What are some of the many advantages of partnering with an experienced employer of record (EOR)?
Bring workforce management into focus with maslowmedia.com .
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Who needs workers’ compensation insurance? Anyone with workers, it turns out. When employees are injured in the course of employment, such insurance provides wage replacement and medical benefits to workers as well as protections for the employer. Just like any other insurance, you hope you’ll never need it. Still, if you do, it can be absolutely imperative to operations. Businesses that ensure worker safety and implement best practices before they need them are in the best position to protect employees, keep claims manageable, and maybe even keep premiums down.
Chase prevention like you would chase the crisis or you’ll certainly end up chasing a crisis. Make regular safety trainings and ongoing education standard procedure (even if employees roll their eyes). If you don’t have the budget to implement every possible safety measure, you don’t have the budget for the project. The best workers’ comp claim is the one that never happens.
If you’re scrambling to figure out how to handle a claim if it comes up, you’re already behind. Have a standard operating procedure on day one. Decide which role is responsible for talking to the adjuster and within what time frame. Train that person ahead of time. Lay out your processes while your brain isn’t in crisis mode and you’ll make sounder decisions. The added benefit is that it will reassure your adjuster that you’re engaged and motivated to reach a speedy resolution.
Have a plan for injured workers who have been cleared for modified duty. These measures reassure insurance companies while demonstrating professionalism to employees.
An independent contractor filing a workers’ comp claim can easily land a well-intentioned company on IRS and DOL radar screens. This happens with surprising frequency despite the logical assumption that an independent contractor should understand the implications of a business-to-business relationship. One key aspect of a true B2B relationship is that a worker’s business activity exists independent of the employer. Preventing misclassification and communicating clearly with workers is a worthwhile preventative investment. Contact us at 303-526-4900 or by email for a free workers’ compensation risk analysis.
Workers’ compensation is always changing. Each political administration handles it differently and states have their own rules and approaches. Workers’ compensation carriers adjust costs and terms in the face of declining profits and escalating claims costs and operating expenses. Companies that address the subject proactively are in the best position to ensure minimal premium increases. Aside from cost, keeping employees safe is forever a worthwhile investment.
The post Head Off Workers’ Compensation Risks at The Pass appeared first on PayReel .
Online video has long been a stronghold of content marketing strategies. Video accounts for 65% of internet traffic
, and 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool in 2023
. As the most dynamic content medium, video allows marketers to show off their brand and products in more ways than static web content.
Not only does video content have the potential to reach new audiences, it can also drive engagement with your existing audience. By using video on landing pages and blogs or alongside products and services, marketers can delight customers, inform prospects, and drive fresh leads through the funnel.
However, for video to have the desired impact, it’s crucial that search engines can find, rank, and serve your content. Accessibility-based solutions like transcripts can promote search engine optimization (SEO) while making your content accessible to any audience.
How Video Transcripts Elevate SEO
SEO is a digital marketing practice aimed at promoting pagerank and driving overall site visits. The strategy can vary depending on keyword queries, but it’s important to recognize that video transcripts can bolster a site’s keyword density for relative search terms.
Search engines can’t “watch” a video the way we do. Instead, they crawl text associated with video files and use this information to index and rank results. Metadata and video tags are good examples of text elements commonly associated with video. But a high-quality transcript provides a more complete textual representation of all spoken content in a video.
Of course, marketers should always be wary of “keyword stuffing.” Overusing targeted keywords on site pages to manipulate pagerank has been penalized by search algorithms
for many years. Fortunately, placing a transcript below a video is considered a natural way to integrate keywords or phrases throughout a page. It also layers secondary and tertiary search terms, creating a healthier and more diverse SEO strategy.
1) Video Transcripts Match Long-Form Search Queries
If you’re working with longer videos like webinar recordings, transcripts can offer the same benefits as long-form blog posts. According to HubSpot, the ideal blog post length is over 2,000 words
. This is because carefully-curated long-form content is more likely to appear higher in search result rankings.
Including a transcript on the same webpage as a video increases its chances of appearing favorably in search rankings. Users may only watch the video and not read the text, but the transcript will make it much more visible to search engines.
Transcripts contribute to your keyword strategy by naturally incorporating target words or phrases into a landing page, which boosts SEO. When selecting relevant targets, consider what kind of search query a user would enter in order to find your video. Then customize your landing pages so keywords and on-page content are aligned to each specific video. For example, the page’s URL, title, H1 and H2 headers, image alt text, and anchor text should all incorporate your keyword or phrase.
2) Video Transcripts Engage Your Audience
By using video transcripts to boost SEO and build accessibility into the production process, you also harness the potential of improving engagement with your audience. Transcripts make your video searchable by end users and search engines alike, and more favorable search rankings means more eyes on your content. In fact, 85% of marketers say that video is effective at engaging their audience
, with short-form and live video content being the leading formats of choice.
In Brightcove’s 2022 survey on the use of video in e-commerce, 84% of consumers are convinced to purchase after joining a livestream or virtual shopping event. Combined with the brand awareness and recall benefits offered by captions and transcripts, accessible video has the potential to boost audience engagement and influence behavioral intent.
