5 tips to create video content from remote employees
Yes, you can create video content from remote employees that is high-quality, visually compelling and tells great employee stories.
Employee stories provide the best culture content and give the clearest insight into what it’s really like to work at your company. However, when you and your employee storytellers are working remotely, uncovering and capturing important stories requires additional consideration. And, telling the stories of distributed team members in a meaningful, visually compelling way may seem more challenging.
But showing your company’s distributed team culture and sharing the stories of the remote employee experience is exactly the content that candidates want to see. It’s real, and it’s happening now. Additionally, your recent company decisions have impacted employees in meaningful ways, and the last few months have either redefined or reinforced who you are as a company.
It’s time to uncover and share your employee experiences, which are powerful stories, with your audiences.
Here are our tips to create video content from remote employees. Using these best practices, you can capture substantive, visually-engaging employee story content virtually.
1. Facilitate well: Manage the interview process from start to finish
We at Stories Inc. have learned from years of uncovering thousands of compelling stories about the employee experience. One thing we swear by: managing the process from start to finish with your employee storyteller. This includes preparing them lightly, scheduling their time with you, and ultimately facilitating an engaging conversation. When we developed Virtual Story Sessions, we didn’t think twice about skimping on a well managed and facilitated interview with the storyteller.
Here’s why: The best stories emerge when your storytellers feel confident and comfortable sharing their real experiences. Your viewers are more engaged when whatever they’re watching or reading is authentic, engaging and accessible. When you do the work to ensure your storyteller is prepared and comfortable with you, they can be themselves and focus only on sharing their experiences.
Another important tip: Remove distractions for the storyteller, such as worrying about how they look, will make a difference in making a storyteller feel comfortable. This gets you much closer to getting a great story. And, caring about the video and audio quality pay off in the end. That leads us to…
2. Honor the story: Optimize quality
Employee stories should be honored with good quality audio and video, even in remote and at-home workspaces. Ring lights, HD webcams, and microphones can help (and your guidance during set up is important for both the storyteller experience and visual quality). Additionally, there are lots of ways to bring a story to life beyond a talking head, such as photos, graphic design, or animation. The point is to create content that you (and your storyteller) are proud to share on your channels with your networks, and a viewing audience will find interesting enough to keep watching or reading.
3. Engage while informing: Prioritize your audience needs
If your content is not insightful about your culture, it’s not useful to candidates. Right now, candidates are searching for how your company has treated their people during the pandemic. They are also searching for how you’re creating inclusive cultures, including how you support BIPOC. Specific employee stories can do this for you! Bonus: When you weave employee stories together to communicate cultural points, you’re giving greater insight for candidates.
4. Give the Cultural Takeaway: Connect the story to your messaging
Another way to create useful content for candidates is to connect the story clearly to the cultural takeaway. When you’ve gathered stories that span multiple perspectives, a clear picture of company culture emerges. But you may need to spell out your employer value proposition and values so the candidate isn’t left to make their own conclusions.
5. Collaborate and delegate: You don’t have to do everything
Good culture content isn’t created in a vacuum. We are experts that can help you create employee story content that works for your company, your storytellers and your candidates. Stories Incorporated’s Virtual Story Sessions is the virtual version of our two-part innovation. First, we conduct virtual, facilitated experiences that uncover compelling stories from employees. Then, we transform those stories into high-quality visual and audio content, delivering content libraries optimized by channel.