Getting many people on a call is a big ask. But delivering information through emails and text messages is even more challenging and visually overwhelming. After all, blocks of text don't command people's attention—videos do.
Video messaging is a powerful tool to establish a personal connection, be it while communicating and collaborating with your team or sending cold messages to a potential client. It's easy, engaging, and expressive.
Let’s look at the best ways to use video messaging for team collaboration and how it benefits you.
Skip to a section
- What is video messaging?
- Why use video messaging?
- 16 ideas for using video messaging for work
- How to use the VEED screen recorder for video messaging
[#TOC1]What is video messaging?[#TOC1]
Video messaging is a means of asynchronous communication where users create videos to share information with their team. Put simply, video messaging replaces written texts and audio notes with video clips—creating a more personalized form of communication.
But video messaging ≠ video calling. The idea is to communicate asynchronously without needing the recipient(s) to watch these videos in real-time.
[#TOC2]Why use video messaging?[#TOC2]
We’re living the future of work, with remote/hybrid and async work slowly becoming the norm. But research shows how the lack of proper communication is often the biggest roadblock affecting a remote team's productivity and outputs.
Whether you want to share a quick note on a new task, conduct a detailed training session, or take project updates, a face-to-face call might be impossible for bigger teams.
Enter—video messaging, a faster, more immersive, and more seamless way of communication. Instead of checking everyone’s calendars, you create short and long clips to talk about anything you want them to know.
Here’s why you need videos for work communication:
- Next best thing to being in person: A survey revealed nearly 49% of workers face video call fatigue. With video messaging, you can save your team from this exhaustion and communicate more expressively—making it the next best alternative to in-person discussions. Additionally, incorporating video feedback can enhance collaboration and provide a visual dimension to discussions.
- Nothing gets lost in translation: There's a high chance of misinterpretation when you can't see people's expressions through written or audio communication. With video messages, people can watch and hear everyone's tones to understand each other's perspectives better. Plus if you use a tool like VEED for video messaging you can add and translate subtitles.
- Deliver messages with greater impact: 83% of people prefer watching a video to access information over text or audio. Since videos offer a more immersive experience, people pay more attention to what’s being communicated. This is why the majority of customer contact center software now has video capabilities as a standard.
- Personalize your communication: Besides simplifying communication, video messaging adds a more personal touch to it. Whether sending a pitch for cold outreach or documenting internal SOPs, videos create an indirect yet personal rapport between the speakers and viewers.
- More effective async collaboration: Videos break the barriers of time and location to deliver messages more conveniently so timezone differences are never an issue.
[#TOC3]16 ideas for using video messaging for work[#TOC3]
There are no limits to how you can use video messaging. It fits right between an email and a live meeting. So, if you want to do more with videos, here’s a list of 16 popular video messaging ideas to help you get started:
1. Training Videos
Create detailed videos to train your employees on any subject. You can make short explainers on different topics and combine them into one long video. Alternatively, you can create a single instructional video covering everything about the subject.
Here's an example of a video tutorial on using HubSpot. It's almost 20-minute long, with a list of timestamps for each feature explained in the video.
2. Presentation Videos
A video is an ultimate tool to spice up a presentation and hook the viewers' attention. Videos allow you to condense more information in a single presentation and communicate quickly.
Plus, you can simplify complex concepts and data through visualization. Presentation videos work well for quarterly and annual reports, sales pitch decks, product launches, and project updates.
3. (Warmer) Cold Outreach
You spend hours writing and rewriting a cold email, only for it to end up in your prospects' spam folders. With email verification and video messaging for sales teams, you can get more out of cold outreach and make it warmer.
Instead of expecting potential clients to put in the effort of reading your mails, make it easy for them to learn more about your business through video messaging. You can pique their curiosity with short and personalized videos.
Share your digital business card as your CTA to enable prospective customers to get in touch.
For example, Sam Humes from VEED's sales team breaks the pattern of the typical "lets connect" LinkedIn message that typically is mass-sent with zero personalization. Right off the bat on the video thumbnail the recipient can see their name in the greeting reading "Hey Drew". Sam then introduces himself and does a brief product demonstration before inviting them to get on a call.
