From digital signage to hybrid meetings – find out why power conditioning is essential for all AV applications.
The post From digital signage to hybrid meetings – why power conditioning is essential for all AV applications appeared first on AVI-SPL Digital Enablement Services Provider.
In the movie Miracle, Coach Herb Brooks transforms a ragtag group of individuals from rival schools into the unlikely winners of an Olympic gold medal. During tryouts, many of the United States’ top hockey players made a show of their fancy skating. While some of the would-be Olympians hoped to be superstars, Coach Herb Brooks had something less glamorous in mind. He was building a team and picked the players he felt could come together and perform as such. He knew he would be going up against teams that had been playing together for years. He wouldn’t be able to compete in most aspects of the game. So he started with the basics: conditioning and building a team-oriented mindset.
We’ve seen the workplace evolve as employees disperse to their home offices and fancy devices and face-to-face interactions yield to app-based means of communication. While we can’t predict all of the ways the workplace will continue to change, we know it will. Like our young, scrappy team from the 1980’s that went back to the basics, there are a few tried and true fundamental workplace principles that remain no matter what the changes bring. A cohesive team will always have a team culture and effective communication.
Whenever we get a little sideways or start to feel the distance growing between team members, divisions, and workers with various statuses, we can always come back to the basics and work on the human side of our business and shore up our communication as well.
We’ve collected some resources for cohesively knitting teams with different structures.
7 Ways to Make Employees Feel Respected
The Best Managers Are “Connectors”
Is Your Hybrid Team Losing Steam?
When Great Minds Don’t Think Alike
Three Elements of Great Communication, According to Aristotle
4 Distractions That Derail Meetings–And How to Handle Them
How to Design an Agenda For an Effective Meeting
Storytelling That Moves People
An Antidote to Microaggressions? Microvalidations.
You can weather a lot of storms well if your foundation is solid. For a well-functioning business, that foundation is going to be built on taking care of your people and effective communication. What are your tried and true principles/tactics you always come back to?
The post Is Your Workplace Evolving? Get Back to Basics. appeared first on PayReel.
In the movie Miracle, Coach Herb Brooks transforms a ragtag group of individuals from rival schools into the unlikely winners of an Olympic gold medal. During tryouts, many of the United States’ top hockey players made a show of their fancy skating. While some of the would-be Olympians hoped to be superstars, Coach Herb Brooks had something less glamorous in mind. He was building a team and picked the players he felt could come together and perform as such. He knew he would be going up against teams that had been playing together for years. He wouldn’t be able to compete in most aspects of the game. So he started with the basics: conditioning and building a team-oriented mindset.
We’ve seen the workplace evolve as employees disperse to their home offices and fancy devices and face-to-face interactions yield to app-based means of communication. While we can’t predict all of the ways the workplace will continue to change, we know it will. Like our young, scrappy team from the 1980’s that went back to the basics, there are a few tried and true fundamental workplace principles that remain no matter what the changes bring. A cohesive team will always have a team culture and effective communication.
Whenever we get a little sideways or start to feel the distance growing between team members, divisions, and workers with various statuses, we can always come back to the basics and work on the human side of our business and shore up our communication as well.
We’ve collected some resources for cohesively knitting teams with different structures.
7 Ways to Make Employees Feel Respected
The Best Managers Are “Connectors”
Is Your Hybrid Team Losing Steam?
When Great Minds Don’t Think Alike
Three Elements of Great Communication, According to Aristotle
4 Distractions That Derail Meetings–And How to Handle Them
How to Design an Agenda For an Effective Meeting
Storytelling That Moves People
An Antidote to Microaggressions? Microvalidations.
You can weather a lot of storms well if your foundation is solid. For a well-functioning business, that foundation is going to be built on taking care of your people and effective communication. What are your tried and true principles/tactics you always come back to?
The post Is Your Workplace Evolving? Get Back to Basics. appeared first on PayReel.
The last few years have tested the agility and adaptation of every marketing team. Physical events went digital. Digital events had to get interesting. Video marketing became more important than ever, and teams had to think about how the sales process worked in both remote and hybrid environments.
B2B video marketing is moving beyond awareness and driving engagements and conversions at each touchpoint in the marketing funnel. In fact, when we interviewed marketing leaders, the topic of discussion wasn’t whether video marketing could drive conversions. It was about the strategy and tech stack needed to do it.
