Executive & Corporate Video Communication Guide

The use of video has grown immensely in recent years, beating out plain text as the most effective way to communicate. In fact, 59% of business executives said if they had to choose between text and video, they’d choose to watch the video—which is why it’s no surprise that the average person spends 88% more time on a site with video than one without. So if you’re not already using the video feature on Microsoft 365 to convey critical messages to your employees, you’re missing out. And even if you do use it, chances are good that your video strategy could use some improvement if you want to reach more employees with this method of communication. To get started, take a look at some common video challenges and how to fix them, facts on the importance of video communications, how to track video success, and more.

Common Challenges of Video for Corporate Communication

Though many businesses already regularly rely on video for communicating, it often falls short of expectations in several ways in the office. First, there’s the fact that many corporations fail to properly manage their assets before trying to communicate with employees on live video. They’re not organized when it comes to applications, files, transcripts, or videos. If they don’t work on coordinating these assets before presenting their live video to their staff, they end up reducing value and fail to engage their audience.

Another challenge is that some companies simply produce boring videos that have little value for their audience. You need to appeal to your viewers if you want them to watch, so it’s important to present interesting, valuable content if you want to engage them. Granted, many companies don’t know how to put forth interesting video content, which is why they hire professionals to do it for them.

Additionally, many companies get excited to present live video to their employees, with the hopes that the entire office can watch at once. But when they start the video, they find they don’t have the bandwidth to allow live video to stream seamlessly on multiple computers at once. This causes the video to continually freeze or stop playing completely. This is why there’s such a need for services from companies like Hive, which partners with Microsoft to help customers use their current network to deliver quality streaming live video. When you use a service like Hive for Microsoft 365, you can rest assured your message will reach all your viewers without compromising video quality—even when you have thousands of employees watching at once from numerous computers in the office.

Finally, even if you manage to avoid these challenges for your videos, if you’re not tracking your video analytics, you’re missing out on important feedback. After all, you need to know which of your videos are doing the best, and how long on average viewers are watching. Basically, you need to know what’s working for your audience and what’s not working so you can change as needed. So if you don’t have any insight on how your audience is engaging with your video content, you’re struggling with a common video-related issue, and that should change. Hive Insights could be the solution for this challenge, as it tells you how many people are watching, how many viewers watch the entire video, where viewers stop watching, and other metrics you need so you can improve future videos. This means you can solve some of the top video challenges by trying out Hive Streaming’s services!

Why Executive & Corporate Video Communications Are So Important

So many companies have already discovered video’s many benefits and just need help streamlining distribution. But there are some businesses that haven’t yet made regular use of video for employee communication, despite having access to the video feature in Microsoft 365. If you’re not sold on the many uses of video in the workplace, it’s time to learn why this method is so effective. These are the top reasons so many companies employ executive and corporate video communications:

Video Promotes Trust and a Feeling of Shared Purpose

When you share a video with your entire staff of employees through tools like Microsoft 365, you’re creating a sense of shared purpose across the company. This is because giving everyone the ability to hear your message at once while looking at the face of the CEO or other executives in charge can simulate an in-person meeting. By nature, people prefer face-to-face conversations, which is why one study showed they’re 34 times more effective than email. The ability to look at someone while they’re talking can build trust, ignite emotions, and allow people to pick up on nonverbal cues. Of course, having in-person meetings with thousands of employees regularly isn’t realistic, but conveying your message via video is, and it will get you the same positive results as in-person meetings—much more than phone calls or emails will.

Video Is the Best Way to Engage Employees

If you want to increase engagement among employees, you need to reach them through video. After all, 85% of US adults who are online watch videos, so you know almost all your employees already enjoy this method of communication. And studies show that people can retain 95% of a video message, compared to just 10% of text they read, so your employees learn better by watching videos. More specifically, millennials appreciate videos so much that one study found they’re twice as likely as baby boomers to want to see videos at work. Considering that engaged employees are more productive and therefore make their employers more money, you have lots of incentives to increase employee engagement. And video is among the easiest ways to do that

Video Helps Connect Remote Workers

More than 4.7 million US employees work remotely full-time, and over 70% of people worldwide work remotely at least one day per week. So if your company is in line with these statistics, you likely have at least some employees who work from home—or you plan to soon. Either way, they don’t see their coworkers or managers very often, but they can when you connect them to the office with corporate videos to ensure they don’t miss out on important communications during the workday.

