When it comes to team communication, sometimes speed is the most important factor. A busy organization can save hours and hours of working time collectively by hosting a simple 30-minute meeting. Email and instant message solutions like Slack are the go-to options for internal communication day-to-day, but even those have their downsides.
In this episode of The Visual Lounge, Sherri Powers, VP of Marketing at TechSmith, talks about how video communication can save time.
Short videos and simple screen recordings can often get the message across faster and more efficiently than email or in-person meetings. Sherri breaks down the math in this episode to show you how much time you could save if you embrace video.
The importance of good communication
Good team communication is always a must in any organization, especially if it’s a large one with multiple departments. However, it’s something that businesses can easily spend way more time on than they need to.
As the VP of Marketing at TechSmith, Sherri knows better than most how challenging it can be to work with multiple departments, leadership, and the general team to get messages across. One of the biggest challenges is time and how long a simple meeting can take.
Not only that, but you also need to make sure your message is coming across clearly, without any room for misinterpretation. Getting that balance right can feel like an art form.
Using data to back your point up
When it comes to marketing specifically, you need to be able to back up what you’re saying with some cold hard figures.
If you need to talk to a different department about company growth or marketing potential, vague words don’t work. You need to be able to back those points up.
Sherri says the key is to use visuals to demonstrate facts and figures. She suggests using data and providing a visual depiction of it on a screen is the best way to drive your point home.
What makes a great visual?
How do you know your visuals are effective? Sherri says to ask, “does it get the job done?” When it comes to internal communication, your audience is already on the same page as you. So, visuals don’t have to be fancy or polished. They just need to be clear.
While Sherri appreciates a good, crisp visual, especially for customer-facing content, the end result is that it needs to be clear.
Why videos can be faster than email
Most of us don’t think twice about drafting out a quick email, but if you’re communicating something complex, is it ever a quick email?
When sending an email, there’s the time it takes to write it, proof it, fix typos, check everything’s made clear, and then you have to wait for the reply. If you need to get across a complex request or instruction, the meaning can get lost along the way, which can mean a bit of back and forth. There’s a lot of over-polishing that goes into writing an email.
Sherri has found that creating a three-to-four-minute screen recording video is much faster than typing everything out into an email.
In the case when you have to physically show someone something, for example, a new feature on a website, visuals are so much more effective.
Knowing when to make a video
Sherri believes that part of the challenge here is knowing when to make a video and what style the video will be.
If there’s a video needed that needs to go into a topic in-depth or will be referred to for years to come, she will spend a bit more time on it.
She might give it a little more polish, a script, or pair it with a PowerPoint presentation. Not all videos made to save time need to be super rushed. They will still save time in the long run and help you avoid repeating yourself.
Building your video creation skills
Even those who use videos on a day-to-day business still have a lot of learning to do along the way. Sherri uses video a lot but describes this as her “growth journey into video creation.”
How much time can video really save?
Sherri shared some of her back-of-the-napkin math to help you figure out how much time meetings really cost the team.
A 30-minute meeting with 25 staff members costs around 12 and a half hours of team time collectively. But replace that with a ten-minute video you watch at 1.5 speed, you can shave a whole lot of time off that.
Starting out in video
What if you’ve never made videos for your team before? Sherri highlights that anyone who has done presentations, either on Google Slides or PowerPoint, already has the tools to create a video. While it can be a bit intimidating at first, Sherri takes you through a simple way to get started.
One of the things people worry about with video is making a mistake. But the very nature of video means you can edit those mistakes out – unlike a meeting or a presentation.
The result? You get a much smoother, more fluid presentation that saves everyone time because you can trim anything unnecessary out.
Starting with video doesn’t have to be intimidating. It doesn’t need to be perfect. Sherri’s advice is to start small and try it out for yourself first. If you’re new to exploring the world of video creation in the workplace, we have some fantastic free resources at the TechSmith Academy.
For more expert advice and tips visit TechSmith Academy on YouTube or listen to the Podcast.