No one knows a company better than its employees. They know the best benefits candidates should know about, which SOPs are the most up-to-date, and which coffee maker won’t ruin your morning. They also know how to use a smartphone and record videos, which makes them the best content creators your company isn’t using.
Employee-generated video content (EGVC) is a growing trend, and for good reason. We already know that video gives employees a better experience; four out of five told us so. But did you know that EGVC can increase your candidate conversion rate by 34% ? What are you waiting for?
If we had to guess, you’re probably waiting to leverage employee-generated content because you need to manage all those employees—and all that content. Ask any video producer and they’ll gladly tell you all the headaches they’ve encountered. But it doesn’t have to be that way. And with the right technology, EGVC can practically manage itself.
What is Employee-Generated Video Content?
To be clear, EGVC isn’t hiring a producer to film one of your employees. Employee-generated video content is about unleashing employees as content creators.
Just like user-generated content (UGC) features customers sharing what they love about a brand or product, EGVC puts the spotlight on your employees. Whether they’re talking about why they work at your company or just explaining what they do, you’re empowering your employees to be spokespeople.
Also similar to user-generated video, no one expects employee-generated video to have a high production value. This kind of content works precisely because it doesn’t look produced. A video shot selfie-style with a smartphone looks like something the person wanted to say, not something a marketing team wrote for them to say. And that authenticity is one of the main reasons why every company needs it.
Why You Need Employee-Generated Video Content
EGVC benefits more than HR goals; it has a measurable effect on business goals. Regardless of how you use it, employee-generated content is valuable to both the company and the employee.

Authentic. This is why UGC is so effective . We’re surrounded by advertising messages carefully tested and crafted by marketers (like us) to drive us to take a certain action. Just as hearing directly from customers invites less skepticism about a product, we’re more likely to trust what employees say about their company. Furthermore, video adds to the authenticity because you can see the person speaking their truth without the edits of a clever PR team.
Cost effective. High-quality video is expensive. Not only does it cost your marketing team time and resources, producers aren’t cheap and editing takes time. And that’s just for one video. Conversely, most of your employees are already equipped to be video producers by virtue of owning a phone, so there’s no one to hire. Add on the latest in cloud-based technology, and the workflow time can be mere minutes.
License-free. Another benefit of EGVC’s lower production value is it doesn’t need the licensed content often used in highly-produced video content. Beyond additional cost, the licenses for stock footage and music beds vary in use and duration. Many providers differentiate between commercial and creative uses, and they often require renewals every year. Employee videos not only save you the cost of this content, they save you the hassle of tracking those licenses.
Employee engagement. In the right contexts, giving your employees a voice can be much more effective than any well-crafted piece of marketing content. But it also benefits the employees, as well. Maintaining employee engagement can be challenging, especially with distributed workforces. But encouraging employees to participate in the company’s branding demonstrates an interest in their feedback that many will appreciate.

How to Use Employee-Generated Video Content
There are several ways your company can effectively use EGVC, but it’s important to recognize why many aren’t using it yet: video management can be complicated.
Managing the Video Content
When something as beneficial as employee-generated video isn’t widely adopted, it’s usually because the implementation seems intimidating—and indeed, it can be.
Content and creative directors know well that video management brings new challenges, primarily due to extraordinary file sizes. Believe it or not, the fastest way to transfer assets from a producer to an editor is by mailing external hard drives (not emailing, going to the post office). Add more than one producer or editor, and now you have drives and files in several physical and digital locations.
With EGVC, you’re managing dozens if not hundreds or thousands of video producers. It’s like trying to organize company documents without a secure server or marketing assets without a Digital Asset Management system (DAM). And even if you do have an online video platform (OVP), odds are most of your employees won’t have access to it, let alone know how to properly upload the assets.
At Brightcove, we have a simple solution for managing employee-generated video. All you have to do is ask your employees to upload their videos to a Google Drive or Dropbox folder. That’s it. At least, that’s all you have to tell them.
On the backend, Brightcove integrates with both Google Drive and Dropbox, allowing you to select a “watched” folder. This folder is synced with your Brightcove account so that any new video file will be automatically uploaded.
This is video management made easy. You don’t have to manually gather multiple assets from multiple people and upload them one at a time. Once your employees take a video on their phones and share it to the proper cloud folder, Brightcove will take care of the ingestion.
EGVC can be used in lots of different ways. To take advantage of them, you’ll need a workflow that’s as simple and familiar to your employees as possible.
Marketing the Video Content
Employee-generated video content can be used both internally and externally for the benefit of customers, colleagues, new hires, and job candidates. Below are a few of the more common uses and examples of how to activate them.

