The Future of E-Learning: Why Training Video Production Is On The Rise

E-learning is all about learning online. Demand for remote learning couldn’t be higher. With more and more people working or learning from home, the need for digestible online learning materials has continued to grow.

So, what is a training video? A training video is a recorded presentation that includes visuals and audio to train, re-train, or onboard staff. They are an effective way of conveying information to large numbers of people at once, which makes them ideal for businesses with lots of employees.

For those companies now looking to reshape how they operate and expand by taking on new staff, it’s important that they have online training materials in place to support their long-term growth plans. Training videos are one of the most effective ways for a company to educate it’s employees, as they are often concise, easily digestible, and engaging.

So what does this mean for you? Well, if you want your business to succeed then training video production should be at the top of your priority list!

Nowadays there are an infinite number of ways to share content online making it difficult to know which method is the best fit for you. When creating a new piece of content, you’ll need to consider; what the message is, who you are trying to reach, what action you’d like them to take, and which platforms the content will appear on, including what kind of content will keep your target audience engaged.

Engaging

One of the best ways to grab the attention of your audience is through training videos. This is because there are a number of benefits that come with using video as a learning method. Firstly, videos offer a compelling way for employees to learn on the job. This means they can refer back to specific information without having to go back through several pages or chapters of text and they can do this from anywhere at any time.

Companies can also use training videos to engage employees through comedy, drama, suspense, and other emotionally engaging cinematic tactics that help to inspire and educate.

Studies have shown that 80% of learners are more likely to learn from instructional video content than any other form – and that the use of interactive training videos is becoming a common way for training experts to create engaging and informative courses.

Fast and Flexible

Keeping videos short and concise will help reduce the number of hours your staff spend retraining or getting up to speed on new information. They can also watch your training videos at times that suit them, as they fold the laundry or run at the gym. An effective training video has also been proven to increase retention rates for listeners compared to other mediums like brochures and long-form documents.

FUN-dementals of learning

Training videos offer employees a fun way to learn new things at work.

Most importantly, it allows employees to engage with the videos if they are being told a story, rather than simply reading from a page which can be difficult for some people.

This is one of the reasons that videos make learning so much more enjoyable! They can be fast-paced, short, and captivating which helps build a relationship between the content and the learner.

Personalization and Branding

One of the best things about using training video production to create consumable content for your business is just that, it’s made with your business in mind. The training modules are specific to the lessons you want to teach and the message you want to convey. They may even feature some of your own employees or be set in your place of work which will help your employees to feel more connected and therefore more engaged with the material.

When it comes to educating your team, you’ll want your training videos to convey your brand, company values, and culture while also being educational, engaging, and fun. You might even want to create something that is interactive so your team can get more involved in the learning process. Everyone learns in different ways so it’s important to have a range of learning materials that will allow your employees to absorb information in the way they find most effective. The great thing about corporate training videos is that they incorporate visual and auditory learning styles.

In today’s hyper-competitive market, where communication is key, businesses must be able to quickly adapt to new technology in order to see continued growth. For this reason, training video production has become a popular method of educating and re-training large teams, but video production also has other uses.

Corporate training videos can help an organization to grow its brand, reach new audiences and engage its customers in addition to giving a cost-effective alternative for educating staff. Training video production isn’t just about improving efficiency within your company’s educational process, they can also be a fantastic marketing tool to show potential customers that you are a voice of authority and information in your field.

Finding the pain points of your target audience and providing solutions to their problems is a winning marketing strategy for big businesses, having been proven effective time and time again. These campaigns aim to educate an audience on a specific topic and encourage them to engage with your business in some way. For example, if you are dealing with an audience that is struggling to keep up with the latest technologies then you could produce a training video on how their company can benefit from embracing digital transformation.

A great example of a company that used this approach in its marketing was B&Q. B&Q cleverly produced a series of DIY home improvement training videos which provided step-by-step instructions on how to complete household maintenance tasks such as fixing a tap or hanging shelves. By using video, they were able to provide their audience with the information they needed quickly and effectively to improve their home. This helped the business to grow as their customers felt more confident in making home improvement decisions and B&Q became the first choice for many.

Using training video production allowed B&Q to stand out from their competitors, becoming an educational source for both current and prospective customers.

It should be clear by now that video production is a great way to educate your audience on complex topics, allowing them to absorb information quickly and effectively online and on the big screen.

There are a number of different ways a training video can be produced to make the visuals more interactive, engaging, and effective. Here are a couple of different types of training video production you might want to consider:

Interactive training videos

Interactive video is, essentially, an online learning experience that allows the user to perform an action by touching or clicking on the visual content. That action can be as simple as loading a pop-up screen, opening a web page, or, more interestingly for visual storytellers, prompting the video to move to a preset place or begin playing a new movie immediately and smoothly.

