become more invested in the business can starts caring more about their work. Encouraging your employees to share their thoughts will stimulate healthy discussions that can inform your business strategy.ConclusionEmployee-generated content has great potential to contribute to your marketing efforts. It benefits not just the company’s marketing but also employee engagement and overall revenue.

Your company’s sales and marketing efforts should not be treated as separate entities. Instead, both departments should be treated as collaborative efforts, each one helping the other succeed for the benefit of the overall goals of the organization. The marketing is the one that generates the sales, while the sales team then takes over to covert those leads to profits. Although each as their own process, they still need to be more of a collaborative effort. But it’s a lot more complex than it sounds, requiring a fine-tuned collaboration strategy to overlap the two so that run seamlessly with one another. Here are some ideas on how to do that:

Assign what each department is accountable for

The first step to creating a successful collaboration is to set define what each department is accountable so that there is no confusion from either side. Having weekly meetings with both teams allows everyone to be on the same page and helps them better understand what is needed from each side. If there is confusion, everything can be sorted out in these meetings so that nothing is left of the process. This helps the entire system become a well-oiled machine for your company.

Always communicate

Communication between the two departments is key. Make sure everyone is letting everyone in on what’s happening from both sides. The best way to do this is to have an internal program that allows people to see what’s happening with all projects so that nothing is lost. This makes communication easier in real-time and everyone can see the progress of a lead all the way down to when it closes.

Share in each other’s successes

Although each department is responsible for their own things, always have both departments share in each other’s successes. The marketing department might have brought in the lead, but nothing would have been done with it if the sales department didn’t close and vise versa. By sharing in each other’s success, it won’t be the sales versus marketing department and just be one team working on different sides for the good of the overall company! 

Have measurable goals for both departments

Collaboration can only happen between sales and marketing when they both have incentives and goals that are tied to the performance of the other department. This will ensure that they both work together.

In order to streamline communication and avoid duplication or redundancy in an enterprise, employee collaboration is key. While many companies have done this by having weekly lunch and meetings, specialized knowledge sharing sessions or even create their own internal communication system, they are not always very effective. This is why many modern and digital collaboration tools were created. The biggest collaboration tools out there at the moment include programs like Slack, Yammer, GoToMeeting, GoogleHangouts, Asana, Google Drive and SharePoint. However, many of these also have their limitations, not quite being as effective as an enterprise would like.

Limitations of current collaborative tools

SharePoint seems to need a lot of care since users have to manually organize everything themselves. They have to take time from their busy schedules to upload, categorize and retrieve files, making it more work than it is efficient. For Slack, non-technical users seem to have a hard time trying to adopt and retain this collaboration tool in their enterprise. And there’s a lot of noise in this platform, which might diminish the productivity of a channel’s communication. GoToMeeting only works well when you have error-free and fast Internet connection, while Ansa can’t merge calendars and there’s a limit of projects for a team calendar.

What’s better?

Since the aforementioned collaboration tools have limitations, CircleHD is a great option when the others fail. The platform provides enterprises a number of solutions, including Executive Communication, Learning and Development, Sales and Marketing Team Establishment, Knowledge Sharing, Training and Compliance, Live Events, Webinars and so much more! CircleHD is the only collaborative software program that goes beyond what traditional sharing programs offer to really provide everything an enterprise would need.

When it comes to sharing knowledge, the web-based tools feature allows Enterprise users to create and share on-demand videos or interact with live demonstrations. Mangers and executives can use the program to send out important company messages and allow users to dictate which staff member has access to content. It’s the perfect collaborative tool any enterprise will benefit from!

Creating a successful video campaign begins with some very simple but important factors. You want to be yourself on camera but also provide a perfect balance between giving it your all and not enough. Although it can be intimidating in front of those bright lights, a quick boost in energy can often be the key ingredient needed to make a successful video. Coming off with too little energy in your video can be boring and uninteresting to your audience. At the same time, too much energy may have you coming off as scary or disingenuous. You’ll definitely need some practice to make sure your video doesn’t sound rehearsed or rigid. Thankfully, we can help! Next time you’re preparing to make a new video, try following the steps below to feel more natural and comfortable.

Positive Reinforcement

It’s a fact that most people really don’t like to be on camera. However, some positive reinforcement (to yourself or someone else making the video) can go a long way. Tell yourself (or the subject) that they’re doing great and use sayings like “you’ve got this” during preparation. This type of positive reinforcement creates good energy that’s also highly motivating.