Recruitment. In addition to job descriptions, ask hiring managers to record a short video introducing themselves and why they’re excited about the position. Managers are one of the most important ingredients in job satisfaction and attracting top talent, so make sure you’re marketing your managers along with the positions. Job listings are much more appealing when you can see who you’d be working for. Similarly, employee testimonials can do wonders for building an employer brand. For example, during Women’s History Month one year, Brightcove distributed a montage of women engineers in support of the #BreakTheBias campaign. You could build on our idea and make distribution as easy as ingest by using our LinkedIn integration. Settings like post info and visibility can all be managed through the integration.
Learning and Development (L&D). It’s time for internal communications to leverage your internal subject matter experts (SMEs). Start a list of FAQs and ask them to respond to each one with a short video. They’re probably tired of answering the same questions over and over, and with Brightcove, they’ll only have to do it one more time. Using our portals and Smart Playlists, you can create a secure, internal video experience that manages itself. All you have to do is add tags to your videos, set up a Smart Playlist to auto-populate with those tags, and create a portal that hosts the Playlist. Coupled with a Google or Dropbox integration, this means the only thing you have to do is add the tags; everything else is automatic. For longer term development, you might consider giving your veterans a chance to share their experiences. For example, Brightcove has a series called “Navigating the Cove” featuring career success stories from staff around the globe. Using our solutions, you could easily replicate this idea without too much effort.
Connection. At Brightcove, Employee Appreciation Day has turned into Employee Appreciation Week. We like to thank each other publicly (and, obviously, through video) because gratitude is infectious. Sharing how much we appreciate each other is part of what connects us and makes us a great place to work. You can take our idea a step further and, like a training portal, create a gratitude portal. Unlike social media or internal chat platforms, team members could easily return to this content whenever they need to be reminded how much they matter to others. Because portals like this are so easy to maintain, you could create more to wish happy birthdays or congratulate promotions. It won’t cost a lot of effort, but it will go a long way in building your company culture.

Implementing Employee-Generated Video with Brightcove
The only thing holding most companies back from activating employee-generated video content is knowing how to manage it. We don’t blame you. Without the right tools, it can quickly spiral into a time-consuming hassle or an outright mess. But with Brightcove Communications Studio and the proper video content management processes, you can reap all the benefits of EGVC with an easy-to-manage workflow.

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Enterprises are adopting video at a rapid pace. Video advertising and shoppable video are more accessible than ever, and internal applications like training and townhalls are also increasing.
At the root of all the flashy features and trendy use cases is an oft-neglected but fundamental component of video marketing: video content management. In fact, this was a recurring theme in The Aragon Research Globe™ for Enterprise Video, 2023:

As demand for both produced video content and user-generated video content grows, video content management, which is how this market got its start, is now more important than ever before.