Learn more in our PLAY episode, “What’s New, What’s Not and What Matters Most to CMOs Today.”
Rethinking the Hybrid Experience
Traditional digital media and video marketing tactics like webinars aren’t keeping people’s attention or driving conversions.
That’s what Margaret Franco, CMO of Finastra, realized as she helped her team adapt to a digital-first environment during COVID-19 lockdowns. Part of the reason is that video marketing, for many teams, is still focused on driving top-of-funnel activities like awareness without building the relationship afterwards. Without in-person meetings and industry events, the Finastra team knew that the customer journey across video marketing had to be personal. From brand awareness to conversion and retention, video had to break through a noisy digital environment where everyone was remote and often distracted.
For Finastra, the video content strategy started by rethinking the video marketing tech stack. As Finastra’s VP of Marketing, Joerg Kleuckmann, puts it, “It all kicked off from an experience I had when COVID started. I was clicking on an ad from a competitor because they had a digital event, and I thought it was our event, and I got confused.” Not only that, when people did access video content from Finastra, they got distracted by something else on YouTube.
Many marketing leaders dealt with similar challenges. Latané Conant, CMO of 6Sense, says that every marketer has to be an “octopus.” They have to cover different disciplines and teams in order to understand what type of video is best for the company and the customer.
Paige O’Neill, Chief Marketing Officer at Sitecore, believes that content is still the biggest challenge, whether a hybrid or digital or in-person format: “How do we connect the dots between the two and serve up that experience for customers?”
In a hybrid environment where people engage online and offline, marketing teams must provide an ongoing journey customized to what personas need the most. B2B video marketing must be more like events, and events must be more like digital multimedia. Both tactics require a lifecycle strategy that builds a relationship with attendees before, during, and after the experience.
To reinvent the team’s B2B video marketing strategy, Finastra launched Finastra TV in 2022 to broadcast video content related to the banking industry. The channel allows viewers to find the content most relevant to their industry and engage with it at their own pace.
“We’re going to build the Netflix for the financial services industry,” Franco says. “Finastra TV is always promoting. It’s always engaging.”
Most importantly, first-party data became the foundation for the new video marketing strategy from the start.
Learn more in our PLAY episode, “Finastra TV: Building Your Own Company Channel.”
Video Marketing with First-Party Data
Streaming platforms like Vimeo or YouTube can host video content, but they offer limited analytics tools. The same goes for social channels, where marketers can measure views and understand viewer demographics but not how qualified they really are as prospects. This is why measuring the success of video marketing often only goes as deep as top-of-funnel metrics like views, social shares, and time watched.
To create a B2B video marketing strategy with the personalization power of Netflix, marketers must focus on collecting first-party data from viewers. By understanding individual prospect behavior across all video content, marketers can better understand people’s interests and viewing habits and follow up at an individual level.
The first step for this kind of video marketing is simple: create video content that your prospects want to view. As Conant explains, teams should organize video production in the same way that “media companies deal with content.” By starting with the market fit for the product—and the content that establishes that market fit—teams can plan content for each persona.
At Finastra, the team created a content strategy based on different seasons and topics that consist of 10 to 15 episodes per topic. The goal was to build a digital stage that drove opportunities, not just views. Every viewer who accesses Finastra TV fills out a form once with relevant contact information and then has the freedom to watch all the episodes. This first-party data is automatically routed to Finastra’s CRM, which in turn scores the lead based on viewing activity.
“We developed a custom solution on the channel where we dropped a cookie behind the user’s first Marketo registration form,” Klueckmann explains. “Gating is a thing of the past. Forms are a thing of the past.”
Finastra TV, which is built with Brightcove, now offers the sales teams an opportunity to follow up based specifically on which videos the lead viewed with a CRM integration that analyzes who is most engaged based—and what conversations may be most relevant to them. Event content is repurposed to make it video-first and, since then, Finastra TV is fully integrated with the customer journey.
A Transparent Journey
COVID-19 taught teams valuable new digital tactics to persevere through an unprecedented challenge. The next step is to integrate those tactics with real-world events and interactions. This all starts with understanding the tech stack that you need to see each customer touchpoint as it happens, whether online or offline.
