What Is Microlearning?

You’re arguing with your parents over politics, and you pick up your phone to Google the specifics of a recent bill.

You’re on a flight to Rome. Before you land, you use an iPhone app to learn how to say “more pasta” and “double espresso, please,” in Italian.

You don’t know how to tie your bowtie before a formal wedding, so you fire up a quick YouTube tutorial on your laptop.  

What do these three things have in common? They’re all examples of microlearning.

Microlearning breaks material down into short, easily digestible components (typically around 30 seconds to a few minutes in length) that tackle a single learning objective. “Microlearning allows for learners to receive the information they need, when they need it, in the relevant context,” says Lauren Freeman, M.A.

Watch the first in Lauren’s Microlearning video series below, and read her full Master’s report on microlearning.

Most of the time, microlearning experiences in our daily lives — say, watching a tutorial on how to cut a pineapple or Googling a stat to resolve a dinner table argument — go unnoticed. But as we incorporate microlearning into our regular routines, we inevitably expect it to be available to us during more formal pursuits of knowledge as well.

In particular, microlearning has powerful applications in today’s workforce, where employees “are expected to constantly acquire new information to stay current,” according to Freeman. Traditional learning experiences — think textbooks, long lectures, and even PowerPoint presentations or PDFs — are often prohibitively time-consuming and static given the fast pace of the modern workplace.

5 Benefits of Microlearning

Increasingly, companies are adopting microlearning as a core component of their L&D strategies. In a recent survey by the Association for Talent Development, 38% of companies reported currently using microlearning, while 41% plan to implement the strategy within the next 12 months. Of those organizations delivering microlearning, 63% have completely replaced formal learning with microlearning.

Microlearning offers numerous benefits, in that it is:

• Flexible. Microlearning experiences are much easier to personalize for each learner’s preferences and needs. By creating short chunks of content dedicated to a single learning objective, organizations can easily swap out content for individual learners or create new modules as the curriculum evolves. This is in stark contrast to traditional training curricula, which are often expensive to create and difficult to modify without overhauling the whole program.
• Accessible: Microlearning can occur during short windows of time and on a wide variety of devices (computers, tablets, phones, etc.) — no classroom required.
• Just-in-time: It’s 3pm, and you need to get up to speed on pivot tables in Microsoft Excel before a 4pm meeting with your boss. Enter microlearning. A quick YouTube video can tell you exactly what you need to know, right now — without forcing you to sit through extra minutes or hours of irrelevant material.
• Sticky: Learners’ short-term memory (also known as working memory) “can only retain a certain amount of information simultaneously,” writes Christopher Pappas of The eLearning Industry. Bite-sized videos and other short modules help boost knowledge retention and prevent cognitive overload, particularly when dealing with complex topics.
• Cumulative: Ideally, each microlearning module has its own learning objective, but also represents “a small win on the way to a larger goal,” according to Alex Khurgin, Director of Learning Innovation at Grovo. Learners can learn what they need, exactly when they need it, while at the same time building their knowledge over time to gain mastery over the subject at hand.

In the next article in the series, we’ll discuss using video to create microlearning experiences and why it’s so effective.

Read Next: Why Your Company Should Create Microlearning Videos

About Vyond

Vyond allows people of all skill levels in all industries and job roles to create dynamic and powerful media. With features that go beyond moving text and images, you can build character-driven stories or compelling data visualizations that engage audiences and deliver results.

With Vyond, it’s easy to create video for your social media marketing. Start a free 14-day trial and sign up for our weekly webinar.

The post What Is Microlearning? 5 Key Benefits for Today’s Employees appeared first on Vyond.

With rich, sensory details, video is uniquely suited to storytelling. It captures viewers’ attention on a visceral level by replicating a face-to-face human connection.

You can use Vyond to create animated videos for your business using thousands of props, assets, and characters representing hundreds of industries. To help you get started, we’ve bundled the savviest Vyond resources from our team to form a comprehensive guide to video-making in Vyond Studio. Here’s an example of what you can create with Vyond. In this post, we’ll cover everything you need to know to create a great Vyond video, from brainstorming ideas to adding advanced effects.

Click to jump to each section:

Start a 14-day free trial of Vyond.

Step 1: Plan and outline your ideas

Before you jump into Vyond’s platform, you have to start by planning your video. The more you think ahead, the smoother your actual video-making will be.

Here are four planning steps to create an outline of your video that details how it progresses:

• Set goals. Identify the objective of your video for your organization and how you plan to measure success.
• Identify the scope. Figure out your video length, budget, a timeline for making it, etc.
• Pick the type of video. Will your video be completely animated or will it include some live-action parts? Consider your video goals and scope when making this decision.
• Brainstorm and outline. Based on your video goals, scope, and type, think about what types of characters and storylines you will need for your film. Then, write out in bullet points how you envision the video progressing from start to finish.

With an outline ready, you have a clear framework for efficiently creating a video.

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Step 2: Turn your outline into a script

Once you’ve laid out your initial thoughts, you’re ready to start scripting. Scripting your video before you start a Vyond free trial will give you more time to explore our video maker. We also recommend that our customers have at least a basic script in mind before attempting to make a video in Vyond Studio.

Use your original outline as the basis of your script and begin to expand it into a video script.

Scripting for video, especially animated video, is different than writing for any other medium. With visuals and audio available to help you tell your story, not every word needs to be spoken. Try to think in pictures as you’re writing your script — this is an important exercise that many new video creators overlook. It’s also best to be brief and conversational. Generally, video will not be as formal as written text.

Here are some of the most important script elements for you to consider, from Vyond’s CEO, Gary Lipkowitz:

• Setting: Where should your story take place? At home? At the office? At the airport? Where is the magnitude or urgency of the pain point at its highest?
• Characters: Who should tell the story? A manager? An employee? A narrator?
• Narrative Style: Are there characters? Should the characters speak to each other like they’re in a TV show? This dialog enhances storytelling but is often slower. Should there be a narrator, talking about the characters from a top view? This allows you to be more efficient and precise, but often at the expense of identification with the characters.
• Structure: Should you start at the beginning? This is the most simple. Or should you start at the end, showing the good (or bad) outcome and tracing back to the start? This shifts focus toward the “how” and away from the result.
• Metaphor: Metaphors can help bring difficult concepts to life, especially with animation. Metaphors help us understand new concepts by attaching them to concepts that we already know. A little boy using a leaky bucket to bring water back from a well can illustrate poor cost control or a faulty process. These metaphors can be spoken or visual.

Watch the video below, and read this detailed post for more scripting tips.

Here at Vyond, we use a simple Google Docs template to lay out our scripts. Visuals are detailed on the left side of the doc, while the dialogue is covered on the right. The format is simple and easy for anyone to fill out, regardless of their scriptwriting experience. Here’s one example of ours:

Once you’ve written your script, read it aloud. Then read it again, and again, and again. Edit as needed to make the language sound natural and conversational. Think about where you can cut out unnecessary words or turn them into animated visuals, or on-screen text that can be excluded from the voice-over.

With the first draft of your script ready and your video planned, it’s time to start using Vyond.

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Step 3: Start a 14-day free trial

We offer a free 14-day trial for anyone interested in trying Vyond before committing to a subscription.

 Start a 14-day free trial of Vyond.

Once you’ve started your free trial, you can begin exploring the platform immediately. Click “Make a Video,” and choose from one of our three styles.

• Contemporary has a modern feel with easy-to-brand design customization abilities.

• Business Friendly has industry-specific templates to create videos for a wide variety of professional scenarios.

• Whiteboard Animation draws out your video piece-by-piece, so viewers are eager to see what will be revealed next. They stay engaged while you break down the core ideas of your video.

After choosing a style, play around with templates. Their pre-set scenery, characters, and more make it easy to create a complete video in minutes.

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Step 4: Learn Vyond

People always ask us how long it should take to create their first video, or to become a pro at using Vyond. The honest answer is that it’s different for everyone. It’s easy enough to drag a few templates onto the timeline, make simple adjustments, and create your first video in less than a minute. Some of our customers are able to jump in their first time, teach themselves, and create an excellent custom video within their first few hours. Other people, the majority, take a few days, weeks, or months to become proficient Vyond video creators.

If you want to learn by teaching yourself, take a look at how Vyond Studio is laid out, follow the guided tour when you sign in for the first time, then explore all of our scene template options. If you want to learn from our team, watch our top resources for learning how to use the videomaker.

Video Tutorials

Our step-by-step tutorials are the perfect resources for learning technical Vyond skills. You can find a library of introductory tutorials with our Getting Started video tutorial page.

These introductory tutorials cover everything from animation styles to adding voice to your videos. Watch this video, and those linked below, with the Vyond Studio open to follow along.

• Animation styles overview
• Using Vyond scene templates
• How to create a custom character
• Character animation
• Enter and exit effects
• Scene transitions
• Adding voice to your video
• Advanced audio editing
• Keyboard shortcuts

Webinars

Beyond tutorials, you can build your knowledge of video and Vyond with our webinars. These sessions are typically 45 minutes long (plus Q&A), so they cover a lot of ground on specific video topics. You can also check out our library of past webinars. This intermediate webinar, for example, will teach you how to take your videos from good to great by using scene transitions, camera movement, and sound effects.

Test your knowledge

Here are some exercises to complete in Vyond Studio to apply what you’ve learned. Search our help center if you get stuck.

