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How To Create Engaging Training Videos

Did you know that our brain retains 80% of what it sees and only 20% of what it reads? This is why using training videos for employee upskilling, product demos, customer training, etc., is much more effective than written documents and manuals.

What’s more, producing training videos isn’t as complicated as it used to be a few years ago. With the right tools and processes, you can create highly engaging video training content without spending a fortune.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily create professional training videos using Loom. Then, we’ll share different training video types along with proven tips to help you create world-class training videos for your business.

Let’s get started.

Create A Training Video in 3.5 Minutes

Before anything else, let’s start with the easiest and most convenient way to create a training video for any business goal.

Yes, I’m talking about using Loom.

Here’s how you can create a professional training video using Loom from your desktop or mobile device.

Step 1: Sign Up For a Free Account

Go to Loom.com and sign up for a free account using your email address or Google, Apple, or Slack account. The signup process is pretty straightforward and takes less than a minute.

Step 2: Installation

Now download and install Loom’s Chrome extension or desktop/mobile app to your system.

  • Loom Desktop App: Offers the full range of Loom features, including screen recording, camera + screen, and cam-only recording modes with high-definition video quality and video drawing and annotation tools.

  • Loom Chrome Extension: Cam + screen, cam only, or screen only recording to capture everything happening in your Chrome browser.

  • Loom Mobile Apps: Cam + screen, cam only, or screen only recordings on the go.

Step 3: Check Your Settings

Whether you’re using Loom’s Chrome extension or desktop app, the recording process is almost the same. Let’s focus on the desktop app for now. 

Before recording, choose your recording mode from the app’s main screen: 

  • Camera + Screen

  • Screen Only

  • Camera Only

Also, check the Recording Settings to ensure that the right camera and audio source are selected (visible in the app’s dashboard).

Step 4: Start Recording Your Training Video

If you’re all set to go, click on the Start Recording button in your Loom dashboard. Loom runs a counter before starting a new recording to help you get ready.

Once the recording starts, cover your topic in detail and demonstrate the features or training content on your device. Add explanations in the background using your computer while Loom silently records everything.

When you reach the end of your training, click the Stop button on the side of your screen to finish the recording session.

Step 5: Edit Your Loom Training Video

Before sharing the video training with your audience, use Loom’s editing features to give it a polished look. Loom automatically takes you to its browser-based editing tool when you stop a recording. No video editing software required! 

Here, you can trim your video, add a thumbnail, insert calls to action, add a transcript, and configure several other video settings to determine how your audience interacts with your content.

Step 6: Share Your Training Video

Finally, you’re ready to share your training video with your audience. Loom allows you to create a public link to your video or grant access to specific users via email invitations. In addition, you can share content directly to any popular social network or embed it on your website or landing page.

That’s it! You’ve just created a high-quality training video using Loom for free. You’re allowed 5 minutes per recording session as a free Loom user. But for longer duration and more advanced features, try one of our premium plans.

Let’s now discuss training videos in more detail.

What Is A Training Video?

Online training videos are videos created specifically to describe a process or teach something to your employees, customers, or business partners.

A typical training video has a presenter who comprehensively covers a well-defined problem and helps the audience gain new skills or knowledge by the end of the video. But there are several other training video types that we’ll discuss later in this article. 

Since video content is more engaging than plain text or audio, organizations prefer using training videos whenever they need to teach new skills or create product tutorials.

But using training videos isn’t limited to corporate organizations. People from all walks of life use them to teach and learn new skills.

For example, a training video could be as simple as a 1-minute tutorial on “How to boil an egg” or “How to change a car tire”. Or it could be an hour-long session on “How to prepare for an on-stage presentation”. You’ll find numerous examples of such training videos on YouTube. In fact, according to Google, 86% of US consumers use YouTube to learn new skills.

However, this article will mainly discuss corporate videos since they’re more formal and follow a well-defined structure.

