Make Video Your Go-To Method for Retaining Brand Knowledge
This article appeared in the August 2019 issue of MiMfg Magazine. Read the full issue and find past issues online.
There’s no greater creator of knowledge than experience. Learning from mistakes, successes, and all the things not covered in your Welcome to the Company manual, can move you forward and are worth passing on to the next person to step into that position. In order to grow, employers must document the employee’s experience. This requires having a process to collect their team’s experiences plus the company’s core values, mission and vision.
People tend to remember visuals better than text; which makes one wonder — if a picture is worth a thousand words, how much could video be worth to your brand’s future? Here are seven reasons why you should look to video to capture your company’s knowledge:
- It’s memorable — video content sticks with you while text can fade away. Research shows videos have one of the highest retention rates across all mediums. By hitting both our sight and auditory senses all at once, you keep the viewer’s attention and what they learn sticks with them better than words on paper.
- Jump aboard the bandwagon — video is the future! It’s no secret that text for knowledge distribution is on its way out. More people watch the news or follow social media than read newspapers to obtain information. As technology has advanced, our attention spans have steadily decreased, but our desire for more information has increased. Video can help capture their attention.
- Video makes the best use of time. You can’t get more hours in the day so video quickly becomes your best bet for packing more information into less space. More people are choosing to watch a five-minute video over reading an article on their own for 20 minutes.
- Your company stories should be treated as more than mere words. Your company goes nowhere without talent, so why not let it shine? Video adds a face and voice to the conversation and helps showcase the people who brought you to the present day.
- The camera doesn’t lie and that leads to honest answers. Capturing candid reactions ensures true business growth. Rather than wondering about an employee’s true experiences, accessing a video may underscore an employee’s true feelings. With a more honest baseline, your company growth strategy will be more effective.
- You’ll do more than remember the past — you could capture the future! A good video of numerous employees, whether past or current, all describing their exceptional experiences working at your company can make or break a potential job applicant’s interest. With talent so hard to locate, why not stand out with an exciting video highlighting your brand?
- Video — it’s just fun! Talking about daily processes can be boring, so why not make it fun? Engage your best employees on camera, one-on-one or in groups, and turn an important learning tool into an activity to build employee loyalty and explore the stories behind the business you built.
Manufacturers are running out of time to capture the knowledge of their retiring employees. With fewer people entering the industry workforce, the talent you hire shouldn’t be left to figure it out on their own. Retaining your company’s knowledge should be part of every owner’s long-term plan and video can make it more fun, more captivating and more effective than just putting pen to paper.
COMPANY is an Michigan Creative is an MMA Premium Associate member and has been an MMA member company since March 2016. Visit online: www.michigancreative.com.
Brian Town breaks it down further in this vlog entry.