1. Change your character’s action to “sit” and make the facial expression “confused.”
2. Make a pig fly from the bottom left corner all the way off the screen.
3. In one sequence, make your character walk, stand, and then jump.
4. Show the change of seasons by showing your character in a summer outfit, and then a winter outfit.
5. Import an image of your favorite place and have your character talk about why he/she loves it so much.
6. Use whiteboard animation to draw a monkey and a banana. Extra credit: erase the banana and replace it with a chocolate bar.
7. Create a chart that compares the popularity of your three favorite sports.
8. Find a template that allows you to insert a screenshot into a computer frame then slowly zoom in on that screen.

Vyond customer support

Have a question about Vyond? Our team of experts is here to help.

• Vyond Help Center: Search through topics and explore Vyond resources to answer your questions.
• Email customer support: You can reach our support team at support@vyond.com. We typically respond within 24 hours.
• Call customer support: You can call our support team at (888) 360-9639. We are available Monday – Friday, midnight Pacific to 5:30 pm Pacific (excluding holidays).
• Premium support: Vyond Starter, Professional, and Enterprise customers have access to live chat support. Vyond Professional and Enterprise members have a priority spot in our service queue.

Showcase

As a newbie, you can learn a lot from others’ Vyond creations. It’s helpful and motivating to see what’s possible in Vyond Studio with time and experience. That’s why we created the Vyond Customer Showcase and Templates Showcase pages where you can explore stand-out video examples from the Vyond team and our customers.

The videos are organized by different use cases—training, marketing, branding—so you can find examples that are the most helpful for your work.

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 Start a 14-day free trial of Vyond.

Step 5: Storyboard and finalize your script

Now that you understand how Vyond works, you know what’s available to you visually and can start storyboarding. Storyboarding is critical because it speeds up production. By envisioning the entire video, you know exactly what to record (or animate) and focus on during the production stage.

The most common way to storyboard is drawing by hand. You don’t need to be a great artist, and the amount of detail you include can depend on how simple or complex your video will be. A storyboard needs at least enough information to give stakeholders a sense of what’s happening.

If you don’t feel comfortable drawing, Vyond is a great tool for quickly putting together storyboards. The characters, props, and settings are already designed—you only need to drag them to where you want them to create each frame.

Always make final modifications to your script during the storyboarding process. The more you can communicate through imagery, the more powerful your video will be.

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Step 6: Create your characters

Creating characters is one of the most exciting parts of using Vyond! Our characters are customizable from head to toe. Pick outfits to show off a character’s personality, and add different eye and mouth shapes to convey their emotions and expressions.

On the free trial, you will have access to our three animation styles and two character creators—Business Friendly and Whiteboard. If you choose to upgrade to a Vyond Professional plan, you will also have access to the Contemporary Character Creator that offers even more customization options, such as changing characters’ height.

We recommend creating your character first and then making the rest of your video. This order is more efficient than switching back and forth from the Character Creator to your scene in Vyond Studio.

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Step 7. Make your video

With your characters built, you’re ready to make the rest of your video in Vyond. With all your pre-production work set, making a video could be the easiest part.

Here are the basic elements you’ll need to make your video feel polished and complete:

• Scenery and props: Find a template that’s pre-built with scenic elements and props to save you time.
• Camera movement: The view of the camera guides viewers’ focus throughout your video, so they’re focusing on the most important elements. Check out this help article and this webinar on camera movement to learn more.
• Voiceover and lip sync: You can either create audio narration through typing in text or by recording your own voiceover. We recommend using the text-to-speech voice while you work and then adding your own recording at the end, in case you need to make any dialogue adjustments. Vyond characters will automatically lip sync to your dialogue.
• Music and sound effects: Both audio elements add emotion and realism to your videos, so audiences are more engaged. Check out this help article on adding music and sound effects to scenes.
• Scene transitions: Watch this help article and this tutorial to learn how to add scene transitions.
• Character movement: Add your characters back in and plot out motion paths for them to walk or run in your video. You can learn how to set character movements in this article.

All of these elements together create a full, sensory experience that engages your audience as they watch your video.

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Step 8. Upgrade to a Vyond subscription

From a free trial account, you are able to explore Vyond and create watermarked videos. However, you’re not able to download a video on a free trial account, and you’ll only be able to use Vyond for 14 days. For regular access to Vyond with the option to download, you’ll need to upgrade to one of the following subscriptions.

Starter

Perfect for individuals, Vyond Starter offers core video creation features, plus:

• Access to AI avatars and tools
• 600+ high-quality test to speech voices
• Screen & webcam recording.
• Includes 10,000 credits per user, per month

Professional

The Professional plan is perfect for businesses and 1-5 user teams. The plan includes all of the Starter features, plus:

• Team collaboration tools
• Access to 4M+ Shutterstock assets
• Instant translation into 70+ languages
• Speech Enhancer (powered by Dolby.io)
• Includes 20,000 credits per user, per month

Enterprise

Built for large teams with individualized needs. Contact sales for multi-seat pricing. Includes all of the Professional features, plus:

• 100+ WellSaid AI voices
• Brand management tools
• Advanced team collaboration
• Enterprise security features
• Virtually unlimited credits

Learn more about Vyond’s subscription plans.

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Step 9: Practice and play

Set yourself up with good, productive habits by learning from the resources in this post. You may be using Vyond for work, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun too! Play around and make fun videos for yourself, your family, or your co-workers. This is a great way to learn. Try out new ideas and don’t be too hard on yourself if your videos aren’t perfect right away. Keep at it and let us know if you need help.

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Step 10: Take your videos to the next level

Vyond makes it easy to make videos, but your video strategy will require more than that. Take your videos to the next level with these tips for sharing and improving your video distribution.

Video authoring and interactivity

Authoring your video with interactive elements transforms the video viewing experience. You can create a choose-your-own-adventure video, give your learners quizzes or skill checks, gamify your content, create clickable menus, and more.

Many Vyond customers use tools such as Articulate Storyline, Adobe Captivate, Trivantis (Lectora), iSpring, and others, to add interactivity to their Vyond videos.

Video hosting

Your videos need a place to live when you’re done with them. With a host, you have a secure place to store and share your videos.

Here are a few industry-specific video hosting suggestions.

• eLearning and HR: You most likely want your videos to be private, so consider storing them on a learning management system (LMS), such as Litmos or Docebo. Or post your videos privately on your employee intranet portal, such as Unily.
• Marketing: Most of your videos will be public, and you’ll want to distribute them as widely as possible. Wistia, Brightcove, Vidyard, and Vzaar are excellent options for marketers as they allow you to easily upload and embed videos, and they track viewer engagement.
• Enterprise: Large organizations with specific video hosting requirements should consider Qumu, Kaltura, Panopto, and Brightcove.

Of course, Vimeo and YouTube has distribution benefits, and it’s free, but it’s also not the ideal service to use as your primary storage and distribution channel. YouTube gives you less control over the viewing experience, as users will see commercials and outside videos on their sidebar, but its affordability makes it a considerable choice.

Advance your video skills

Make the most of your Vyond subscription by continually building your video skills. Revisit the knowledge-building tips in Step 4 and check out video resources outside of Vyond. Our video production team recommends No Film School, and our marketing team has learned quite a bit from Wistia.

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Anyone Can Become a Vyond Pro

Vyond is meant for people with all levels of experience—from the novice to the film school grad. With this accessibility, it doesn’t take long to become a whiz at using Vyond. Follow these ten steps and you’ll quickly be on your way to making professional animated videos regularly for your organization.

Make a video

The post Everything You Need to Make a Video in Vyond appeared first on Vyond.

The issue is that viewers can misunderstand your video’s message if the emotions your character conveys are ambiguous.

For example; psychiatrists have linked crossed arms to defensiveness. So, if your character performs this action with a big smile, your viewers might be unsure about the emotion you convey: Are they hiding something? Are they happy? Are they uncomfortable? It’s unclear.

Luckily, adding the correct expressions at the right time to convey the desired emotion is easy using the following six techniques.

1. Change their facial expression

Facial expressions are a huge part of how humans perceive emotion and make their emotions known to others.

Like in real life, the characters from your animation should change their facial expressions as they go through your video’s events.

For example; if your character just heard surprising news, take him from a Neutral to a Shocked or Surprised facial expression depending on whether the information was positive or negative.

You can change your character’s facial expressions in Vyond Studio by clicking on them and selecting the Expression icon at the top right corner. From there, you can pick between the expression that better resembles your character’s feelings at that particular scene.

2. Change their actions

Body language—like vocal tone and gestures—allows humans to interpret other people’s emotions just as their facial expressions do.

Psychologists like Albert Mehrabian argue body language transmits as much as 93% of a message. While people have criticized Mehrabian’s study, it’s clear that it’s harder to convey emotion without body language. Or when body language doesn’t match facial expressions.

For example; our “Too noisy” pose covers a character’s ears and adds two bolts of lightning next to them. This pose is perfect to symbolize a noisy environment. Therefore, adding an expression of joy on the character’s face wouldn’t make any sense, while one of frustration does.

You can change your character’s actions by selecting a character and clicking on the Action menu at the top right corner. From there, pick an action that amplifies the emotion that your character’s facial expression is trying to convey.

