Marketing teams have started using videos made by Influencers and organisations are finding these videos are heavily impacting buying decisions. Consider Chewbacca Mom, a lady who filmed herself in the car with a new electronic Chewbacca mask.

Her absolute delight was the most watched Facebook Live video in 2016 and by the end of the year it had 162 million views. As the video went viral, the mask sold out in many major toy stores.

As seen here, user-generated videos don’t require specific or costly equipment, they can be captured by anyone and anywhere using a smartphone.

Why User-Generated Videos?

Empowering your employees to capture videos demonstrating a process or reflecting on an experience can increase collaboration and enhance social learning. User generated videos can also:

• Identity demand
• Build trust
• Provide quick feedback
• Create a learning culture
• Break down silos
• Identify internal champions

It can be a daunting stepping away from the polished videos that the L&D, media or internal comms teams normally create. Loss of control and poor quality videos are commonly the main concerns when considering a user generated video approach. This can easily be overcome if you follow some simple steps:

How to promote User-Generated Video Learning

1. Provide guidance

This could be in the form of a training course or a curated library of resources explaining the best way to capture and edit footage using mobile devices. This also provides a good opportunity to explain the company branding, standards and expectations for a video.

2. Make the process of creating and publishing easy

Putting too many stages or approval points into the procedure will put people off. It needs to be a simple and quick process, meaning that as soon as a training need is identified a video can be created and published. A specific team can quality assure the videos before release, however most people will self moderate and not share a video which isn’t fit for purpose.

3. engage with others

Promote the use of video across different areas of the business and give them an opportunity to see the benefits of user-generated video. Get buy-in by identifying and supporting the creation of videos which specifically support the challenges that area faces.

4. Have a central location for all content to be shared

This could be the companies intranet, YouTube channel, social media platform or an LMS. You only need to visit an L&D exhibition to see there are many platforms available that specifically focus on hosting video.

5. Track success & Share good examples

Ensure videos are titled and tagged so they are searchable and monitor views and feedback. When great videos are published these should be shared across the wider organisation so everyone can see the positive impact of user-generated videos.

Marketing is proving that videos don’t need to have perfect production values to engage audiences and influence behaviour. People are keen to learn from others with experience and user-generated videos can quickly get information to the target audience and support learning at the point of need.

If you’re interested in implementing videos and would like to discuss Smartphone Video Training, please contact us.