Benefits Of Training Videos

Online training videos offer numerous benefits over conventional offline learning and text-based documentation. Here are some of the main benefits of online training videos:

Highly Engaging

Online training videos are highly engaging and make learning enjoyable. The combination of video, background audio, and constantly changing visuals in training videos ensure that our brains never get bored and stay fresh while learning. In addition, modern-day online training videos use different audience engagement techniques such as emojis, interactive quizzes, exercises, and viewer feedback to ensure that the audience remains hooked to the content all the time. 

Save Time And Resources

Online training videos save hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long run. They allow you to free up resources and use them more creatively by recording repetitive content and serving it whenever needed. 

As you create more training videos, your organizational knowledge base grows and significantly improves the knowledge flow in your company resulting in more informed and competent employees.

Provide On-Demand Learning

Online instructional videos are on-demand learning resources your employees, partners, or customers can access whenever they want. They don’t need to wait for a trainer’s appointment or attend a live lecture to get their answers through e-learning. Plus, they don’t need to watch the full video if they’re looking for a specific piece of information. Instead, they can simply jump to that part of the video to get their answers.

Easily Shareable

Once you’ve created an online training video, you can easily share it with anyone anywhere in the world. For example, every Loom video has a public link you can share with your team, customers, and partners. This turns your videos into knowledge resources that you can quickly use to answer questions and solve problems.

Increase Brand Credibility

Besides improving employee productivity and skillset, creating online training videos can be an excellent way to strengthen your brand image. When you regularly make online training videos covering and answering your audience’s most common questions, you become their go-to resource for everything related to your industry. This improves your branding, drives word of mouth, and increases brand influence.

Drive Organic Search Traffic

Publishing online training videos on your website, YouTube, and other public platforms is an excellent way to drive traffic from search engines. If you optimize your video’s title and description for the right keywords, Google’s search algorithms start ranking you for relevant search queries sending you loads of free traffic.

Increase Customer Satisfaction

Creating video tutorials on your features and the frequently asked questions of your audience is a proven way to increase customer satisfaction. It allows you to provide timely support and help your customers get answers to their questions instantly. It also saves your support team’s time by reducing the number of open tickets. And even if a customer reaches out with a query, your support team can simply share the link to the relevant training video on your website to resolve their problem. This helps your customers use your product to its full potential and get more value. As a result, it drives word-of-mouth marketing and enables you to attract referral customers. 

Close More Sales

Online training videos are an excellent sales tool. Your sales teams can use them to explain product features and show prospects how they can get value from your product. As a result, it makes your sales arguments more persuasive and helps you close more deals.

When Should You Make A Training Video?

So, what are the best times to use training videos for your employees, customers, or business partners? Let’s discuss the most common scenarios.

When Onboarding New Hires

Most organizations send new hires to different departments and schedule training sessions as a part of the onboarding process. You can easily replace this repetitive and unproductive process with employee training videos covering various organizational functions.

Every department can create its set of instructional videos explaining its functions and role in the overall business structure. Then, when new hires get onboard, they can watch those videos before visiting a department for personalized introductions.

This simple solution can help organizations save hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars annually.

When You Leave A Company

Creating training videos covering your most critical projects and job functions is an excellent way to hand over your job to a new person when you’re leaving a company or moving to another position.

The conventional handing over/taking over process requires employees to brief the new person in charge on all the projects and responsibilities. However, by creating training videos, you can provide the new employees with a permanent resource they can refer to whenever they need guidance or clarification on any related to your work.

When You Need To Document A Process

Documenting processes is critical for large organizations, so everyone knows how something is supposed to be done. But most employees never read process documents since they’re often quite long and usually not very engaging.

So, in addition to the conventional documentation process, create instructional videos explaining a process more engagingly. 

This approach also comes in handy when you develop a new process or launch a new product because only you know the optimized method for using it.

Communicating With Remote Employees 

With the rise in remote employment worldwide, online training videos have become critical to every organization’s in-house communication strategy. If you have multiple remote team members in different time zones, you can create training videos on various work-related topics to timely communicate any updates or processes.