3. Add facial expressions to your characters before adding audio

The character expression you add before adding audio (lip-syncing) influences how your character looks before, during, and after saying your lines.

For example; you can add a “smiling” facial expression to your character if the voice line is exciting or positive. This addition won’t make your character smile while talking. But it’ll add a smile before and after the character says any sentence, thus projecting happiness.

Like before, select your character and add a facial expression at the top right corner. You can then click on your character once more to add a Dialog in the mic icon from your toolbar.

The Dialog menu allows you to record from your microphone, upload an audio file, or use our text-to-speech feature to assign an audio track to your character. You can pick the recording option that better suits your needs.

4. Include music to emphasize your character’s emotions

The music you use emphasizes your character’s feelings while also helping the viewer feel these emotions.

For example; studies found sad music—think Mozart’s Requiem—can amplify people’s feelings of sorrow and melancholy. Therefore, playing sad music while your character goes through an unfortunate situation will magnify the scene’s gloomy atmosphere.

On the flip side, play upbeat music as the character smiles, and your video will convey positivity.

You can add music to your project by clicking on Audio at the top left side of the toolbar. From there, you can either choose between dozens of our music tracks or upload an audio track.

5. Use camera movements

Camera movements can direct the viewers’ attention to the action or facial expression your character is performing.

A zoom—when you give the illusion that the camera is closer or further from the subject than it is—is an easy movement you can incorporate into any video.

For example; you can zoom in to a character’s face so that the viewer can focus, say, on the frustration or joy in the character’s face. Then, you can zoom out after a few seconds to re-establish the entire frame as the area worth watching.

You can zoom in or zoom out easily with Vyond by first adding a Camera Movement from the Camera icon at the top right corner. Then, change the placement of the triangles based on how you want to zoom.

To zoom in, place the light orange rectangle on top of your character’s face and make it smaller than the dark rectangle. To zoom out, interchange the rectangle’s sizes.

Zooms are one of seven camera movements you can use to emphasize your character’s expressions and actions. You can learn more about these camera movements here.

6. Utilize the Continue Scene feature

Characters can only have one expression per scene. So to switch their face before changing the props and scenario, we need to use the Continue Scene feature.

Vyond’s Continue Scene feature allows you to continue a scene from a previous scene’s endpoint.
This feature is useful for scenes where you want to keep the same props, characters, and environment while changing a character’s expressions or actions.

For example; let’s say you create a scene where the company’s CEO shows the company’s annual performance to his team members. The scene could consist of two shots:

1. 1. One before the CEO shows the results
   2. One after the CEO shows the results

In the first shot, the employees could have a neutral facial expressions. However, you could use the Continue Scene feature during scene B to keep the elements of the first shot while changing the employees’ facial expressions to either surprised, sad, or happy, depending on the CEO’s report.

You can use the Continue Scene feature by right-clicking on a scene from your timeline and selecting Continue Scene. These steps will create a new scene on your timeline with the same props, characters, and setup that the previous one had.

You can read this article to learn six use cases for our Continue Scene feature.

Add emotions to your Vyond characters in minutes

Vyond allows you to create characters from every age group in just a few minutes. Once they are ready, you can brainstorm the emotions that your script’s lines and video should convey.
You can then use this data to pick between dozens of facial expressions and hundreds of character actions in just a few clicks.

Start a free trial

The post 6 Tricks To Make Your Videos More Relatable With Character Expressions appeared first on Vyond.

A 2021 study on the pandemic’s impact on the workforce exposes this difficulty. It found that 36% of employees feel disconnected from colleagues. These employees tried to communicate with colleagues, but 34% found it hard to get a response through channels like email. This impact is felt even more heavily by remote organizations. In-office and hybrid workers can walk over to their coworkers’ desks when there’s a communication breakdown—an option not available to someone 500 miles away from their closest colleague.

Without a culture that emphasizes clear communication, employees face problems alone. This lack of collaboration leads to losses in productivity, increased stress, and a more frequent turnover of employees feeling like outsiders.

Remote organizations can apply seven ideas to overcome these challenges. Each helps you build a company culture where employees cooperate to achieve the same goal in less time.

1. Create clear communication guidelines

Headphones during your workday? Deep work. Reading during lunchtime? No time for gossip. These are two unwritten rules of office work etiquette.

But rules are more ambiguous while working remotely, which can cause unintentional offenses or stress for employees.
A survey of almost 2,000 workers found that 70% experience unclear communication with colleagues at least once a month. When messages aren’t precise, employees waste time trying to crack what their colleague wants or executing the wrong directions. As a result, employees waste four hours per week on average trying to solve these communication problems.

The same survey found that 75% of employees sense a lack of communication within their companies. If team members often take a while to respond only to send ambiguous answers, employees are less motivated to seek support and more likely to try to solve the problem on their own. Instead of staring at the computer for an answer, they’ll devise their own solution, even if someone else knows a more efficient path.

You can attach norms of each channel you use to communicate internally to provide efficient and pleasant communications. Your list of norms should explain when using a channel is appropriate, the best messaging frequency, and tips to clearly convey a message.

For example; motivate employees to use live video to discuss sensitive information like performance reviews or promotions. This format lets you clarify the listener’s doubts in real-time, avoiding unintentional offenses from ambiguous messages. In your list of norms, tell participants to turn on their cameras. Seeing your speaker allows viewers to see their body language and trust their words.

2. Turn leaders into remote work advocates

Employees look up to leaders for guidance on how to behave. A leader’s values, work habits, and tools affect employees’ views of remote work.

Suppose the head of a team constantly says they miss working from an office because of in-person relationships. Employees may develop a similar sentiment after hearing about the downsides of remote work day in and day out. They can spot flaws in remote methods of building relationships and networking events, thinking they can’t replicate face-to-face events. With this mindset, building relationships becomes almost impossible.

Fortunately, the opposite attitude from your leader positively influences employees. A leader capable of articulating the benefits of a remote work tool, a new asynchronous workflow, or an upcoming virtual event reminds employees how effective remote work is.

To build a team that enjoys working remotely and is eager to collaborate with others, have your leaders exhibit the beliefs you want in your culture. If you value internal friendships, have leaders schedule a weekly call to meet someone from the company. Calls can be as short as 15 minutes, or they can spend an hour getting to know each other. The primary goal is to show leaders promoting an active approach to meeting colleagues.

3. Encourage cross-team collaboration

It’s common for remote employees to collaborate less with other company divisions than non-remote ones. There are no lunches, hallways, or elevators to meet people outside their departments. Infrequent cross-team collaboration and support can lead to unhappy and unproductive employees.

A survey of over 1,000 US employees in different industries found that workers that don’t share knowledge spend over five hours redoing work that another employee once did. At times, they don’t redo work but follow an inefficient process that another team optimized long ago.

These unnecessary time investments delay projects as workers figure out how to tackle a challenge by themselves. You wouldn’t face these issues with a cross-team collaboration culture. For example; if a content writer had a question about the best hiring practices, they would schedule a 30-minute interview with HR rather than reading about this topic for hours. Frequent cooperation accelerates workflows, giving employees more time to focus on high-impact projects.

Create a document sharing guidelines on how employees should support each other. Pledges share actionable steps people can take to overcome a challenge or commit to a mission. Thanks to it, employees know exactly how to improve a situation and its benefits.

At the beginning of COVID-19, the CEO of IBM wrote a pledge based on colleagues’ conversations and challenges. It contained the commitments he would make to ease the lives of employees who were forced to work from home. Like IBM’s CEO, write a pledge with actions to make working remotely easier.

Uncover your company’s collaboration challenges using surveys and 1-to-1 conversations with employees. Hurdles inform your pledge’s steps. If one team works later hours than most others at the company, you could pledge to spend one day each week working those hours so you could interact with them more. Adding this item encourages teams to get to know each other rather than avoid contact.

4. Build a team based on their time zones

Remote companies can hire talent from anywhere. But hiring people in dispersed time zones can slow down projects and spark division among employees.

Asynchronous communication channels like email and Slack are the go-to collaboration option for teams spread across the world. While convenient to message someone quickly, these channels aren’t efficient at facilitating camaraderie. Employees would have to chit-chat over 10-hour + time frames to get to know each other, making both parties lose interest.

Another issue with building a team in vastly different time zones is finding a meeting time that works for everyone. If half of your team is in the US and the other half in Western Europe, you can find a time that’s not too early or late. But what if half of your team is in Mexico and the other half in Hong Kong? In this scenario, one group would have to stay up late or wake up early, which can tire employees.

You could host two sessions at the same meeting. But suppose members of two time zones never see each other. In that case, it’s unlikely they’ll build friendships and a sense of camaraderie between each other.

One solution to a disbanded global team is hiring talent within a seven-hour time difference. So if your team is mainly in America, and you can’t find talent on this continent, look for candidates in Europe. This overlap gives workers at least one hour to partake in casual events and video meetings, where they can build rapport with colleagues.

5. Use videos to introduce new team members

It’s normal for new employees to feel awkward at work during the first days. Reaching out to a stranger can feel daunting, making even casual interactions stressful. Since there are no areas for casual encounters, remote workers can feel more stressed and lonely in their new job than office workers.

At best, these workers will join a Slack channel or companywide meeting filled with faces and names they don’t know. Unless you host an event to get to know new team members, they won’t have an opportunity to meet people on a personal level. Employees that don’t have anyone to interact with have a more challenging time sharing innovative ideas or collaborating with others.