With the usage of tools like sales prospecting and engagement, this process can be made even more efficient and personalized. It helps streamline your video message outreach by providing valuable insights into your prospects and facilitating seamless communication. It aids in scheduling follow-up communications, ensuring that the warmth doesn’t fade over time.
Additionally, remember the significance of email signature for marketing and enhance your outreach strategy further by adding it at the end of your messages. This signature can include a call-to-action that directs recipients to explore more about your offerings. Stand out from the crowd and leave a lasting impression with a well-crafted email signature that complements your video messaging.
4. Asynchronous Catch Ups
Whether you want to ask a quick question, share a short explainer, collect daily updates, or conduct weekly stand-ups, video streamlines communication across time zones. It makes collaboration more seamless, allowing you to document your progress on every project for future reference. Integrating cloud based phone systems are also ideal for remote teams and can be great internal communication.
5. Virtual Intros
Welcome new hires to your virtual workspace with video introductions. A short and snappy video can convey more about a person than a text message. Plus, there's room for a lot of creativity for you to experiment and customize this per your company culture.
According to William Sipling, Director of Workforce Transformation at Hubstaff, video intros are a great way to onboard new team members and connect faces to names. “During an employee’s first week, each new hire records a short video of themselves where they discuss their role as well as fun fast facts and hobbies. Each video is linked from our organizational chart so that everyone can learn about each other. It’s a great way for our fully-remote team to be engaged with folks from different departments, and in different time zones and countries.
Here's an example to show how it's done.
6. Pre-meeting connect
Use short videos to set and reiterate the agenda(s) before a meeting. This keeps everyone on the same page and reduces any deviations. You’ll also get a better idea of the meeting’s length and outcomes depending on who wants to cover what topics.
7. Post-meeting recap
Reinforce the action items from a meeting with a post-meeting recap video—a video version of the lengthy minutes-of-the-meeting emails since people retain more information from a video rather than text. Any participant can jot down all the points discussed in the meeting and convert them into a video clip.
8. Social Media Videos
One of the best use cases of video messaging for marketing teams is to humanize a brand on social media. Short videos are a big hit on platforms like Instagram and TikTok—boosting audience engagement and brand recognition.
Later is one of the best video messaging examples. The team creates snackable Instagram Reels content to educate and entertain its Instagram followers and rack up thousands of views on every reel.
9. Press Pitches
Videos can level up your marketing and generate buzz about your business in many ways. A video press pitch helps you stand out from the hundreds of pitches reporters receive daily. A video clip also makes your brand story or news more appealing.
Here's a great example of a press pitch by The Nu Company whose goal is to challenge the food industry by offering organic products that never sacrifice on quality.
10. Video Newsletter
Video newsletters might do the trick for you if you're tired of not getting the expected clicks and responses on your email newsletter. In fact, SuperOffice conducted an interesting experiment to conclude that mentioning the word “video” in an email can increase the open rates by 6%.
More than just increasing the open rates, video lets you cover a lot more ground and establish a stronger connection with your audience. You can also further enhance the email deliverability rate and email security by deploying a proper DMARC policy.
Take a page out of TeamGantt’s book to create a video newsletter. In this 2-minute video, the team offers the latest update from their company with a mix of human and virtual content.
11. Marketing Campaign Reviews
Measuring the results of a marketing campaign involves a lot of data. Videos help you present all data analyses in the most comprehensible format. You can include detailed dashboards and record every team member's insights to produce well-rounded campaign reviews.
12. Customer Support and Onboarding
Since videos show users how to complete a task instead of just telling them about it, video messaging can remove any possible friction from the customer onboarding process.
Here’s one from Basecamp to tell you how to use video messaging for customer support. This 1.5-minute video gives viewers a walkthrough of multiple Basecamp features they need to set up their workplace. The project management brand has a whole playlist of videos like these to solve any customer questions once they start using the product!