The best features will fail without a proper foundation. Before settling on a new or even your first streaming platform, take a moment to review some of the most common video management mistakes. Knowing what to avoid will allow you to get the most out of your platform and set up your video marketing strategy for success.
No Taxonomy
One of the most common mistakes in video content management is not having a clear and consistent taxonomy. Imagine throwing cables into a pile in the corner of a closet and wondering why they come out tangled and knotted. Without a taxonomy, video storage can be difficult to manage effectively.
No Taxonomy Symptoms
It’s easy to tell if you have a working taxonomy. You usually won’t hear internal stakeholders say, “Ugh, I would’ve used that video in my campaign if I knew we had it!” Missed opportunities are a telltale sign that marketers aren’t able to find your content and make the most of it.
You also won’t hear someone say, “Wait, we already had an asset about that?” Too often, wasted resources are the result of a mismanaged media library. Especially for marketers working against deadlines, it can foster bad habits like producing duplicate content rather than going to hunt and peck for what they need.
No Taxonomy Solutions
Taxonomy refers to the ways in which content is categorized and organized. For example, AV folks inverse wrap cables (to prevent tangling) and sort them by things like length and connector. In the same way, content managers should structure their media libraries by aboutness and use.
Enterprise video platforms like Brightcove offer a couple of different file storage features.

Folders. Best used to organize video assets by aboutness, folders are the primary navigation for content managers. External content like products and services, as well as internal content like trainings and townhalls, should all have their own folders. However, not every subcategory needs its own folder. Keep the folders high-level and your library will be easier to navigate.
Playlists. Best used to organize video assets by use, playlists are the primary navigation for content activators. Campaigns, channels, and other external and internal initiatives can each have their own playlist. Unlike folders, playlist contents will overlap to accommodate various uses and thus can be more granular. For example, a clip of the CEO from a townhall might fit on both an onboarding playlist and a PR playlist.

In addition to manual playlists, a leading platform like Brightcove also offers Smart Playlists that can be generated automatically based on tags, custom fields, descriptions, and dates.
Of course, Smart Playlists won’t work if any of the necessary data points are missing. Video tagging, in particular, isn’t an intuitive skill and users are prone to over-tag with useless data or freeze up and avoid tagging altogether. That’s why most platforms also offer required fields that prevent an asset’s activation until those fields are filled in.
A rigorously maintained taxonomy is what it will take to stay ahead of the competition in some burgeoning markets. For example, “Aragon feels there will be long-term archival needs for certain types of telehealth use cases (The Aragon Research Globe™ for Enterprise Video, 2023).” In a field prone to legal scrutiny, organizations should strongly consider offering benefits beyond business outcomes.
No Ingest Procedure
Another common mistake is not having a clear and consistent process for ingesting video content. It’s like expecting a football team to win games with no assigned positions or set plays. Without a proper ingest procedure, it will be difficult to ensure that the right video assets are stored the right way.
No Ingest Symptoms
One way to tell that your ingest procedures aren’t standardized is by checking your file names. Do they have an ISO-formatted date ? Is there any irrelevant information like the producer’s name or the duration? Or are some simply called “project” because someone forgot to title them? Inconsistent naming conventions indicate users are following their own instincts rather than a company-wide standard.
Another indicator is duplicate assets. This means users can’t (or won’t) identify which assets are already in the library, so they’re uploading the same file multiple times. Not only is this likely due to the aforementioned naming issue, it also suggests users are trying to fill a vacuum in the ingest process.
No Ingest Solutions
Ingesting refers to the process of transferring video content from the source to the storage location—in this case, an online video platform or OVP. A taxonomy is an important first step, but alone, it won’t help if no one knows to follow it. Once you outline an ingest procedure, there are several features that can help you maintain it.

Role-based access. Just like not every football player has the skills to be a goalkeeper, not every employee should have access to your media library. For example, Brightcove’s platform is divided into different modules and allows you to select which modules are accessible to different roles. Restricting the Upload module to select users will improve process compliance and make it easier to identify responsible parties when errors need to be corrected.
Replace source file. Version control often becomes an issue when a product is updated or your brand is refreshed. Brightcove makes this easy by offering a button called “Replace Source File.” Whenever you’re done with an old version of a video, just click this button and you can update every instance of the asset. No duplicate files or naming issues. If that sounds like a simple solution that any web CMS already offers, it is. If you’re mad that your current video CMS doesn’t offer it, you should be.