You can ask new hires to record or animate a video sharing their hobbies, expectations, background, and quirky facts. Their colleagues can watch this video before a new employee’s first day to think about talking points to make new hires’ onboarding more pleasant.

At Vyond, every new hire animates a video introducing themselves during their first days. For example; look at Asia’s, which summarizes her life. It also shows she’s funny and a talented professional. Colleagues can watch the video to get to know her and find common interests to chat about on Asia’s first day. These videos have improved team relationships and our product development initiatives.

6. Recreate team-bonding activities online

Happy hour drinks, birthdays, and milestone celebrations are events where employees can build relationships with each other. These moments allow employees to see each other’s personalities rather than thinking solely of work, building a cohesive team and a fun work environment. However, these events aren’t always available to remote employees. It’s hard for the team to play mini-golf together when they’re spread across the world. You can create virtual spaces where people can interact to spark internal friendships.

Any company can host casual events to facilitate internal friendships. For example; Alibaba hosted a virtual quilt-making event after not hosting their yearly in-person event, AliDay. The event promoted teamwork and the company’s values, developing a unified team culture.

Use Vyond to strengthen your remote work culture

Vyond is an animation tool remote teams can use in their team-building activities and efforts. Thanks to our dozens of free templates, leaders can create impactful training on remote tools, remote communication etiquette, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) lessons without previous animation experience. You can also use props, environments, and characters to show everyday situations where biases or beliefs affect employees’ chances of working together and becoming friends.

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But no matter how many Ds your animation boasts, simply creating an animation doesn’t guarantee someone will watch it. While viewers may play your video with one click, they could check their email or social media just as fast.

Whether to entertain or sell a product, we recommend you apply the following eight steps. They’ll help you create engaging 2D animations that intrigue and captivate your viewers.

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1. Sketch your ideas on a storyboard

Before you start animating, use storyboards to show your team how the story will look.

A storyboard is a drawn or animated sketch of your 2D animation’s events and dialogues. While it may only be a sketch, team members and clients can comment on the story’s events to ensure they’re clear, compelling, and aligned with the team’s goals before you animate them.

You can create storyboards on a piece of paper. First, draw a series of squares—each representing a scene—and then draw horizontal lines for each scene’s dialogue below each square.

For example; if you were to create a storyboard for The Three Little Pigs, you could sketch the story in nine squares: one for the introduction, three for each pig’s house-building efforts, one to introduce the wolf, three for the wolf’s house-destruction efforts, and one for the ending.

Once your team approves the storyboard, you can animate the project or present an animated storyboard—an animatic—to share a clearer idea of what you plan to create.

2. Animate from scratch or use a template

Creating your 2D animations from scratch gives you the complete creative freedom to execute your storyboard precisely as intended. But unless you have experience with animation, staring at a blank screen can be intimidating, meaning animating from scratch can be time-consuming.

Vyond makes the animated process easier by giving you access to a huge asset library of video templates, characters, backgrounds and props, all in a variety of professional styles. You can find the template that best fits your storytelling needs by browsing our template library, and filtering by Job Role, Category or Style.

You can also use Vyond Go, our instant script and video generator to create an editable rough cut video in less than a minute.

3. Create your stories’ 2D characters

After choosing a template, it’s time to create your storyboard’s animated characters.

You can use Vyond Studio to create characters of any age regardless of your animation experience.

First, open the character panel found in the top left corner of Vyond Studio. From there, you can choose between dozens of pre-designed characters or click on Create new character to open our Character Creator.

Pick the 2D character animation style that aligns with your project’s style, and then choose the body type and shape that better represents your character’s physical features.

As a final step, customize your character’s facial features and garments based on their profession, interests, or personal style.

4. Choose an appropriate environment

A poorly selected location can make a well-designed character look out of place, making the message or narrative you are trying to convey ambiguous.

Take the example below as an illustration of how your scenario affects your message.

On the left, Mickey dresses like a cowboy in a location matching the cowboy era. The character design and background match the cowboy narrative. In contrast, Mickey’s outfit looks out of place when he’s in front of The Simpsons’ house. The environment doesn’t match his aesthetic or the era Mickey’s supposed to be part of. In this scenario, Mickey is dressing for a costume party at best.

You can cohesively decorate your stories’ environment by checking your storyboard and brainstorming the location of each scene with your team. Meet with your team’s animators and scriptwriters to check the props and background elements that should be on the final version of your storyboard’s squares.
Then, head to Vyond Studio and click on Background to choose between 150 locations, over 2,000 props, and 32 patterns.

5. Animate props and characters following Disney’s animation principles

Disney’s animation principles are 12 practices that some of Disney’s most skilled animators follow to bring animations to life.

You can follow some of Disney’s principles of animation to create lifelike 2D animations that entertain and engage viewers.

Look for actions in your storyboard that could benefit from one of Disney’s animation principles. For example; if you’re animating a character running, you can reduce the running speed at the start and end of the action to follow Disney’s Slow In and Slow Out principle.

Follow Vyond’s simple animation process to give life to static characters. Start by selecting a character, click on Action in the top right corner, then pick an action. Going back to our running example, you could add the Running action to the character, followed by a Line Motion Path that makes it run from left to right.

6. Vary your camera’s movements

Camera movements drive your viewers’ attention to specific portions of your video, increasing the likelihood that they watch your 2D animation from start to finish.
For example; during Under The Sea, one of The Little Mermaid’s iconic songs, animators vary between camera movements like zoom outs, slides, and boom shots to direct the viewers’ attention to formerly hidden portions of the frame.

You can also use camera movements to ensure viewers don’t miss the video’s most crucial elements—like call-to-actions, next steps to complete a purchase, or statistics.

Before you vary your 2D animation’s camera movements, look at your project’s scenes and ask yourself, which is the most critical element I want to highlight? Then, choose the camera movement that better highlights said element—action, event, prop, or character.

For example; let’s say one of your scenes features two characters talking at a café. In that case, you could zoom in to hide unimportant portions of the background and emphasize the importance of their conversation.

7. Add motion graphics

You can create 2D motion graphics—like symbols, shapes, and text—to emphasize a phrase, action, or transition from your scenes.
For example; in the video below from SpongeBob’s official YouTube account, the animators used motion graphics to highlight the switch from one scene to another. While the motion graphics are subtle, they are visible enough to allow viewers to distinguish episodes from one another.

You can use motion paths in Vyond to turn static text, props, and shapes into moving assets. First, select the asset and enter the Motion Path menu in the top right corner of Vyond Studio’s interface. Then, choose the type of motion path that best fits the movement you are looking to recreate. Finally, adjust the moving asset’s end position and the time it’ll take to reach it.

Those animating text can use our Kinetic Typography (i.e., moving text) template to speed up the animation process.

8. Include music and sound effects

Music and sound effects that support the emotion your 2D animation is trying to convey help maximize the impact of your animations.

A 2009 research paper found music can influence the emotion we perceive from a visual. During the study, test subjects were more likely to perceive a neutral image as happy (or sad) after listening to happy (or sad) music.
For example; you can include an upbeat song to energize your audience as a positive event shows on the screen or add a rain sound effect during a sad scene.

In Vyond Studio, you can do this by entering the Audio menu in the top left portion of the interface and then choosing from 154 pieces of Background Music and 318 Sound Effects.

Create your first 2D animated video using Vyond

Vyond is a versatile, all-in-one AI video creation platform that makes it easy to create engaging 2D animated videos for any business need.

With our intuitive, easy-to-use AI-powered instant video maker, Vyond Go, and our full-featured video editor, Vyond Studio, you can effortlessly generate your first 2D animated video in minutes.

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In Vyond Studio, you can place and customize any font you want—in a few clicks.

You can pick a font based on your target audience

The font you use influences how your viewers react to your video. For example, statisticians may find informal fonts like Comic Sans immature, perhaps making them question if the video comes from a reliable source. But if your viewers are 10-year-olds, they won’t bat an eye after seeing this font.

Vyond Studio comes with 38 fonts you can use regardless of your account plan, from casual fonts like Caveat Brush to more traditional-looking ones like Vidaloka. To switch fonts, click on Text Settings on the right side of the toolbar and choose one of the 38 from the Font drop-down.

You can also import any font you’d like, whether it comes from Adobe Fonts, FontShop, or other font marketplaces if you have a Professional or Enterprise account.

The process takes a few steps. First, download your licensed font in a .otf or .ttf file format with a file size below 15MB. Next, click Import inside the Upload menu on the toolbar’s left side and pick your font. From now on, every time you log in to Vyond Studio, you’ll find your font in the Text Settings option.

You can add them to any project

You can use text to add context to a scene or attract the user’s attention to a specific portion of the screen. For example, in the video below, there is a billboard hinting at the driver’s destiny. It’s a subtle detail but makes the viewer curious about the upcoming events.

From Vyond Studio’s interface, click on Text on the toolbar’s left side and choose the text box style that aligns with your project’s needs.

You can customize your text box

The text needs to be readable and positioned deliberately so your viewer knows what information you’re trying to communicate.

Your subtitles, titles, and paragraphs should be different sizes and in different locations to communicate the difference between them. Generally, you should make your title twice as big as your paragraphs or subtitles. This jump between sizes is known as the Double Point Size rule. Its goal is to let your design guide the viewer into what they should read first.