3) Video Transcripts Can Boost Target Metrics
Searchable content served to an engaged target audience also has a positive impact on engagement metrics like view count and session time.
For example, content showcasing a product or service
is one of the most engaging types of video, as well as the most likely to generate leads. From the research phase to the final purchase, video content is useful at any stage of the buying journey. When a user finds a product or service-related video, they’re probably looking for more information related to that topic. If there are reviews, support links, or suggested reading available on the same page as the video, it bodes well for average session duration and engagement.
Video Transcripts Only Count if They’re Accurate
One major condition of including video transcripts (and reaping the benefits) is accuracy. Just like high-quality transcripts have the potential for positive influence, inaccurate transcripts can negatively affect your standing with search engines.
Automatic speech recognition (ASR) engines are typically about 80% accurate, but the industry standard requires a minimum of 99% accuracy. While ASR technology has improved over the years, it’s not best practice to rely solely on automatically generated transcripts or captions
.
Video has become the preferred method of content consumption by digital natives. So much so that 85% of e-commerce consumers find video essential to their online experience. When your brand provides a transcript or captions, you can ensure your content is effectively indexed and searchable to new and existing audiences. Accessibility is more than just a legal requirement. Prioritizing an equitable user experience brings SEO benefits like boosting keyword density and strategy.
Want to learn more? Read about the ROI Benefits of Transcription & Captioning
.
This blog was originally written by Shannon Murphy in 2013 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
For today’s creators, video accessibility has become much more than a checklist item for regulation and compliance.
With diverse audiences of varying abilities, languages, and viewing environments, delivering accessible videos is a clear indicator of your respect and commitment to your viewers. It demonstrates that you are dedicated to championing inclusivity, embracing non-native speakers, and providing the best possible user experience (UX).
Content producers understand that these experiences are the core of building a strong sense of loyalty and appreciation among viewers, customers, and the public at large. When viewers feel valued and included, they are more likely to become dedicated fans, engage with the content, and share it with others.
What Makes a Great User Experience?
But what creates an engaging, yet accessible UX? In Peter Morville’s user experience honeycomb
, he outlines seven qualities:
Useful
Usable
Desirable
Findable
Accessible
Credible
Valuable
While he intended it for website experiences, many have used his framework for a variety of user experiences. For example, a number of these qualities can be applied to premium video platforms like Brightcove. Our ad monetization solution is useful, our Player V7 update makes our product more usable, and our industry-vetted ROI makes our platform valuable.
In the same way, Brightcove’s partnership with 3Play Media helps our customers make their content more accessible, furthering our commitment to providing the best user experience. In fact, Brightcove customers can achieve true, accessible equivalency by ordering accessible video services from 3Play directly within our platform.
Serving over 10,000 existing customers, 3Play Media
is the premier media accessibility provider in North America, delivering services with 99% accuracy and SLA-guaranteed turnaround. Content creators with a global audience can also receive localization support through 3Play’s translation and subtitling services in over 45 languages.
What are the Key Components of Video Accessibility?
Digging a bit deeper into the services you now have at your fingertips, let’s look at four ways you can start today to enhance your videos accessibility.
Closed Captioning
A key feature that improves accessibility for those who are deaf or hard of hearing, closed captions provide an on-screen transcript of the audio content. Additionally, it increases engagement by allowing viewers in noisy environments, or those watching with the sound off, a way to still experience the video.
Example of a Web.VTT Closed Captions File
Live Captioning
Depending on your use case, you can consider two different types of live captioning: Automatic and Professional.
Live Automatic Captioning. This can be a practical approach for providing baseline accessibility when professional captions aren’t feasible. For example, internal video meetings or informal presentations and webinars don’t necessarily require human captioning. Live automatic captioning can also be beneficial for social media livestreams to make the content more accessible to a wider and more diverse audience.
Live Professional Captioning. This is an ideal approach for important and high-profile live event streams where quality and compliance are priorities. These could include academic videos where accuracy is crucial to ensure students with hearing impairments and non-native speakers can access and comprehend the content. Similarly, Live Professional Captioning can ensure all viewers of large events and conferences or investor and customer presentations can have a high-quality experience.
Translating and Subtitles
This accessibility feature is important for reaching a global audience of non-native speakers. It not only fosters inclusivity but also expands the potential audience to viewers from various backgrounds.
Audio Descriptions
For visually impaired audiences, audio descriptions are a valuable tool for making video content accessible. By providing verbal depictions of key visual elements, any viewer can understand the context and follow the narrative effectively. It not only showcases the creator’s commitment to inclusivity, it enhances the overall user experience for those who rely on alternative ways to consume visual media.
How Great UX Grows Audience Loyalty
In a digital landscape with so many content options, generating loyalty is an investment. And if one thing is clear in the creator ecosystem, it’s that audiences will invest in brands when brands invest in them. This means they are more likely to engage with your brand, share your videos, and become devoted fans or customers.
By prioritizing accessibility features, such as captions, audio descriptions, and multi-language subtitles, content creators ensure that their content caters to a diverse range of viewers. And offering them the tools and features they need to fully experience your videos is perhaps one of the most effective demonstrations of your investment in them.