“We’re in a hybrid journey right now,” says Paige O’Neill from Sitecore. “How do we bring the best of digital but go back to those customer interactions?”
By offering Finastra TV, the team saw a 26x increase in ROI from physical events, capturing the potential of a hybrid customer journey in new ways. This wouldn’t be possible without the first-party data integrations that help Finastra understand exactly who is watching what and passing that information to the sales team.
As B2B video marketing follows the success of streaming platforms, the importance of customer data is only going to grow. By building a data-first multimedia strategy, you can ensure that video content is fully integrated from the first touch of the customer journey to the last.
Outsourcing HR operations to an external vendor means contracting out time-consuming tasks that weigh down your internal staff — from recruitment and onboarding to employee relations and vendor management. Yet many organizations are unaware HR outsourcing is even an option. Could it make sense for your business?
An experienced outsourcing provider can help identify specific areas within your HR operations in need of development and support, saving you money, reducing risk, and streamlining critical processes. From routine administrative tasks like filing taxes and managing job postings to more laborious efforts like workers’ compensation claim management — partnering with an HR outsourcing provider can help you and your team focus on the strategic initiatives that matter.
There are various types of HR outsource vendors out there, so consider the following differentiators when you begin your search:
A better question might be, which HR functions can’t be outsourced? Depending on the needs of your organization, nearly any HR operation can be outsourced, but only if you choose the right partner. Human resources teams, like many others, are often short-staffed and overworked. An HR outsourcing provider can help companies improve time management, control costs, and navigate compliance administration.
With the Great Resignation still a reality, human resources departments are under more stress than ever. Consider outsourcing HR operations to realize the following benefits:
In the current business environment, realizing efficiencies, saving money, bolstering retention, and easing the workload of overwhelmed teams are more critical to success than ever. Is your company ready to consider outsourcing HR operations?
The post The Benefits of Outsourcing Human Resources Operations appeared first on Maslow Media.
While interactive content and shoppable videos are nothing new, the demand for live commerce and live interactivity videos continues to grow. Not only are viewers showing higher engagement rates, brands and retailers are recognizing their potential to drive higher conversions, connect with younger buyers, and boost sales.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that live commerce has been shown to generate up to 10x conversion uplift. In fact, the U.S. livestream commerce market is projected to account for $35 billion in sales and 3.3% of all U.S. e-commerce by 2024.
However, the technical complexity of live streaming, particularly when incorporating interactive elements, can be daunting. Furthermore, understanding the nuances of interactive videos can be especially challenging for some content creators.
In this post, we’ll take a deep dive into the benefits, the technical requirements, and the challenges you’ll need to navigate. You’ll learn how to harness the power of live interactivity and ensure you get it right to maximize its potential.
Business Benefits of Live Interactivity
For starters, adding interactivity to your live events helps you stand out from the millions of videos that are uploaded to the internet every day. But there are several other ways it can benefit your business.
Deeper Community Building
Interactivity plays a crucial role in helping viewers feel as if they are truly a part of your community. This community-building can extend beyond your brand and products by fostering connections between like-minded viewers who are engaged with your video. Allowing them to actively participate in the content facilitates social interaction and creates a more dynamic and enjoyable experience for all.
Better Audience Feedback
Another key benefit of interactive video is the ability to gather instantaneous feedback and insights. Traditional metrics such as video views are table stakes by now and by themselves are no longer sufficient. Today’s creators must understand which aspects of their livestream resonate best with viewers and incorporate these understandings into future content. Data gained from interactivity, like viewer behavior, preferences, and demographics, will offer insights that can also help achieve other key goals like sales, subscribers, and retention.
Enhanced User Experience
Moreover, live interactivity can enhance the overall user experience by integrating seamlessly with various technology ecosystems, such as Learning Management Systems (LMSs), e-commerce platforms, marketing technology (martech), HR platforms, and Over-the-Top (OTT) media platforms. Adding interactivity to any of these platforms should be an essential part of the viewer’s overall digital experience. Using that interactivity to deliver greater personalization creates a unique end-user experience tailored to your company and specific to each viewer’s journey.