If you’re just starting out with text layouts, the basic rule you should follow is to “justify type left,” which means to align text along the left edge of the screen or frame. You justify type left in Latin languages (English, Spanish, etc.) in particular because text is written from left to right. So our eye naturally falls to the left side of a frame, looking for the start of words.

Alternatively, if you are writing in a language that reads from right to left, justify your text to the right. Then, you can either copy and paste your text into a text box or type it directly. Either way, the text box will recognize the language and adjust the textbox to its content.

You can Auto Size fonts on Vyond Studio

The Auto Size feature modifies your font’s size based on the size of the text box.

There are two main ways in which Auto Size works. First, if you create a text box and Auto Size is on, your text’s size will automatically change to fit the box. So if you have one word, like “cow,” in a small font size inside a large text box, the font size will increase to fit in the box.

Second, if you have a text box with any amount of text in it and enlarge or shrink the text box, the text will enlarge or shrink according to the change.

The Auto Size feature is available to all Vyond users. First, select the text box you want to Auto Size to reveal the Text Settings menu in the top right portion of the toolbar. Then, tick the Auto Size box. Unless you turn Auto Size off, it will affect that specific text box for the rest of the project.

You can incorporate them into a style guide

A style guide is a document where you add the visual details your work should follow across the project, such as the font you’ll use, the size of headers, and the colors of the paragraphs.

In Vyond Studio, you can use the first scene as a style guide. You can add the text boxes for titles, paragraphs, and subtitles with the Text Settings you want. And then, when it’s time to create your animated project, copy-paste the text boxes from the first scene into the last one. This will maintain a cohesive style across the project.

You can make them move to engage the viewer

Text that moves is known as kinetic text. This type of text aims to attract the viewer’s attention to read what you wrote, which it achieves typically more successfully than static text.

Your text’s movement needs to be well-thought-out. Too much movement and you can confuse the reader. But too little, and your readers might miss the text you so carefully constructed.

So, to achieve a balance in the amount of kinetic text you add, highlight the most critical phrases from your finished script. These are the words you’ll want to animate. Once you know which words to emphasize, create or open a video project in Vyond.

From there, you’ll be able to use our Enter and Exit effects, Continue Last Scene feature, and Motion Paths to bring your sentences to life. You can read the step-by-step guide to do it here.

Use and customize any font you’d like in Vyond Studio

Your brand’s font is a communication channel. It enhances your storytelling by adding more details to your story. It communicates the characteristics of your brand, too. For example, a detail-rich font may convey your brand appreciates art, and a formal one may transmit you took video production seriously.

In Vyond Studio, you can pick any font you’d like, no matter the values, emotions, or brand qualities you want to convey.

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Sound effects (SFX) and foley—sound effects that imitate everyday, natural sounds—also contribute to how immersed the viewer is in our story. A study by the Empirical Musicology Review on the influence of sound design on videos found that nearly all people that watched a video with music and sound effects felt more immersion and suspense than those who watched soundless videos.

You can apply the following six tips to make your video more realistic and memorable with sound effects.

1. Limit the number of sound effects you add

Viewers can lose track of what’s happening if too many sound effects are playing simultaneously. You should add a few well-selected sound effects so that viewers can listen to each audio clip and keep track of your scenes’ events.

A good practice to avoid overusing sound effects is to never play more than one at a time. This limitation helps you emphasize one action or event without overwhelming the viewer with conflicting sounds.

As you create more videos, you can experiment with overlapping sound effects. Unique effects that viewers can only associate with your brand help you stand out from competitors.

2. Use sound effects to humanize your brand

Humanizing your brand means communicating with customers as you would to a friend—using casual language and referencing elements of pop culture.

You can use sound effects to add relatable sounds to show leads that you understand them, build a more profound bond with prospects, and raise their likeliness to pick your brand over one they don’t trust.

CEO of Taco Bell, Mark King, appeared as a talking potato to announce the return of potatoes to the Taco Bell menu. The video uses sound effects like a chime and a DJ airhorn, reminiscent of video game montages, to strengthen the youthful and personal vibe of the video.

You can check your audience research documents to discover the sound effects that prospects and customers recognize. If you can’t access this data, type words related to your customers’ interests on Reddit or forums to find communities filled with your target audience.

By scouting these communities, you can add sounds from pop culture that you can later drag and drop into Vyond’s timeline to make your video more relatable.

3. Use sound effects to evoke emotions

Sound can influence viewers to feel specific emotions.

A sad tune like Chopin’s Prelude in B minor paired with a thunder sound effect can cause viewers to feel sad or even sob, depending on what’s happening on screen. In contrast, play an upbeat tune with the sound of drums and fireworks, and you’ll transmit excitement to the viewer.

You can discuss the emotions your video should transmit with colleagues before adding a sound effect. You can base the decisions on the feelings you want people to associate with your brand, how you want viewers to feel after watching your video, or the emotions you are trying to recreate during a scene. Then, pick a sound effect from Vyond’s Sound Effect library that helps you emphasize a feeling.

4. Vary your audio levels

You can use background music, ambient tracks, and sound effects to create scenes that intrigue viewers and establish a mood as long as each track’s audio level varies. When audio levels vary, viewers can distinguish one clip from another and follow your video’s events.

There are three types of audio clips: background music, ambiance tracks, and sound effects.

Background music is an audio clip that plays throughout most of the video. These clips are typically the quieter ones, as their goal is to set the overall mood of the scene.

Ambiance tracks are short audio clips that set the scene for areas, like birds at a park or airplanes landing at an airport. You can set them at a higher volume than background music to highlight sounds that only happen at a specific location.

Finally, set sound effects or foley sounds as the loudest clips to ensure viewers hear them despite their short length.

You can balance audio levels in Vyond by right-clicking on an audio clip from the timeline, choosing Settings, and then increasing or reducing a clip’s volume.

5. Duplicate repeated sound effects

It’s common to reuse one or two sound effects across the video, like those used to emphasize transitions. You can duplicate these effects in your multimedia timeline so that you save time. Instead of spending minutes sourcing sound effect libraries, you use them to animate or refine your story.
You can duplicate repetitive sound effects in Vyond by right-clicking the audio clip in the timeline, copying it, and pasting it at the second where you want it to play. For a more precise placement method, paste the clip and then drag and drop it across the timeline.

6. Attach a sound effect to your brand

When you repetitively play a sound effect as branding elements show on the screen, you prime viewers to associate that sound with your brand. As a result of the connection, viewers will recall your brand quicker, even when listening to a similar sound.

Scott Winstead, a blended learning expert, says, “When you popped in Sonic the Hedgehog, the first screen that comes up is the SEGA logo with a short jingle singing the word SEGA real quick. Then you move on to the game title screen. Subtle and to the point. And some 20 years later, I still can hear it in my head.”

You can attach a sound effect when your logo appears on the screen or when you mention what your brand does. For example, it can be a swoosh, whip, whoosh, or jingle sound. Once you choose them, add them to every video you produce so that viewers can associate your brand with visual and sound cues.

Enhance your video with animation sound effects

You can use sound effects to create engaging videos that evoke evident emotions and communicate a clear message.

With Vyond Studio’s intuitive animation tools, you can add sound effects from your favorite licensed, royalty-free sound effects marketplaces or choose between more than 300 built-in ones inside Vyond’s library—without the need for attribution. You can also pair these effects with 154 background tunes and edit each clip’s audio levels to ensure your scenes achieve the mood you want without overwhelming viewers with many indistinguishable sounds.

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Why video?

Video marketing was crowned ‘King of Content‘ as early as 2015 and it still holds the title in 2022. Over the next few years, online video viewing is predicted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21% from 2021 and 2028. Hundreds of hours of video are uploaded every second, 3.1 billion users worldwide consume video, and billions of video views are happening daily. And to top it off, video consumption is not just for entertainment purposes, as more people are watching videos for learning new skills and fostering a sense of community.

Why video for business?

Consumers are using video to research products before they buy them. Brands are using video to improve their marketing outcomes. And businesses are creating video content to better train and onboard their employees. Without a doubt, video is here to stay, and the following statistics serve as evidence of its popularity and importance.

Demand and Popularity of Video is Increasing

People are watching more video content and paying more attention to video than other types of media.

• By 2021, video will represent 82% of all IP internet traffic. (Cisco, 2017)
• 79% of the global mobile data traffic will be video in 2022. (Cisco, 2019)
• People watch on average 19 hours of online video per week, and an average of 2.5 hrs per day — this is a 5.56% increase compared to 2021. (Wyzowl, 2022)
• In 2019, there were over 2.6 billion digital video viewers worldwide. That number is projected to reach over 3.1 billion by 2023 (Statista, 2021)
• In 2017, 81.1 percent of U.S. online users accessed digital video content. In 2020, this number is projected to be 83.3 percent. (Statista, 2018)
• People pay attention to video content, but they skim or multitask with written content and podcasts. (HubSpot, 2017)
• People spend an average of 2.6x more time on pages with video than without. (Wistia, 2018)

Marketing Videos Are a Great Way to Reach Consumers

“In today’s fast-paced world, video marketing is one of the few types of online material that provides the value, relevance, and flexibility consumers need, all while catering to the on-the-go lifestyle they want.” (Forbes)

Types of Marketing Videos

Marketing videos come in many forms, including explainers, social media videos, product demos, user-generated content or customer videos, and more. According to a 2021 report from Vidyard, the most commonly used business video types are:

The Benefits of Video for Businesses and Consumers

As video has become increasingly popular, consumers and businesses have found many benefits. 84% of Enterprise organizations report using video for five or more purposes and 28% use video for nine or more (Kaltura, 2018).

