Training video productions aren’t known for being solid pieces of cinema. The good news? They don’t have to be.
But by making a few smart choices throughout the video production process, you’ll ensure that the training videos your business and team are making don’t suck. Here’s some of the best ways to make sure your training videos go beyond training to create a truly memorable, clean, and engaging viewing experience.
Make it easy to understand.
Please. We are begging. If you only take away one lesson from this whole blog post, make it that your training videos need to be easily digestible for your audience.
There’s nothing worse than watching a training video that fails to do the very thing it’s supposed to do: train. At the end of the day, a training video that fails to give the audience necessary skills and knowledge isn’t even worth the time it took to watch, let alone to produce. Use a straightforward structure and plain language in your training videos. Your audience will thank you for making it easy on them.
Make it engaging.
There’s nothing worse than watching a video of someone speaking in a monotone voice. Don’t waste your audience’s time producing content that they’ll just end up using as a sleep aid.
There are a number of ways that you can keep your audience engaged. Simply producing an entertaining video is a great way to make sure they aren’t dozing off while you explain important points. Structure also helps with engagement. Be transparent about the time and format of your training video, so that audience members can skim easier.
Of course, one way to really engage your audience with your training video is to simply produce quality content. Audiences will take note if the video production quality is low, so make sure you’re offering something that is of truly stellar quality by hiring a professional team. The audience can tell the difference, and so will you when you see the differences in engagement.
Make it entertaining.
There’s no better way to keep an audience engaged and focused on your training video than to produce entertaining content. And entertaining content really is the key to the whole equation. It’s what takes a training video that might have sucked otherwise and makes it okay, and it’s what takes an okay training video and makes it outstanding.
Easier said than done, though. How do you produce content that trains the audience in your topic, while also making sure it’s entertaining.
One of the best ways is by not taking yourself too seriously. Humor, skits, asides, and other digressions are all great ways to keep your training video filled with variety and keep your audience watching. Of course, there are some caveats. You need to make sure you’re keeping the video’s ultimate purpose in mind, rather than trying to win an Emmy for Best Comedy Series.
However, a little does go a long way. By trusting your audience to follow you through the informative and the humorous, you’ll not only help them retain information, but also prime them to keep listening to what you have to say.
Keep runtime in mind.
Your audience doesn’t have all day. Respect their time by keeping the training video’s runtime as short as possible while still giving them all the necessary information they’ll need to succeed on the job. This isn’t just for the sake of convenience. A shorter training video means that you’ll be naturally forced to stick to the highlights, keeping the entire purpose of the training video more firmly in the center.
In short, by simply paying attention to how long your training video is, you’ll probably produce a training video with a clearer and easier to understand focus in the process!
Always add value.
If your training video simply rehashes everything in a how-to book, what’s the purpose of the training video in the first place?
Take full advantage of your audience’s attention by adding value during the training video. Consider the material they might have already looked through and become familiar with before watching the training video. While keeping in mind runtime, engagement, and comprehension, you can add value by including information, edge cases, and other nuances that might take more explaining than is present in a how-to book.
Ready to make training videos that don’t suck?
It can be to write off training videos as a lost cause, a piece of content that you can’t possibly turn into something entertaining, engaging, and educational. Ironically, it’s this exact defeatist attitude that perpetuates training videos that do suck.
Searching for solutions to boring video content? There are many benefits to making your training videos approachable, engaging, entertaining, and value-adding. And it’s not just in the sleek end product. By putting quality work into your training videos, you’ll generate stronger relationships with your audience, be they employees or customers, and ensure they return to your business in the future.