These features will only become more important as microvideo grows. Short (30-second) how-to videos are increasingly popular with customer support use cases. But as media libraries grow, so does the need for businesses to lock down their ingest processes. “Aragon feels that more of them will need a full Enterprise video platform to be able to manage the growing volume of videos over the next five years.”
No Publication Procedure
A final common mistake is not having a clear and consistent process for publishing video content. A grocery store would never order produce before coordinating with packagers and distributors; it might rot before getting to the table. Likewise, without a proper publication procedure, videos may start growing (figurative) mold in your library.
No Publication Symptoms
Whenever deadlines are missed or the wrong video gets published to the wrong place, your publication procedure is suspect. Delays and errors indicate there’s no established workflow for a video asset once it’s ingested.
Another obvious sign that publishing happens haphazardly is when you try to break out a video’s metrics by audience but can’t find where it’s published. This kind of opaque performance can occur because some may not realize that publication is part of content management.
No Publication Solutions
Publishing refers to the process of making video content available to the public. And despite the fact that it addresses where a video lives outside of the media library, this is still the content manager’s job. Fortunately, good streaming platforms offer some helpful features to make this job a little easier.

Portals. Rather than waiting for links, embed codes, or the webpages needed to host them, a video portal can be set to auto-populate based on certain playlists. For example, Brightcove Gallery offers several responsive, no-code templates that can be populated by Smart Playlists. Meaning, you could add “PR” and “onboarding” tags to that CEO townhall clip mentioned earlier, and upon ingest, it would automatically publish to those respective portals.
Players. When Brightcove and other platforms allow you to customize multiple video players, we’re not doing that so you can create wacky designs (okay, maybe a little). Players are an opportunity to organize where your videos are published. For example, landing page audiences behave very differently than homepage audiences. But if you have a video published in both places, how do you break out the performance? If you had a designated player for each location, then you could simply filter performance by player. Anywhere an audience behaves in a distinct way is an opportunity for a designated player.

Players are particularly valuable when working with interactive video. According to Aragon Research , “One of the fast-growing use cases is interactive video, which makes shopping experiences more immersive.” But to keep up with that growth, enterprises will need to know where buyers are watching and interacting with videos. Designated players allow them to break out those audiences and refine their strategies accordingly.
Solving Video Management with the Enterprise Leader
Managing video content can be a challenge, given video’s cascading growth in volume and use cases. Avoiding the common mistakes can keep your content well organized so your streaming platform can propel your marketing strategy to keep up.

To be clear, the solution to poor video asset management is having a clearly defined and adopted strategy. Tools and features can’t create that strategy, and they only work as well as the people using them understand that strategy. But they can make executing that strategy easier, especially if you’re using an analyst-named leader like Brightcove.
For two years in a row, the Aragon Globe has named Brightcove Leader in enterprise video.
Download The Aragon Research Globe™ for Enterprise Video, 2023, to learn more about why Brightcove is leading the way in enterprise video.
Aragon Research does not endorse vendors, or their products or services that are referenced in its research publications, and does not advise users to select those vendors that are rated the highest. Aragon Research publications consist of the opinions of Aragon Research and Advisory Services organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Aragon Research provides its research publications and the information contained in them “AS IS,” without warranty of any kind.

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Forget “try before you buy.” Today’s consumers are all about watching before they buy. Research from Brightcove shows that 85% of consumers worldwide use video content in some way to inform their online shopping decisions.
The next generation of e-commerce video marketing is here now, too: interactive video . More than eight in 10 shoppers who spend the most money online agree that interactive videos with features such as click-to-purchase links are helpful as they shop online.
The challenge for brands looking to seize this opportunity is that most video platforms don’t offer interactivity directly in the platform. However, Brightcove is one of the few online video platforms (OVPs) that offers interactivity out of the box (OOTB). For a feature designed to improve the customer experience, the benefits of in-platform interactivity are undeniable.
Benefits of OOTB Interactivity
There is, of course, one key benefit to using third-party interactivity: It’s platform agnostic. Most vendors work with a variety of OVPs. While switching video platforms might seem like a hassle, the many benefits of OOTB interactivity (like Brightcove) make it worthwhile.