Salesforce reports 90% of marketing organizations use video. Moreover, they deemed video as the star channel of 2021. (Salesforce, 2021)

Consumers prefer to learn about a brand and its products Through Video

When it comes to receiving branded content or learning about a business’s products and services, consumers prefer video over other types of content.

• 85% of people would like to see more video from brands in 2021. (Wyzowl, 2021)
• Newer generations consume more video than the previous ones. 1 in 2 Gen Z and Millenials report not knowing how they’d “get through life without video” (Google, 2019)
• From the same Google report, we learn that 46% of global viewers use video content to learn something new. (Google, 2019)
• More than half (54%) of consumers prefer to see video content from a brand than other types of content. (Hubspot, 2017)
• Two-thirds of people (66%) said they’d prefer to watch a short video to learn about a product or service rather than read a text-based article, website, or post (18%); view an infographic (4%); download an ebook or manual (3%); attend a webinar (3%); receive a sales call or demo (2%). (Wyzowl, 2020)
• 43% of survey respondents say that branded video is the most memorable type of content shared by companies. (HubSpot, 2017)
• 94% of people have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service. (Wyzowl, 2021)
• When researching new products and services to make B2B purchasing decisions, millennials prefer video-based content (29%) more than a case study (19%), white paper (16%), brochure (15%), webinar (11%), or infographic (11%). (Merit, 2017)
• 84% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. (Wyzowl, 2021)
• 79% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy or download a piece of software or app by watching a video. (Wyzowl, 2021)

Consumers seek out video to help them make purchasing decisions

Many consumers have searched for videos on Google or YouTube to help them decide what products to buy.

• More than 55% of people search for a product on Google and then learn more by going to YouTube before they buy it. (Google, 2018)
• Top three reasons people watch a video after using search when researching products to buy: 1. To see a product before they buy it or to see how others have used it; 2. To learn more about a product they have in mind; 3. To see credible or authentic reviews from others. (Google, 2018)
• Nearly 50% of internet users look for videos related to a product or service before visiting a store. (Google, 2016)
• Over 70% of shoppers say online video has helped them learn more about an auto product they intended to buy. (Google, 2019)
• 50% of electronics shoppers say they purchased products they discovered on YouTube. (Google, 2018)
• Video searches for ‘which [product] should I buy’ doubled from 2017 to 2018.  (Google, 2018)

Video Helps with Learning, Training, and onboarding

• Nearly 75% of enterprise companies are using video for internal learning and development and 98% see video use in their organization as steady or growing. (Kaltura, 2018)
• Many employees, regardless of remote status or age, wish their company offered more types of training (60%) and they were available on-demand (65%) and there were different levels available (65%).  (Vyond, 2022)
• Employees mostly prefer self-led online training [like video] (51%), followed by instructor-led training (47%). (Vyond, 2020).
  • The most common trainings employees have at work are data security (58%), ethics (58%), and discrimination and protected classes (57%). (Vyond, 2020)
  • The trainings employees would find most beneficial are ethics (49%), management (45%), and data security (44%). (Vyond, 2020)
• “Enterprises see a high value for video, especially for video communication and learning. 98% say video is valuable for improving communication and for training employees better and faster. Other areas in which video is thought to have a positive impact include connecting geographically-dispersed employees (95%), increasing brand awareness and lead generation (93%), and empowering employees to share knowledge (93%).” (Kaltura, 2018)
• According to a survey by the Association for Talent Development (ATD), 72% of organizations plan to create microlearning videos in the near future, if they aren’t already. (ATD, 2017)
• Psychologist Richard Wiseman’s research shows that whiteboard animation leads to greater retention. His study determined an astounding 15% increase in recall in the test takers who viewed a whiteboard animation versus those who didn’t. (Wiseman, 2013)

• 98% of enterprise organizations site video as being valuable for “Improving communication” and “Training employees better/faster. (Kaltura, 2018)
• 4 in 5 people said digital video helps them learn new things. (YouTube Data, 2017-1018)
• Google searches for online courses grew by over 70% globally between the last week of March and the first week of April 2020, while global YouTube watch time for lectures on spoken languages have grown more than 6X year over year. (Google, 2020)
• Google asked 12K viewers aged 13-64 the number one reason why they watched what they watched in the past 24 hours.‘Teaches me something new’ was the second-most popular choice. (Google, 2020)
• In one 2014 study, 80% of respondents believed that video would have a positive impact on making the onboarding process smoother for new employees. 87% also believed that video would have a positive impact on training employees faster, and more cost-effectively (Kaltura, 2014)

Video gives marketers a significant return on investment

With video growing in popularity and consumers using video to make purchasing decisions, it’s not surprising that marketers are finding significant ROI from marketing videos.

• 95% of video marketers say video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service. (Wyzowl, 2020)
• 87% of video marketers say video has increased traffic to their website. (Wyzowl, 2020)
• 83% of video marketers say video has helped them generate leads. (Wyzowl, 2020)
• 81% of video marketers say video has helped increase the average time their visitors spend on a page. (Wyzowl, 2020)
• 80% of video marketers say video has directly helped increase sales. (Wyzowl, 2020)
• 43% of video marketers say video has reduced the number of support calls they’ve received. (Wyzowl, 2020)

• 89% of video marketers say video, in general, gives them a good return on their investment. (Wyzowl, 2020)
• 99% of people who use video for marketing say they’ll continue using video in 2020. (Wyzowl, 2020)
• 18% of first-time video marketers started using video in 2019 because they feel clearer about the ROI of video. (Wyzowl, 2020)
• 92% of marketers who use video say that it’s an important part of their marketing strategy. (Wyzowl, 2020)
• 95% of video marketers plan to increase or maintain their spend on video in 2020. (Wyzowl, 2020)
• The average success rate of video marketers, across all platforms, is incredibly high. On average, where marketers use video channels, 79% of them report success—although this number differs across platforms. (Wyzowl, 2020)

Marketing videos have become easier and more cost-effective to make

Many non-video marketers have recently added video to their marketing strategy because they believe they are easier and more affordable to create.

• 47% of first-time video marketers started using video in 2019 because they believe it’s become quicker and less time-consuming to create video content. (Wyzowl, 2020)

• 48% of first-time video marketers got started with video because they found it easier to convince others in the business of its value. (Wyzowl, 2020)
• 46% of first-time video marketers started using video in 2019 because they believe video is becoming more affordable and because it’s easier to create video content in-house. (Wyzowl, 2020)

Video Improves Email Marketing Results

Including video in your marketing emails can increase your click-through rate.

• Including video thumbnails instead of images in your email can increase clicks by over 21%. (Wistia, 2017)
• In a single quarter, one Vyond customer experienced a 130% increase in click-through rate (CTR) for emails with animated video compared to the CTR for emails without animated video. (Vyond, 2017)

Social Media is a Prime Destination for Video Marketing

With so many platforms to choose from — Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, etc. — and billions of users among them, social media is a prime destination for brands to place their marketing videos.

• Videos are consumers’ favorite types of content to see from a brand on social media. (Animoto, 2018)
• On social media, video ads are the number one way consumers have found out about a new brand/product before purchasing. (Animoto, 2018)
• 93% of marketers say they’ve landed a new customer thanks to a video on social media. (Animoto, 2018)

• 88% of marketers are satisfied with the ROI of their video marketing efforts on social media. (Animoto, 2018)
• 80% of marketers feel good about the ROI of video ads posted on social media. (Animoto, 2018)
• Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram are the top three platforms for marketers posting social marketing videos and video ads. (Animoto, 2018)
• Social media is the number one reason marketers named for creating videos in the last 12 months. (Animoto, 2018)
• 73% of marketers create at least two videos a month for social media. (Animoto, 2018)

YouTube Video

With hundreds of hours of video uploaded every minute and its popularity among users 18-34, YouTube has become a key platform for video marketing.

• People upload 500 hours of video to YouTube every minute. (Statista, 2020)
• The average YouTube watch session on mobile lasts more than 60 minutes. (CNET, 2018)
• More than 70% of what users watch on YouTube is driven by its recommendation algorithm. (CNET, 2018)
• On mobile in an average week, YouTube reaches more 18+ year-olds during prime-time TV hours than any cable TV network. (Google, 2017)
• Two-thirds of YouTube users watch YouTube on a second screen while watching TV at home. (Google, 2017)
• 50% of viewers aged 18-34 said they would stop what they were doing to watch a video from their favorite creator. (Google, 2017)
• 65% of people use YouTube to help them solve a problem. (Google, 2018).
• 88% of video marketers plan to include YouTube in their 2020 video marketing strategy. (Wyzowl, 2020)
• YouTube remains the most widely used platform for video marketers, with 85% of video marketers using it in 2019. (Wyzowl, 2020)
• 83% of video marketers that have used YouTube said it had been successful for them. (Wyzowl, 2020)
• The number of channels reaching 1+ million subscribers increasing by more than 65% year over year. (YouTube, 2020)

Facebook Video

While YouTube is the social destination for video, Facebook has gained traction as a video destination for users and marketers.