Viewers of interactive video are able to make decisions that affect the course of the training video allowing them to see how the characters in the film react to their choices. This allows you to play out the repercussions of your decisions, skip to what interests you, and see events unfold through the eyes of other individuals. It immerses you in the action and allows you to steer the digital learning experience.

Interactive training videos can be used as either an external marketing tool or a means to train employees on the best ways to respond in certain situations. This is particularly useful in teaching situational management techniques, workplace safety demonstrations, and other important quick-thinking scenarios.

Interactive videos can also be used as a means for marketing, allowing your customers to get hands-on with your product before making any purchasing decisions and encouraging them to contact you directly in order to ask questions and find out more about what you do.

Animation training videos

Animation-based training videos are particularly useful in explaining really difficult topics or concepts that cannot be acted out by humans. Animation turns any idea, no matter how extraordinary, into reality. Training topics that are difficult took visualize in real life such as, “how is oil produced” or “how to influence consumers through digital marketing” might be better depicted using animations which can help break down the content into more visually compelling chunks that make the information easier to digest and retain. Animation is often used to depict information in HSE induction and staff training films because they are ideal for instructional material.

Through animation, you are able to customize and create video content that doesn’t yet exist in reality. Showcase a new product, a planned building, a service for the future, or a product operational many miles below sea level. With animation the possibilities are endless. Companies can even create characters that are relatable to their target audience and describe products and services in an entertaining way, that engages viewers through curiosity and interest – something video marketing has been doing for years.

Making a professional training video is a complex process that requires an experience team of seasoned experts and a range of expensive equipment. If you want to create a video that is professional and effective you’re better off hiring a training video production company to handle the job.

If you are a small, independent business, start-up or freelancer with limited resources, we have put together a quick step-by-step guide that walks you through the training video production process so you can put together your own basic corporate training videos. Check it out below:

Step 1: Deciding on your message and target audience

The first step to creating any piece of video content is to decide on the message you want to send and who you want to send it to. What are you hoping to achieve with your video? What demographic does your audience fall into, and what are their likes and dislikes? Understanding more about your audience will help you to craft a training video that is relevant to them, their needs, preferences, and communication style. In doing so your video will be more successful and allow you to meet your business goals.

Step 2: Storyboard and Script

Once you know what it is you want to say, create a storyboard that will help you visualize the idea better using simple sketches or images. This will help you stick to your project vision. You’ll then need to outline a rough script that will communicate the learning materials you want to share in a concise manner. If you are delving deep into complex topics it might be better to break these down into a series of smaller videos.

Step 3: Setting the scene

Decide where you are going to film your video. This may be in the office, at home, or in a public location. Wherever you are, make sure you have all the elements you will need as part of your storyboard to communicate effectively. For example, your video may be entitled, “how to install a shelving unit” which may include a visual demonstration of the process. To ensure everything runs smoothly, you’ll need to make sure that you have all the necessary tools to hand on your training video production set.

Step 4: Filming

Quality is so important. Fortunately, most smartphones now feature a high-quality camera that can be used to capture your message. If you don’t already have one we recommend investing in a basic tripod with a phone connector so that you can keep your phone safe and steady as you control the angle, depth, and lighting of your shots.

If you don’t have any professional lighting equipment you’ll want to make sure you’re shooting under optimal lighting. If you are filming in your office face your camera away from the window rather than towards it. Place your camera close to the speaker so that it picks up their voice. Using the tripod will help to make your video footage consistent and steady.

If you are worried about volume, there are a number of small microphones that can be clipped onto clothing or stood near the speaker. All of these small pieces of equipment can be purchased fairly cheaply on Amazon.

Just beware that using this equipment doesn’t necessarily guarantee quality. Ideally, you’ll want to contact a video production company that offers training video production services to handle your video project.

Step 5: Editing

Once you have finished recording your training video, it’s time to edit it together. For this, you’ll need some sort of video editing software. There are a number of fairly inexpensive apps that you can download on your phone to edit clips together, but we recommend editing on a PC using professional software to get the best results.

Adobe Premiere Pro is an accessible option for most people that is easy enough to learn how to use. Here you can enter all the clips you have recorded, adjust audio levels, cut them down, splice them together, ad visuals and place a soundtrack in the background. Ideally, you’ll want your video to communicate your branding in a visually engaging way.

If this seems like a lot, that’s because it is. Creating compelling corporate training videos is a challenging endeavor, particularly when you have limited experience. That’s why our team of training video production experts is available to help you create videos that will have a positive impact on your audience.