Ideal Cyclical Journey
When implemented effectively, live interactivity can propel users into the ideal cyclical journey: content consumption, engagement with your digital experiences, positive response to calls to action, and brand affinity growth. Successful completion of this cycle will encourage users to share their experiences with others. The end result is amplified reach and increased impact of your interactive video content, bringing even more users into the cycle where it can repeat and continue.
Technical Requirements of Live Interactivity
With a thorough understanding of these benefits, you may be ready to level up your live interactivity but questioning what it takes to start implementation. Short answer: that depends. Why? It may be helpful to break the technical requirements down into two categories: basic setup and advanced setup.
Basic Setup
A basic setup has a couple main requirements.
Online video platform (OVP) for content distribution and playback
Platform capable of handling video overlays and calls to action (CTAs)
However, this only scratches the surface of live interactivity’s potential.
Advanced Setup
To truly unlock the power of live interactivity, creators need to go beyond the basics and integrate their interactive video platform with other systems, such as e-commerce platforms, LMSs, and marketing technologies. An advanced setup in this sense means more than simply connecting the two. Rather, it should enable interactivity that is personalized and unique based on specific attributes of a user’s profile pulled from the system you’re connecting to.
An advanced setup will open up new possibilities, for example:
Connecting with e-commerce platforms to allow users to buy a product from within the video without having to navigate to a purchasing page.
Personalized calls to action based on previous purchase history.
For internal use cases, like training, the LMS system and player working together to create in-player quizzes, establish success criteria, and determine whether the user passed.
Create customized content recommendations based on user behavior within the LMS.
These scenarios offer a glimpse of the potential, but there are countless additional opportunities for your particular use case. By producing a well-integrated interactive video experience that communicates with other technologies, it greatly enhances the end-user experience and becomes an invaluable asset for creators.
How Brightcove Can Help
Brightcove Live Interactivity simplifies the advanced setup. With features including surveys, polls, quizzes, real-time chat, and shoppable e-commerce, you’ll be fully prepared to deliver captivating experiences that boost live audience engagement.
For example, Brightcove’s proprietary chat technology allows you to incorporate chat into live videos and provides greater control over branding and user experience.
With mobile web-first interactive player overlays, you can also create a consistent and visually appealing experience that aligns with your brand while seamlessly integrating with product management platforms. Retail and e-commerce businesses will also appreciate the easy-to-manage events console that gives you the ability to add product information to the livestream in real time.
Although live-streaming can be stressful and challenging, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t realize the many opportunities and benefits it holds. If you’re nervous about truly going live but still want to incorporate live interactivity features, Brightcove Simulive and/or Cloud Playout could be the answer. These solutions allow you to pre-record your content, air it as “live” when you choose, and then simulate a live experience complete with live interactivity features. They essentially combine the best of both worlds while mitigating the risks and costs.
Additionally, these features will be automatically transitioned from your live event to a video on demand (VOD) asset that can continue to drive value over and over again.
For creators looking to take their interactive experiences to the next level, developer events and APIs allow you to customize and build upon these features.
With the rich analytics on both a user and aggregate level, you’ll be able to understand which of these interactive elements are driving the most engagement.
Challenges of Live Interactive Events
Clearly integrating live interactivity into video content offers significant benefits and opportunities. However, it’s important to be aware of the challenges and pitfalls that could occur when incorrectly implemented.
First, it’s important to strike the right balance. While incorporating interactive elements is appealing, overuse or poor implementation can distract viewers from your content. It can also inhibit the actions you want viewers to take as a result of viewing the content.
You should also keep in mind that interactivity goes well beyond merely incorporating shoppable video within a player. The most effective interactive experiences are those that integrate seamlessly within the user’s journey across your digital properties. Interactive elements shouldn’t be jarring or overly apparent, but designed to subtly enhance the user experience and gently guide them towards desired actions on your site.
Live Interactivity Done Right
Successfully implementing live interactivity requires having the right mindset that focuses on creating a seamless user experience. In addition to the right technology, it also requires that all of the systems work together harmoniously. Brightcove Live Interactivity offers a comprehensive solution that delivers everything you need to enhance audience engagement and create captivating interactive experiences in your live events. By leveraging Brightcove’s powerful features and adopting a user-centric approach, you’ll unlock the full potential of live interactivity to help achieve your goals.