• Videos are becoming increasingly popular post types, accounting for about 11% of Facebook posts. (Quintly, 2019)
• Square Facebook videos get 35% more views than landscape videos. (Buffer, 2017)
• It costs 7.5% less to get someone to engage with square video on Facebook. (Buffer, 2017)
• 65% of people surveyed say they watch publisher video on Facebook every day, while 35% watch multiple times per day. (Facebook, 2019
• 94% of survey respondents who watch a publisher video report sharing it. (Facebook, 2019)
• 62% of people said they were more interested in a product after seeing it in a Facebook story. (Facebook, 2018)
• Facebook has become more effective as a video marketing channel than YouTube, with 79% of video marketers using it — and 85% of those people say it’s been a success. (Wyzowl, 2020)
• 76% of video marketers plan to include Facebook in their 2020 video marketing strategy. (Wyzowl, 2020)
• 32% of video marketers plan to include Facebook Live in their 2020 video marketing strategy. (Wyzowl, 2020)
• 81% of marketers have placed spend against a video on Facebook. (Animoto, 2018)
• Facebook is the top organic and paid social media platform B2C marketers use. (Content Marketing Institute, 2019)

Instagram Video

Many consumers are watching branded video on Instagram through its feed, IGTV, and Stories, making it a key platform for marketers’ video marketing strategy.

• 49% of consumers have watched video on IGTV; of those, 70% have watched an IGTV video from a brand. (Animoto, 2018)
• 28% of video marketers plan to include Instagram TV in their 2020 video marketing strategy. (Wyzowl, 2020)
• 47% of consumers enjoy watching ads on Instagram Stories. (Animoto, 2018)
• 74% of marketers have posted at least two videos on Instagram Stories a month. (Animoto, 2018)
• 65% of video marketers plan to include Instagram in their 2020 video marketing strategy. (Wyzowl, 2020)

Twitter Video

Though not as popular for video marketing as Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram, Twitter is still an important part of many marketers’ plans.

• There are over 2 billion video views on Twitter each day, which is 67% YoY growth, according to Twitter’s internal data. (Twitter, 2020)
• Tweets with video attracted 10x more engagements than Tweets without video. (Twitter, 2020)

• Promoted Tweets with videos save more than 50% on cost-per-engagement. (Twitter, 2020)
• 93% of video views happen on mobile. (Twitter, 2020)
• Keep your Tweets short: Videos with minimal Tweet copy vs. longer Tweet copy have a 13% higher brand and message recall and overall view time. (Twitter, 2020)

Ready to Get Started with Video?

Now that you’ve read how marketing videos can benefit your business, if you’re ready to get started making videos, here are some best practices.

Keep it short, but not too short

• Video engagement remains at 51% for videos less than a minute long. The engagement slowly decreases as the video length is increased. To a minimum engagement of 16% at 60+ minutes. (Wistia, 2022)
• The video completion rate for 15-second clips sits at nearly 90%. (KoMarketing, 2020)
• 60% of videos are less than 2 minutes long. (Vidyard, 2021)
• In one experiment, 30-second ads had a 30% higher view-through rate (VTR) than 15-second ads. (Google, 2016)
• 45% of viewers watch a video all the way through regardless of its length. This is a decrease compared to 2019 (52%). Just over half (58%) of viewers watch a video to the end if it’s less than 60 seconds, but only 24% will finish a video if it’s more than 20 minutes. (Vidyard, 2021)
• Younger generations are more likely to seek out short-form content such as webisodes, tutorials, and short video clips produced by professional and amateur creators. User-generated content is often short form, and younger viewers are more likely to watch both. (Google, 2020)
• Videos that are longer than 20 minutes only get about 24% audience engagement. While Videos that are less than a minute long get 58%. (Vidyard, 2021)
• A Vyond customer reports that 75% of viewers watched up to two minutes of a job aid training video. The percentage of viewers dropped off significantly after the two-minute point. (Vyond, 2019)

Have a distribution strategy

• The majority of business-related video views (87%) still take place on desktop computers. (Vidyard, 2019)
• Chrome is the top browser by a wide margin, with nearly two-thirds (61%) of video watchers using the browser. This is followed by Internet Explorer, which, at 15%, has fallen significantly year-over-year. (Vidyard, 2019)
• Audiences watch business video content more on Thursdays than any other day of the week — 22% of views happen then. (Vidyard, 2019)
• Websites, social media, and landing pages are three of the most popular places to embed video content. (Vidyard, 2019)

Use captions

• 92% of consumers view videos with the sound off on mobile. (Verizon, 2019)
• 80% of consumers are more likely to watch an entire video when captions are available. (Verizon, 2019)

• When captions are available, 37% of viewers said they are encouraged to turn the sound on because the videos seem more interesting, and 29% said that even with the sound off, they were better able to understand the video because of the captioning. (Verizon, 2019)

Consider Animated Video

• By switching to animated video, a Vyond customer experienced a 67% reduction in onboarding time for a group of new employees. (Vyond, 2017)
• In a single quarter, a Vyond customer saw a 130% increase in the click-through rate (CTR) for emails with animated video compared to the CTR for emails without animated video. (Vyond, 2017)
• Another customer experienced a 375% boost in video shares on social media and a 21% increase in YouTube views by adding animated video. (Vyond, 2015)
• By using Vyond to create more than 200 animated videos, one customer saved between $600,000 and $1.4 million in production costs and saved their clients’ HR team more than 2,000 hours in unproductive meetings. (Vyond, 2016)
• Conversion rates jumped 67% when MailLift added an animated explainer video to their homepage. (Vyond, 2015)
• A Vyond customer reports saving eight hours per week on video content production by adding animated video to their previously Adobe-only toolkit. (Vyond, 2016)

Training & Video Marketing Statistics Show the Benefits of Video

Whether you’re looking to help customers learn more about your products, improve your marketing ROI, or increase your email click-through rate, these statistics show the benefits of incorporating video into your marketing strategy.

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In much the same way, your own video resume, or video cover letter, can make hiring managers sit up and take notice — and give you a shot at that coveted interview. 

The internet has made finding job openings a lot easier, but it also makes getting those jobs harder because you’re usually competing with hundreds of other applicants. No wonder hiring managers spend an average of 6 seconds perusing each resume. If you want to get more interviews, you’ve got to find a way to stand out, and a video resume will do just that. 

Videos engage hiring managers

Even the best resume doesn’t have the “pop” of personality that video adds. Videos share your body language, expressions, and tone of voice, factors that are missing from a paper resume. Drafting a resume with those non-verbal cues in mind can make it easier to tell a story with your video.

Note that your video doesn’t have to be complicated to be well done. Consider this simple but professional-looking video resume. It doesn’t rely on fancy visuals — only a blank background, some text, and a well-rehearsed script. Saji’s video here is a strong sell for her knowledge and experience. She showcases her presentation skills without going overboard on video production. 

Video resumes are particularly useful if you’re in a profession that requires strong communication skills. Job hunters in creative professions can also gain a considerable advantage from a good video resume because it gives them an opportunity to demonstrate their creative talents.

However, a badly done video resume can backfire by instead demonstrating your lack of artistic talents. And once your video resume hits the Internet, it will be there for all future employers to see. You must be sure that both your content and your video style are appropriate for the occasion before you send your video resume to anyone.

What should you put in a video resume?

Think of your video resume as a mini job interview. Your clothing, demeanor, language, and subject matter should be interview-appropriate. In other words, don’t send a video of yourself surfing unless you’re applying for a job in the surfing world.

• Tell a story. A video resume is a great way to showcase something from your background that’s sure to impress the hiring manager, especially if you tell it in the form of a story. If you’re having trouble deciding what to talk about, write an outline detailing your background and think about how your experience is connected. What have you learned in the past that would make you a great fit for this new position?
• Be brief. Limit your video resume to no longer than two minutes — anything longer than that is asking too much of the hiring manager. 60-90 seconds is ideal. Read your script out loud, or better yet, record yourself reading the script, and then play back the recording. Hearing the words makes it easier to home in on the most relevant and interesting bits of your background.
• Be specific. For a truly compelling video resume, create a custom video for each job you apply to. You’ll be able to point out how your background makes you a perfect fit for that specific job, and you can even work in a line or two about why you want to join the company. For instance, if a job posting says they want someone with project management experience, talk about a project you managed.
• Add a call to action. End the video with a call-to-action, a sentence or two that spells out the next step and motivates viewers to take it. For example, you might ask the hiring manager to visit your LinkedIn profile to see the rest of your employment history. A good call-to-action makes all the difference between a video that gets results and one that does nothing more than entertain the hiring manager.

In this video, Kendall uses Vyond to tell her story with an animated video. She also includes her email and phone number as a call-to-action at the end.

To open this video and make your own edits, sign into a paid Vyond account or free trial and then click here to open this video template in Vyond Studio. You will be able to download videos on a paid subscription.

To make sure you look your best on camera, wear the same kind of outfit you’d choose for an interview with the employer you’re interested in. Place the camera so that the lens is just above your eye line and tilt it down a bit to get the most flattering angle. Don’t position yourself directly under a bright overhead light or you’ll end up with distracting shadows on your face. Finally, choose a professional-looking background — preferably a blank wall or backdrop in a neutral color.

