Your internal communications strategy is how you communicate with your team. It can be a powerful tool for shaping the energy and productivity of your company. These emails and announcements set the tone, set the agenda, and set expectations for your brand internally. But if you’re not careful, this information can get pretty boring. Your team may even stop paying attention entirely, and all your carefully crafted weekly digests will be for naught. That’s bad news for your company. How can you stay competitive without engaged, activated employees who feel connected to the brand and their job?

Videos can inject some much-needed life into your internal communications. Yes, videos! Videos capture attention more easily. Videos can be faster to produce, and they help people retain more information. Plus, videos can capture more context and create a welcoming virtual culture, bridging the physical gap between coworkers who aren’t currently in the same location.

Wondering whether you really need videos? There are a few telltale signs that your internal comms strategy may need revamping: your open rate for emails is low, people aren’t retaining information, and there’s an energetic gap between colleagues on remote teams.

Here are five ways that video will improve your internal communications strategy (and how to plan them).

1) Videos capture more attention – so people will actually open your emails

Every manager knows how hard it can be to get their team on the same page. This problem has been exacerbated by the current public health crisis and the digital overstimulation that people are subjected to when stuck at home. When people are burned out on screen time, it’s even more challenging to capture their attention and make sure that critical information gets across. 

Text is all too easy to ignore. One email blends into other emails until your eyes glaze over and your inbox starts to look like a dictionary. Unfortunately, this means that important internal information sometimes gets lost. Rather than reprimanding your overtired staff for overlooking emails, why not try changing your strategy?

Give your team an incentive to open their emails. A quick video with an interesting backdrop and attractive graphics is fun to watch! Put yourself in your employees’ shoes. Wouldn’t you be much more likely to watch a short video featuring your boss in a party hat than wade through a long, dense email?

If you’re struggling to get people to actually open your emails, then try swapping text-based missives for video announcements. It’s guaranteed to capture the attention of your team so that your message can actually get through. Emails with videos have a much higher open rate. Engagement is likely to skyrocket, too, which is the hallmark of a productive team.

2) Videos can be faster to produce, saving you tons of time and energy

If you talk faster than you write, then videos could be the time-saving solution to generating internal communiques. Think about it this way: you could spend hours painstakingly typing out a perfect memo, fidgeting with the font sizes and colors to make sure that people notice what they’re supposed to notice. 

However, a better option is to, well, let your voice speak for itself. With help from a video production agency like DreamItReel, you can produce multiple videos faster than written memos. All you need to do is tell us your idea. We’ll nail your internal branding so that each and every video looks and sounds on-brand. We can help you script, storyboard, and even animate your concept. We can even hire actors or voiceover artists if you don’t want to be in the videos yourself.

Internal communications strategies are often made up of bulky concepts, lofty aspirations, and pages upon pages of processes. It’s not an exaggeration to say that reading through everything would take a ton of time. Videos can be understood by the human mind approximately 3x faster than plain text. This means that you and your team will be saving time if you incorporate videos into your internal comms strategy.

3) Videos improve retention! Your team will actually understand and apply the information

Internal comms is not just a one-way, one-time thing. It’s the way to unite your team around shared goals and values and then galvanize them towards action. You cannot have a successful internal comms strategy if you’re simply delivering information to your team. A unidirectional strategy is not true communication; it’s a monologue.

Ideally, internal memos provide clear and actionable information. But text can obfuscate information rather than clarifying it. This is especially true for people who are visual or spatial learners. A video demonstration is far more likely to leave a permanent impression on your creative team than a wall of text. 

A video can help make your message crystal clear. It can even provide examples for implementation of the concept, either with animation or a voiceover and stock video combination. No more repeating yourself in team meetings or wondering if anyone actually read your memo. Not only are videos more likely to be watched, but people are more likely to actually retain the information. How’s that for value?

4) Videos capture richer information, with more context and more warmth

With written communication, if something isn’t on the page then it simply doesn’t exist. This limits the amount of information you can cram into a memo. However, videos are multisensory. You can use music, background visuals, animations, sound effects, titles, and a script to tell your story. This is called rich information, and it’s the fastest, most effective way to communicate complex ideas.

Anyone who works in branding knows that context is everything. It’s often about the tone and what you don’t say that gets your message across. The same concept holds true for internal communications. A video can be a powerful tool because it can communicate multiple things at once. The colors and music can pump up your team and encourage them to keep striving towards their goals. The expression on the actor’s face (or the boss’s face) can reassure a stressed-out team.