Seamless integration. Features are designed to work with the rest of the software, reducing the amount of time and effort required to get the system up and running.
Consistent user experience. There is a consistent user experience for interactive elements, reducing confusion and improving customer engagement.
Lower costs. Unlike third-party features that require additional licenses for fees, the cost is included in the software subscription, making the rates more transparent and cost-effective.
Greater security. There are more robust security features in place to protect systems and data. You can take advantage of them without having to implement additional security measures for third-party integrated features.
Easier maintenance. Interactive features are maintained and updated by the OVP, reducing the burden on you to maintain and update it. Plus, feature enhancements aren’t time-consuming or costly for you—they come with the package.

Interactive Video Features
While OOTB interactivity is still uncommon among OVPs, several features have become standard across interactivity offerings. Overlays, quizzes, chapters, polls, external links, and in-video branching are available on most solutions, including Brightcove.
However, Brightcove has the widest interactivity feature set, including several advanced features that many other platforms do not. The standard features are a step in the right direction, but the following advanced features further interactivity’s goal of making video behave more like the web.

Sentiment. A high-performing product video clearly demonstrates interest. But without knowing the customer sentiment, you won’t know if that interest is related to purchases or returns. Embedding a video with sentiment options like thumbs up/thumbs down, star ratings, or emoticons can help you discern the difference.
Video-to-video branching. If streaming services have taught us anything, it’s that consumers like the video experience. With video-to-video branching, online shoppers never have to leave. Instead of returning to a menu, they can continue browsing similar or related products from the comfort of your video player.
Time triggers. One of the most important rules of interactive video is giving the viewer time to react. Opportunities for feedback or browsing different product videos can quickly become opportunities for frustration if the video continues before the viewer can take action. Time triggers allow you to pause the video at certain points, or skip to another part of the video if no action is taken.
Personalization. If your website offers a store login, you can further refine your customers’ viewing experience based on the first-party data they submitted. Like the restaurant server who remembers your name and order, your video player could do the same.
Chat. In stores, getting your questions about a product answered is easy—just ask someone. Overlaying third-party messaging programs onto your video provides a similar, digital experience. Why lose an immediate sale when you answer questions in real time?
Custom content. Embedding custom forms means that RSVPing to a launch party doesn’t have to wait for a follow-up email. Whether you use Google Forms, Mailchimp, Typeform, Calendly, or Eventbrite, feel free to collect form data without asking your customers to click off the video.

Interactive Video Playback
The most advanced interactive features are worthless if your customers can’t play or properly view the video. Thankfully, interactive video has come a long way; most platforms offer web playback on all the major browsers as well as mobile web playback.
Especially with almost half (42%) of e-commerce now happening on mobile , it’s critical to ensure the video experience is seamless on every user’s device. Unlike some interactive solutions that only offer lightboxes, Brightcove provides inline experiences. While lightboxes are notoriously unresponsive on mobile devices, inline provides a much more user-friendly experience.
Most platforms also allow interactive playback in standard landscape orientation, and some, including Brightcove, allow portrait.
Interactive Video Analytics
Interactive video not only provides a better video experience for online shoppers, it gives marketers more granular behavioral data about their customers. Most solutions offer this through platform analytics, CSV export, API access, and the ability to integrate with Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics.
The metrics offered will vary, but you can expect most platforms to include metrics related to activity stream, aggregate performance, conversion, and overlay clicks. However, few offer stop watching/exit metrics like Brightcove. Similar to a video’s engagement rate, these metrics are key to knowing how your audience is responding to your interactive elements.
For example, just as too many interactive elements can be distracting, so can the wrong element at the wrong time. Stop watching metrics can help you test and isolate the optimum time in a video to place a Buy Now button or a related product link.
Thanks to native MAP integrations, Brightcove also offers user-level reporting like click-through rate, navigation rate, and response rate. If this sounds like an absurd amount of data, it is. This is actually one of the biggest issues with interactivity providers: great data but poor insights.
Marketers don’t just need more data; they need the tools to quickly interpret and act upon it. This is why Brightcove also offers Audience Insights, the leading customer data platform (CDP) specifically designed for video. With proprietary metrics as well as fully aggregated user-level data, Brightcove offers more actionable interactive video insights than any other platform on the market.
How to Compete with Interactive Video in E-Commerce
E-commerce brands know that video can make or break a product purchase. But with so much video content, it’s hard to stand out. And even when you do, it’s often hard to figure out why. It’s not enough knowing that a video was viewed or a call-to-action was clicked. Brands must focus on why a viewer took the next step or dropped off.
While other platforms can produce engaging, interactive videos, most aren’t innovative enough to meet the data-driven demands of e-commerce strategies. Brightcove Interactivity offers everything enterprises need to compete in today’s highly personalized, audience-centric market.