If you’d rather not be on camera, animation is a great option. With animation, you have the ability to bring any concept to life with ease, and it’s easier than you may think. 

Here’s a simple template to help you showcase your skills. 

To open this video and make your own edits, sign into a paid Vyond account or free trial and then click here to open this video template in Vyond Studio. You will be able to download videos on a paid subscription.

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In this animated video resume, Michelle points to specific examples from her experience to prove her qualifications and uses animation to amplify her narrated story. She also added her video to Wistia so she could include a clickable call-to-action at the end to link directly to her LinkedIn profile.

Using your video resume to get interviews

Once you’ve finished making your video resume and have reviewed it for flaws, your next task is to get it in front of the hiring manager.

Of course, before you can send anyone a link to your video, you’ll need to post it somewhere. YouTube is a popular choice but may not be the best option for video resumes because of the ads and suggested videos that you can’t control. Vimeo and Wistia are more professional-looking options and are designed for business purposes. These tools give you control over your video’s appearance and give you analytics on your video so you’ll be able to see just how viewers are reacting to your video resume — for free.

It’s also always a good idea to include a video about yourself on your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is the preeminent business networking site, and embedding your video in your LinkedIn profile helps get you in front of hiring managers.

You also have the option of emailing the video resume directly to the hiring manager but don’t try this unless you’ve already started a dialogue with that person. Otherwise, the hiring manager will probably pitch out your video without bothering to look at it or even read the email.

Other ways to use video for job-hunting

Job hunters can leverage video for purposes beyond landing interviews. You might also craft a video as a post-interview thank you note, a tool to lobby for a promotion at your existing job, or a way to ask for help with your job search.

Sending a thank-you note after an interview is a great way to impress hiring managers. If you’re going to send a thank you email, video can make you look even better. You can attach a video to the thank you email or include a thank you GIF in your written email. Here’s an example for you to copy. 

To open this video and make your own edits, sign in to your Vyond account or free trial and then click here to open this video template in Vyond Studio. You will be able to download videos on a paid subscription.

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Finally, a video can be the perfect way to ask for a professional favor, such as a job reference. And once you start your job, using video is a great way to introduce yourself to your new team. At Vyond, each new team member creates a video in their first week to introduce themselves to the company. Here’s one example:

Regardless of its purpose, keep your video brief and on point. The video’s purpose is not to lay out every possible argument in your favor; it’s to highlight your most important points in an engaging, distinctive way.

Don’t discount the power of video

Your video resume will help you establish an immediate personal connection with hiring managers and can give you a significant advantage over other applicants. It’s a great way to cut through the noise, whether you email your video or include it on a resume website. With the right video resume, you’ll be on the fast track to landing a job you love.

About Vyond

Vyond allows people of all skill levels in all industries and job roles to create dynamic and powerful media. With features that go beyond moving text and images, you can build character-driven stories or compelling data visualizations that engage audiences and deliver results.

With Vyond, it’s easy to create videos for your training. Get started making your own videos today. Start a free 14-day trial.

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The post Video Resume Tips to Help You Land the Job appeared first on Vyond.

This guide will provide clear and easy instructions for sending emails with a video and/or animated GIFs. We’ll also share the elements of great video emails and present four methods for adding video to your emails.

Watch the video below and jump ahead to this section for detailed instructions.

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The must-haves for sending a video through email

Want to learn how to send a video through email? These are the two things you have to keep in mind:

An engaging visual preview

People are less likely to watch your video if you represent it as a long URL link in an email.

Imagery is the best way to alert readers to a video in your email. Video is a visual medium, so it only makes sense to promote it with images. Not to mention, humans are visually oriented, so imagery is more likely to catch attention in a crowded inbox. Think about “clickability” when deciding how to present a video in an email. 

In the example above, it looks like the video is embedded into the email, but it’s really an animated GIF image with a play button over it. More on this below.

Experience across email platforms

Email apps—or clients—are not created equally. They all have different ways of displaying emails and attachments. For best results, you have to try to give every recipient, no matter what client they use, the same email experience.

Here is a comprehensive resource on how email apps display content differently, and which types of video content to avoid.

By thinking about “clickability” and compatibility, you can evaluate the best way for your business to send video emails.

4 ways to email a video

Choosing your method for emailing a video depends on what’s most important to you. Do you care more about a seamless video-watching experience in the email, or are you more interested in getting clicks to your site? How much time can you spend on adding videos to email? Do you know how to use HTML?

Here is a breakdown of the strengths and weaknesses of four ways to add a video to an email:

Link + image 

Our checklist for videos in email:

An engaging visual preview ✅

Support across email clients ✅

Our recommended way to email a video is linking an image or animated GIF. It offers email recipients an engaging preview of the video while still enabling them to click, watch your video, and continue exploring your site.

This method works really well for recipients who are reading the video email on their iPhone or other mobile devices.

It works by including an image—either a thumbnail image or an animated GIF—of your video in an email that links to a landing page. Be sure the video described in your email is at or near the top of the page you’ve linked.

Here’s how you can share a video through email with this method:

• Upload your video to a video hosting site like YouTube.
• Add the image of your video thumbnail to an email.
  • Take a screenshot of your video thumbnail or by creating an animated GIF of your video and adding a play button to it.
  • Vyond Premium, Professional, and Enterprise account holders can create custom animated GIFs or turn portions of a video into an animated GIF for this purpose. Giphy is also a free and easy mp4 to GIF-creation tool.
  • Here’s how to download an animated GIF in Vyond Studio:

• Insert the image or animated GIF into the email body.
• Link the image to your video.
  • Here are instructions for linking an image in Gmail and Outlook.

A GIF is effective because the animation will capture your reader’s attention. Be careful, though: some clients like Outlook 2007, 2010, and 2013 won’t play the GIF.

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Embed with HTML5

Our checklist for videos in email:

An engaging visual preview ✅

Support across email clients ❌

Another way to email a video is to embed it in the message so recipients can play it right from the email. You can embed a video in an email by coding it into the message through HTML5.

To embed a video in an email, you or a developer at your company will need to adjust the HTML5 code of your email using these instructions.

When a video is properly embedded in an email, it’s an ideal user experience—the recipient can watch the video right from their email without needing to go anywhere.

There are, however, a few downsides to this method. Not all email platforms support HTML5 videos:

Emails with embedded videos are sometimes marked as spam, which makes the message unreadable for recipients.

It’s also more difficult to drive email clicks with this method because a video that you can play in the email can’t be linked to another website. The viewer might watch your video but might not visit your website.

Attach an mp4 file

Our checklist for videos in email:

An engaging visual preview ❌

Support across email clients ❌

Instead of including a video preview or the video itself in the email, you can opt to send the video as an attached file in your email.

The process for attaching a video to an email is easy—simply click the “attach” button (typically, the icon is a paper clip), and select the video file that you want to attach.

This method is nice and simple, but it doesn’t offer an engaging visual preview or drive clicks.

A single attachment doesn’t easily capture the attention of email recipients—they could easily miss the video unless they scroll to the bottom of the message and see the attachment. If you’re using this method, be try to include visuals of the video in the body of the email as well to engage recipients.

Email marketing platforms do not support attachments, so emails with mp4 attachments must be sent from individual accounts. This method is not a good way to send large video files, as the typical limit for a video file across email clients is 20 to 25MB. To send large video files to a small number of people, try a file-sharing platform like WeTransfer.

One workaround is to send a large video file as an email attachment through your client’s Drive. Gmail, for example, offers the Google Drive suite; Outlook has OneDrive.

While emailing a video as a drive-file attachment will allow you to send larger videos, this tactic will work only for recipients who use that drive service—so the method is still limited in support across clients.

Attaching a video file doesn’t really encourage recipients to continue exploring your brand, either. Instead of visiting your website, they are opening an attachment.

With these limitations, the attachment method may work for communication with a small number of people who have the correct drive system for opening up your video file. But attaching a video to an email is not recommended for reaching out to a large number of customers, considering the file-size restrictions across clients.

Include a YouTube link

Our checklist for videos in email:

An engaging visual preview ✅

Support across email clients ✅ & ❌

If you include a YouTube URL in the body of a Gmail message, the video will appear as a playable attachment for Gmail recipients. The URL will work for everyone, but only Gmail users will be able to play the video in the email. For those readers, this is a useful way to get your video played right away, in the email itself. It won’t work as well for people using other platforms, like the Mail app on their iPhones or other mobile devices.

On the flip side, this method doesn’t encourage traffic to your site. Recipients who click on the attachment will be directed to the YouTube video page, so they may explore your brand more by poking around your company’s YouTube channel. But it’s unlikely that the video page will bring traffic to your site unless the video itself has a CTA button to your site.

This method isn’t recommended for a large number of recipients, as anyone using another email platform will see only the plain URL and most likely won’t be motivated to watch the video.

Email videos with your viewer in mind

Adding video to your emails is a reliable way to increase engagement from recipients. Marketing research shows that including videos in emails consistently leads to greater open, click-through, and conversion rates.

These results, however, happen only if your videos are emailed with the viewer in mind. From your video display to support across email platforms, you have to weigh quite a few factors to send a video that engages readers. Using this guide, you can find a method for emailing videos that is accessible and engaging and encourages viewers to connect with your content.

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