13. New Hire Onboarding
New hire employees can feel lost and overwhelmed with all the information coming their way in the first few days. Video messaging, facilitated by innovative recruitment software, can simplify the onboarding process and help new hires make sense of everything. Moreover, when you create videos to communicate with a recruit, you give them the flexibility to learn things at their own pace.
This welcome video by STATION F shows how you can add a dash of humor and fun to create a friendly and wholesome vibe for your new hires.
14. Recruiting
Attracting great talent to work for you is—in many ways—the same as pitching a great prospect to buy from you. You can use video messaging for recruitment the same way you use videos for cold outreach. A recruitment video gives interested candidates a glance at your company culture and entices them to send in their applications.
Take this example from Tooploox. The 2-minute video takes a funny approach to show candidates the company’s work environment and team bonding.
15. Help Desk FAQs
Creating a repository of FAQs is a lesser-known use case for videos. You can spice up your mainstream help desk and answer common queries with detailed walkthrough videos.
You can also consider using voice AI agents. These agents can handle automated conversational interactions, providing instant responses and enhancing the overall user experience.
VEED's help desk is prepared with not only written answers but also video explainers. People searching for answers can then choose the format they prefer and learn in best to get their answers.
16. How-To Videos for Employees
With video messaging for HR, you can create an internal knowledge base or an employee portal to answer the most frequently asked employee questions. This simplifies documentation and enables better knowledge-sharing.
You can create videos to document every standard operating procedure or step-by-step guide, giving employees quick answers to queries and concerns. So, instead of just telling them how to perform a task, you can visually guide them how to do it flawlessly.
For example, the below screenshot shows links to VEED's Notion hub covering all things related to our blog. Inside each labeled step our team will find videos showing them the ropes of our process, strategy, and tools we use.
[#TOC4]How to use the VEED screen recorder for video messaging[#TOC4]
Getting started with video messaging is easy when you have a feature-packed screen recorder tool like VEED. Follow these steps to record yourself or your screen and create videos for virtually everything in a few clicks:
1. Go to VEED’s Screen Recorder and select a layout
Navigate to VEED’s screen recorder and choose the best recording format for your content from six available options.
From the screen that opens up, choose the best recording format for your content from six available options.
2. Adjust your recording settings
Once you pick an ideal format, you’ll get multiple recording options to refine your video.
Click on Themes to add a background theme for your video.
Click on Background to add a color or image to the background.
Click on Prompter to see the script for your video.
And with this, you’ve customized your settings to make a highly attractive video.
3. Start recording
After adjusting your settings, hit the Start Recording button on the top right and wait for the countdown.
4. Pause and take retakes if necessary
The best part about VEED’s video messaging tool is that it allows you to pause and take retakes in every video. When you hit the retake button, your video starts from scratch. You can also press pause whenever required.
5. (Optional) Refine and edit the video
VEED's video editor allows you to iterate your video in many ways to make it more professional-looking.
All you need to do is create your VEED account to access the editor and save videos on the cloud. Then, you can add music, merge your recorded video with other clips, and add subtitles. You can also explore the video editor further and customize it with more advanced setting to change your draft the way you like. Once done, export it and share it with the right people.
What’s inside VEED?
- Screen and Webcam Recorder: Record your screen (and yourself) with our recorder and edit after if you want.
- Video Template Library: Access to a collection of templates for all major platforms.
- Video Editor: Add subtitles, resize for major platforms, add music, translate, and more!
- Collaboration Tools: Invite your team to your workspace or get edits from clients with the comments feature.
- Video Sharing: Embed, send, or share your video directly to social platforms.
6. Save and export your video
When you’re done recording, hit Stop and wait for the video to upload. Once the video is uploaded, you’ll find the Finish Recording button. Press that to download the video. You can also sign in to your account to save the video on the cloud.
Send video messages like a pro (even if it's your first time)
Video messaging offers unmatched ease and flexibility of communication. It’s a fast and frictionless alternative to text and audio messaging. With VEED’s free screen recorder, you can take your video messaging efforts to the next level. Record, edit, and export videos in minutes to communicate like a pro.
VEED’s all-in-one solution can make your tech stack leaner and give your team the chops to communicate smarter without breaking a sweat.