I knew South-by-Southwest (SXSW) was going to be different. The schedule revealed the normal offerings you’d expect: keynotes by such people as the humanitarian chef Jose Andres, Ryan Gellert of Patagonia, and the actor Tilda Swinton, panel discussions about technology and filmmaking, and networking happy hours sponsored by companies such as Edelman, Vimeo, and L’oreal (among hundreds of others). But a deeper exploration revealed that this is not your standard conference. Signs on the convention center floor heralded panel discussions on “tracks” such as Workplace Revolution, Psychedelics, Energy, and the Media Industry. There were fascinating talks on topics ranging from corporate diversity and culture (at the German House) to virtual production on LED-wall sound stages (at the Australia House.)
At the Creative Industries Expo on the main convention center floor, a twenty-five foot holographic dancer lorded over us all, standing next to a booth touting a development service for screenwriters, which was next to a booth designed to showcase new technologies and recruit for the CIA.
A five-minute walk from the Expo led you to a huge 3D Dorito which infused your nostrils with Cool Ranch (really), and another ten-minute walk from that led to a warehouse with a full-on immersive experience based on Showtime’s hit show Yellowjackets, complete with hors d’oeuvres that were definitely not made from people.
Officially, South-by (as the cool kids call it) is a festival that celebrates the convergence of tech, film, music, education, and culture – and I can tell you firsthand that it delivers on that celebration. I’ve been to film festivals and film markets and business events and trade shows and tech conferences, but I’ve never experienced all of them in one city with one pass within 5 days.
It was, quite literally, overwhelming. Seeing and hearing and experiencing everything proved to be an impossible task, and my only suggestion for next year is that they incorporate a cloning booth so one can attend everything simultaneously. (Although I hear that might be on the slate…)
What I was able to see, however, was informative and inspiring. The Expo, especially, proved to be much more engaging than a standard industry floor, due to the sheer breadth of products and services and technologies on display from every industry. The panels were – as you would expect from presenters of this level – well worth the time.
One panel in particular sticks out, because I actually ended up being one of the camera operators at the last minute. This panel was being presented by a potential client with whom I was chatting, and – after describing our services – they mentioned that one of their camera operators had backed out at the last minute for a panel that day, so they could have used us. Given that I have spent years working for TeamPeople as a camera operator filming panels and conferences, I volunteered to fill in and run his 2nd camera (at no charge…) – and their relief was palpable. They were also pleasantly surprised to see that even the people we have on the ground at a festival and conference are able to operate cameras on a moment’s notice…which is just how we roll over here.
I found myself engaged in some fascinating conversations – about technology, media, finance, or just life in general – with some of the smartest people I’ve ever met. I met brilliant filmmakers, ingenious designers, savvy financiers, and entrepreneurs who are re-inventing drone taxis or redefining the travel industry or creating new products for immersive virtual meetings.
One of those entrepreneurs with a fascinating story is Alexandra Schrecengost, friend of TeamPeople and Founder and CEO of Culture With Us , a relatively young company which offers virtual and hybrid team experiences for business. Alex was named as a 40 under 40 Tastemaker by Wine Spectator in 2021, and she was invited to be a private mentor for people who were interested in learning more about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion as it applies to Entrepreneurship. As a diverse business owner and accomplished entrepreneur, there are few people more suitable to mentor on that topic. The opportunity to meet with people like Alex was yet another interesting offer from the festival, and also stands as a testament to the wonderful diversity on hand at SXSW.
Given TeamPeople’s focus as a service for companies needing creative roles and production, it was interesting to be exposed to so many other types of companies and ventures, and I found myself pleasantly surprised by just how much there is to celebrate in the convergence of all of these industries. By the end of my time at SXSW, I came to understand why this is the case, and why SXSW works:
It’s because – at the end of the day – the entire conference is about storytelling. Everyone in attendance has a story to tell, whether it’s about a new trend or a revolutionary product or (in the case of filmmakers) a literal story. A festival like this just drives home the point that the singular thing that makes us human is our need to tell and hear these stories. I was thrilled to be at an event that celebrates this in such a fun and delightful way, and I got the sense that many of my fellow storytellers and story-lovers shared that same sense of joy.
I also found myself incredibly grateful to be part of an industry, and a company in TeamPeople, whose purpose is to celebrate this part of our humanity. It’s easy to fall into cynicism, and to only see the business and capital and competition at a festival like this, but a bit of digging and some late-night conversations will reveal a diverse, thoughtful community of people who all just want to tell and share each other’s stories.
It was enlightening, empowering, and fun, and I’m very much looking forward to returning next year.
Are you looking to share your story? Whether you are sharing entertainment, news, documentaries, educational or corporate video content, we know the people and the processes to get the job done right. We have talented teams deeply ingrained in the storytelling community who can help convey your message, and rosters of production vendors to bring your story to life. Contact us – we’d love to hear about your story!
Delve into the world of female representation in cinema, tracking some of the characterizations that have stuck to women over a century-plus of movie history.