Clearly, there are some good reasons to start using video in your office if you don’t already. Before you start relying on video more, though, make sure your network can handle it. Be prepared to get help from Hive Streaming for seamless video you can share with everyone in your office.

Know the Best Occasions For Sharing Video With Employees

Now that you’ve learned the importance of video in corporate communications and have identified some of the common issues you might be struggling with, it’s time to get an idea of the best types of videos to share. After all, there are many different occasions for sharing video with your staff, especially live video. The following are some of the most valuable options for corporations:

Townhall meetings: Live video is perfect for allowing executives to present reports on the company and then answer employee questions.
Company announcements: When you don’t want to gather all employees in one spot at one time for a major announcement, you can create a video so they can get the same information from anywhere, at any time.
Livestreaming meetings: Streaming meetings in real time can keep employees informed and connected so they all get important information at the same time, whether they’re watching from home or from the office.
Troubleshooting: It’s often easier to explain quick fixes and complex repairs alike via video than in text, so video is perfect for helping employees resolve problems.
Employee onboarding: A series of informative videos can welcome new employees and walk them through their job duties, answer frequently asked questions, and introduce them to company executives.
Employee training: People are much better at retaining video content than text content, so training videos are great for teaching new processes while keeping viewers engaged.

As you can see, there are many ways to use video in corporate communications, which is probably why 75% of executives told Forbes they prefer video-related content. And that number will keep going up as more corporations catch on to the many benefits of video.

Why You Need To Be Tracking & Analyzing Video

Before you get to work creating videos to suit various needs around the office, stop and make sure you have a way to track their success. After all, one of the most common challenges corporations face is figuring out how effective their videos have been. The good news is that there are simple ways to track how your videos are doing. The following are some metrics to track so you can determine how your videos are performing.

Essentially, you need to know how many people are watching, how many watch the whole video, and where people tend to stop watching if they don’t make it through it all. But this information is just a start. You also deserve to know who is watching your video, how the streaming performance is, what the network impact is, and more.

Fortunately, you can learn this information through specific tools, such as Hive Insights 2.0. When you use this app, you get a wealth of feedback on your videos, including the above mentioned metrics. You can also see ranking lists that feature viewers by size and locations, quality of experience, and more. Text and map-based filtering are included with this app, too, meaning you can get more insights on statistics by location, customer site, and viewer experience. These features offer ways to see what’s working and what’s not, so you can learn from that and adjust your videos accordingly.

To see specific examples of how Hive can help, you can take a look at the case studies from past clients. For instance, Eastman is one client that needed help efficiently using existing network resources to improve video quality while also monitoring and reporting on video performance. According to the case study, Eastman wanted “not just typical macro statistics like number of viewers, time viewed, and average bit rate, but also the reporting of actual user experience by individual user and measures of quality of experience by region.” Hive Streaming provided that, allowing Eastman to show a live video broadcast to all offices—improving employee engagement during training and giving detailed feedback without requiring new network investments.

After looking at all the advantages, it should be clear that using video to enhance your corporate communications efforts is essential, especially when you already have the video feature as part of Microsoft 365. But that doesn’t mean video is without its challenges. If you’ve struggled in some way with getting your videos to engage your employees, you’re not alone. The good news is that there are plenty of tools out there that can help you improve your corporate videos to ensure they’re not only interesting enough to your employees, but also able to smoothly stream on multiple devices at once. So try out those tools to see which one works best for your business, and prepare to reap the rewards!

About Hive Streaming

Hive Streaming provides software-based video distribution solutions for enterprises who embrace video communications. Hive Streaming enables organizations to improve employee engagement with video communications. We solve the challenge of delivering high-quality live and on-demand video to employees’ devices. And, help you save cost and minimize disruption by utilizing your existing bandwidth, hardware and video content management and webcasting platforms.
Hive Streaming has gathered a team of leading experts in video technologies and enterprise networking to solve large file distribution challenges.

Any Microsoft 365 customer can leverage Hive’s analytics and distribution solutions without having to install additional software or hardware

Hive ensures your video messages are delivered in the highest possible quality, resulting in better viewing experiences and enhanced engagement

Hive provides rich analytics and engagement metrics to measure employee engagement

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