Multiple Takes

Don’t finish shooting your video until you’ve made sure to complete multiple takes of it. The last thing you want is to sit down and start editing only to find that some of the shots were off. This happens more often than you would think and it can be a very costly mistake if you’ve hired someone to speak in your video. Save extra time and headache by doing multiple takes during your shoot. Then, if there are any issues during editing, they can be easily fixed or replaced by your backups.

Stay Positive

Messing up is perfectly okay. All of us have messed up at some point and one thing many successful performers do is laugh at mistakes. Have fun and shake it off because you’re going to be a superstar once the final piece is published. Shaking the jitters and mistakes out of you early on can make a world of difference to your final presentation.

Rip Takes

Do you or your subject sound a bit too rigid or rehearsed when practicing? Try delivering some of your lines with over-the-top energy. Believe it or not, doing this can actually reset your talent’s energy scale and make it easier to take levels down a bit. Remember, you want to hit the perfect amount of energy when doing your next take.

You don’t need to be a professional actor in order to make a great video campaign. Just practice and keep all of the points above in mind. The right presence and energy can turn into more sales and a really creative video could even go viral!

Attention is the currency of online marketing. The more engaging your content is, the better results you’ll get. Video content is considered a game changer in digital marketing because of how effective it is in capturing interest and initiating engagement.

Video can be used in different stages of your marketing and sales processes. Here are some types of video that you can create depending on the results you’re targeting.

Videos that build trust with your market

You should provide value first before you can expect to get value in return. People buy from people they trust so before you even attempt to sell, you must build a relationship with your clientele.

Video is a great way of sharing who you are and what you do to your cold market. Informative videos can help them understand their problems better and explore possible solutions. These videos will establish your expertise in your field and will eventually foster trust and engagement.

Videos that sell

As your prospects go deeper into the marketing funnel, you can use videos to nudge them into making that purchase decision. You can create videos that highlight your edge over your competition, feature success stories and good practices, and describe your offerings in detail. You can build deeper connections with the help of videos that tap into your market’s mindset and biggest motivations.

Videos that nurture your customer base

Marketing does not stop after you make the sale. You need to keep a happy roster of customers and nurture them to become ambassadors of your brand. When they are so happy with your service, they act as a marketing mechanism on their own and promote your services to other people. Videos that are geared towards customer support like how-to videos or those featuring case studies of satisfied customers help develop loyalty among your customers.

Conclusion

Digital marketing and sales are improved drastically with the help of videos. Knowing how powerful videos are and how you can harness their potential in your marketing and sales campaigns will boost your results and overall revenue.

Companies have began using videos in virtually every aspect of their day-to-day operations. With the decrease in bandwidth and video production costs over the years, creation is now much more affordable. Businesses of all sizes can adopt video production for both internal and external communication – from training videos to sales commercials. What many small businesses fail to realize is that organizational videos can be used to serve a wide range of different purposes. Listed below are just a few unique ways you can utilize video in any modern workplace.

Company Hiring

The newer generation of millennials doesn’t prefer to read text or brochures when looking for new employers. Instead, they’re much more enticed to apply for a position by seeing recruitment videos. These types of videos can let potential job applicants get real insight and a sneak peek of the company, job details, and culture. It sets you apart from other companies and can definitely help you reach a wider audience. Different categories of recruitment videos include job description videos, company profile videos, day-in-the-life videos, and candidate intro videos.

Orientation & HR Training

Easily engage with new employees by offering videos that help them orient themselves with your company at a faster pace. These types of videos can also make their introduction a smooth, engaging and streamlined process. Some of the most common types of employee and HR training videos include orientation videos, leadership videos and HR compliance videos.

Internal Communications

Videos can be a great way to broadcast information to everyone in your company. There are actually a wide range of cases for internal communication between organizations and videos work for several of them. The most common internal communication videos include CEO speeches, policy updates, event videos, and email videos.

External Communications

Whether it be crisis communication, new product releases or case study videos, we’ve all seen at least one of these before. Videos are one of the most personal ways businesses can reach consumers. They’re also fantastic tools that help you stay connected to your audience. Videos can improve brand recognition, image and reputation. A few types of external video content includes company profile videos, public relations videos, shareholder videos, and product promotion videos.

Knowledge & Education

Part of growing a successful company is to ensure employees are continuously learning new things. Videos can save time when it comes to sharing knowledge and education among different teams. Workshop videos, webinar videos, conference meeting videos, and skill enhancement videos are just a few types you can use to educate your employees.

These are just a few of the most popular ways to implement more video technology into your office or workplace. With how simple and affordable video production has become, it’s truly something that companies of all sizes should be making good use of. Save both time and money by implementing more videos into your daily business operations!