For example, a manager can send a tutorial video to remote and in-house team members explaining their new promotion policy or feedback process.

Running Employee Skill Development Programs

Employee skill development is critical for an organization’s long-term growth and employee satisfaction. Online training videos can play a pivotal role in helping organizations build effective employee upskilling programs.

You can identify the essential skills and topics to help your employees perform their jobs more effectively. Then, you can work with your in-house training & development team or hire corporate learning consultants to build relevant and engaging online training programs for your employees.

Types Of Training Videos

Let’s discuss the different types of training videos you can create for your business.

Screencasts

Screencasts are the most convenient and effective training video type because they give viewers a direct and unfiltered view of your computer screen. In addition, you can record your screen activity while narrating the process in the background so that the viewer knows exactly what you’re doing. 

You can easily create engaging screencasts with Loom, allowing for a more visual and personalized communication experience.

Presentation Videos

You can also use PowerPoint presentations to create online training videos. Your content slides contain the most important highlights of your training, while you describe the process in detail in the background.

Alternatively, you can create presentation videos in the “talking head” style where a person explains a process or product on screen.

Live Training

Live training videos are helpful for sales demos, product tutorials, or in-house training programs. These instructional videos can be done through a webinar or live broadcasting tool. Live training videos are more engaging because viewers can directly ask questions. However, they’re only suitable for urgent training sessions or in-house communication.

Async Videos

Asynchronous training videos allow you to record and share a training process with as many users as possible. These videos become a part of your organization’s knowledge base and can be used whenever needed. 

Animated

Animated training videos use whiteboard animation and are more engaging than other video types. They’re primarily used for explaining different processes making it easier for the viewers to remember critical information.

Interviews

Interview-style training videos use questions to help the viewers understand a product or process. Such videos include two or more participants, one of whom asks questions and the others respond in detail.

What Makes A Training Video Effective?

Anyone with a smartphone or camera can make a training video. But to make videos that stand out and impact your audience, they must have the following qualities.

Short(<5 minutes) and to the point

The best online training videos are short and focused on a specific sub-topic. They’re not hour-long lectures that cover a topic from A to Z. Instead, they’re actionable pieces of content with a clear outcome for learners. 

The best way to create such videos is by breaking down your main topic into short, bite-sized lectures of less than 5 minutes. For example, if you’re making a training program about your email marketing tool, don’t cover everything from signing up for an account to setting up an automated email sequence in one video.

Instead, you can break down the topic like this:

Video 1: How to sign up for an account

Video 2: Setting up your profile

Video 3: How to create an email

Video 4: How to create an autoresponder

Video 5: How to create an automation

Video 6: How to track emails

Each of those videos is a particular topic with a clear outcome for learners, and can be easily covered in less than five minutes. Doing this ensures that your audience can easily find the most relevant information in the least possible time.

Step-by-step walkthrough

The best online training videos are highly actionable and consist of step-by-step guidelines. They’re not lectures or sales videos praising your product. Instead, they’re laser-focused on helping your audience understand the topic and take action. Think of them as walkthroughs that hold the viewer’s hand and help them execute on the go.

Clear and direct instructions

This is an extension of the previous point because step-by-step guidelines are only effective when they’re clear and direct. A compelling online training video is not about lengthy introductions or unnecessary details. Instead, it jumps right into the problem and starts sharing instructions for the viewer to follow.

For example, a training video about “Creating an automation sequence” doesn’t need to include why automated emails are important, what are their benefits, why they’re better than regular email campaigns, etc.

Instead, it needs to directly start with instructions like:

Step 1: Sign in to your account

Step 2: Click on the Automation icon

Step 3: Click “Create New Automation”

Step 4: Choose an automation template

Step 5: Click customize from the top right menu

Do you see where this is going? Simple, direct, and clear instructions make your training videos more effective. Engaging your audience is essential, but don’t forget your video's primary purpose, which is to help viewers take action.