Videos can achieve all of the above with a single piece of content, something that’s much harder to do with text. Busy managers and business owners need efficient communication solutions. To stand out from the competition, your team needs to work fast and work confidently. A great internal communications strategy is the backbone of a great team, and videos can be the foundation of your internal comms strategy.

5) Videos grow the company culture—perfect for remote teams

In a year of virtual collaboration and remote working, video was king in 2020. It will continue to be a key element in internal communication strategies in 2021 and beyond, as distanced teams continue to work from home and adapt their working models. 

Videos are perfect for internal communication strategies because they easily bridge physical distance. They can provide “face-to-face” moments to colleagues who aren’t in the office together. This type of personable, human interaction can grow the company culture much better than stale text-based memos. 

Seeing your colleagues’ faces, listening to their voices, and watching the same visual content as your teammates is a great way to increase the sense of belonging. This was absolutely critical for keeping people motivated and connected during the pandemic. But it’s also a wise way to retain top talent. 

People need to feel like they’re part of something. Human faces and moving pictures are far more emotional than plain text. If your company culture needs a bit of sparkle, then videos could be the perfect solution. If your team will continue to work remotely in any capacity in 2021—or if you already have people collaborating across multiple time zones—then you need to incorporate video into your internal communications strategy.

How to incorporate videos into your internal communications strategy

Here are a few suggestions for how to incorporate videos into your internal editorial calendar. Naturally, goal-setting should be your first step. We can help you brainstorm content, but you’ll need to set the agenda. Is your company focused on increasing employee engagement? Do you need to improve adherence to protocol? Are people feeling stressed out and productivity is suffering? 

Once you set your goals, you can design your campaigns along a timeline. Work with a calendar and start laying out major events. Just like with external marketing plans, your internal video strategy should account for holidays and industry-related events. Block out key dates like conferences, seasonal festivals, and any company-wide retreats. Now, layer on any variable projects and deliverables that you can anticipate. For instance, you might know that July is typically a very busy month.

Finally, it’s time for the fun stuff: brainstorming! There are two major types of video content you should be producing, and these are evergreen videos and timely videos. The right strategy will depend upon your organization, your size, your budget, and your industry. We can help you create a plan of attack that supports your company’s growth while staying on budget.

Types of internal videos

From training videos to off-the-cuff motivational speeches, here are some examples of internal videos that you could implement at your company. Remember, some of these videos will become pillar content for your organization. They can be played and replayed over and over again as a reliable source of information. Naturally, these videos require a bit more time and money to produce. Other videos can be more casual with less expensive graphics and a quicker turnaround time.

• New hire welcome videos
• Training and onboarding videos
• Weekly team updates
• Daily executive updates during a time of crisis
• Quarterly team meeting announcements

There are a few more things you’ll need to keep in mind to nail your internal video strategy. It’s important to release internal videos on a reliable schedule. When people know what to expect, they’re more likely to look for your announcement.

If you’ll be sharing confidential or sensitive data in these internal videos, then make sure to control the sharing options and access. You can password-protect videos on Vimeo or even go so far as to create a standalone internal database for your video content.

Finally, make sure you evaluate internal video campaigns with the same critical eye as you do with external videos. Check the analytics to see how many people are watching and where they stop. Enable commenting or utilize livestreams to solicit feedback and interaction from your team as they watch. The best internal comms strategies are conversational, where every viewer feels invested in the content because they know their voice will count for something. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that internal videos are a one-and-done deal. Give your team the same respect that you offer to customers by listening to their feedback and adjusting your strategy accordingly. 

Getting started

Ready to take the next step? By now, you understand that videos are a powerful communication tool for internal teams. Videos can help solve many of the problems that internal comms strategies run into: paltry open rates, poor retention of information, time-consuming workflows, and unsatisfyingly generic memos. 

If you’re already planning to include videos in your 2021 marketing strategy, then why not make them part of your internal strategy, too? The DreamItReel team offers seamless video production for a variety of content types and purposes. We take the pain out of content production while guaranteeing consistent results and impactful videos, every time. 

Give your team the beautiful content they deserve—start the process with our BriefBuilder. We can’t wait to help bring your ideas to life.