High-Quality Video And Audio

Nobody likes watching 360p videos with unclear audio. The effectiveness of your training video relies heavily on its production quality. So make sure to use HD video quality with easy-to-hear and crisp audio instructions. 

In addition, since a training video aims to clearly communicate a process and help your audience take action, it’s better not to add background music or unnecessary sound effects that distract the viewer.

7 Steps To Producing Training Videos

Producing online training videos isn’t as complicated as before. But you still need to follow a well-defined process. 

Let’s quickly discuss the main steps in creating a training video.

Step 1: Decide Your Topic And Goal

What do you want to teach in your video? What’s the topic? Can you break it down into a sub-topic to make it more specific? What’s your goal? What skill will the viewer learn by watching your video? Can you cover the topic in under five minutes? If not, can you compress it?

Answering these questions is critical before creating a training video because they’d help you determine your video's exact scope, type, format, and other details.

Step 2: Choose Your Video Format

Choose a video format based on your business goal. For example, screencasts are usually the best option if it's a product tutorial, or you’re running through a powerpoint deck. Animated whiteboards are ideal for explaining processes, while talking head videos are more suited to elaborating internal team procedures and operations.

Whichever format you choose, it should align with your video’s goal. Otherwise, it won’t impact your audience the way you want.

Step 3: Create A Storyboard

A storyboard is simply a timeline of events in a video that helps you and your team understand the content’s flow. It outlines the different phases of your video and determines how it progresses.

For example, you can start your video with a talking head introduction for the first 15 seconds. Then switch to screencast mode and explain the relevant feature and how it works for 2 minutes. Then you’ll take thirty seconds to conclude the video.

This is a basic timeline, but you can create something more sophisticated based on your content’s length and complexity.

Step 4: Write The Script

Online training video scripts work differently from advertisements or explainer videos. For example, if you’re creating a training video for your colleagues and employees, you don’t need to write every word you’ll speak during your video. Instead, you can write down the main points you want to cover in each section of your video and talk naturally in between. 

But if your video is for your customers and will be shared on your website or social media platforms, it’s always better to have a script before creating your video.

You can divert from the script when you’re in the flow. But having it by your side ensures you’re always on track.

Step 5: Produce The Video

Your training video’s production process depends on its type, format, and goal. For example, if it’s a screencast or camera+screen video, you can record it using Loom. 

But if you’re doing an animated video or a talking head presentation, you’ll need to arrange proper lighting, cameras, and surroundings before shooting your content.

Irrespective o your video format, you’ll need a proper recording mic to ensure your voice is audible and free of noise.

Step 6: Edit The Video

Trim your video, remove any unwanted frames, add annotations, insert overlays, or include a CTA during your video’s editing process. 

Step 7: Share The Video

Finally, when you’re ready to share your video, save it to a cloud platform where everyone can access it. For screencasts, Loom is the best option since it provides you user access rights to determine who can watch your content.

YouTube is another reliable video hosting platform where you can publish your videos for public access or unlisted videos only your team members can watch.

Use Loom to Make Your Next Training Video

As you’ve seen in this article, creating online training videos isn’t as complicated as before but comes with numerous benefits. If you’ve never created training videos before, we’d recommend using Loom.

Why? Because it’s the fastest and most convenient way to create high-quality screencasts and on-camera videos without spending a dime on expensive video editing software.  

If you already have help content on your website, simply convert it into a video by creating a Loom screencast. For example, if your help content shares step-by-step guidelines on creating a new account for your platform, execute this process and record it via Loom to create a screencast.

Do this with any content you already have, and you’ll quickly have an extensive library of training videos.

For customer support, find your customer’s most frequently asked questions and answer them by creating Loom videos so that you never have to explain them to another customer.

There’s just so much you can do with Loom.

Sign up today for a free account and try it yourself.

Posted:

Aug 31, 2022

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