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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.

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Video dominates our online lives in ways that seemed impossible just a few years ago. The ill-fated “pivot to video ,” based on overinflated viewership numbers from social platforms looking for their next monetization strategy, turned countless media companies away from experimenting with the format. But the pandemic brought video back in new and unexpected ways.
Marci Maddox, Research Vice President of Digital Experiences at IDC , shared just how true this is in a PLAY Season 1 episode. “By 2024, 80% of the world’s population will be online—many of whom are Gen Z with an affinity toward video. In 2024, consumers will spend upwards of $10.5 trillion online, of which video will be a growing factor in influencing those buying decisions.”
And it’s reaching people in more places than ever before, too. “The pandemic accelerated the use of video by 32%,” said Maddox. “This was everything from virtual events to personal messages. Video content continues to expand its reach to consumers in their everyday lives, at work, at home, or at play.”
As a result, the prevalence of video will require more companies to “think and act like a media company,” Maddox explained. “Video is entertaining. It’s informative. It can also be a way for us to communicate with one another—and try to communicate to our customers, employees or partners in a new, immersive way.”
Embracing the Media Company Mindset
The time is ripe for companies to start on this journey, because interest in video’s capabilities has expanded beyond marketing teams. “We saw interest in employee recruitment, in learning, in communications, and even in onboarding—some cases for employee onboarding and others for customer onboarding,” said Maddox. “Now, with remote workers, there was a spike in video usage to accommodate executive town halls. And salespeople turn to video to help in their communications in lieu of those traditional in-person meetings.”
To manage these growing use cases, companies have new technology at their fingertips. “More personalized video is going to allow us to use machine learning and real-time data to generate specific calls to action and to drive additional emotional connections,” said Maddox.
One use case for Maddox is in insurance policy renewal. “The marketing team could create a video with the client’s name, plus include historical claims that were made against the policy,” she explained. “You also may be aware of additional purchases of cars or jewelry that would benefit from additional coverage.”
From a customer’s perspective, it’s a no-brainer. “Who wants to go look up the number to call their agent? If we give the users all of that information at their fingertips, now we have not only an instructional video, but we have one that can be a call to action to close a sales deal.”
Further, what used to require expensive hardware and grand production studios now only needs a smartphone, a desktop computer, or cloud-based services. “Ten years ago, organizations that produced video, likely for marketing or entertainment purposes, still found it difficult to handle video consistently,” explained Maddox. “How do I find it? How is it searched? Can I stream it? Does it need to be cached? Does it have geographical reach? Today, organizations can work beyond physical boundaries to capture and produce video content faster.”
Developing a Video Content Strategy
Brightcove’s approach to video content strategy focuses on answering the questions behind “why” and “how” an organization should put video to work. The market tends to get too wrapped up in technology, but our customers ask for advice on how to get more from the video platforms they’re implementing. Our goal is to help organizations realize the business benefits from video, and Maddox offers some helpful tips on where to start.
First, companies need to look at who is creating and who is supporting video within their organizations. “The adoption of video content falls to multiple stakeholders within the company,” said Maddox. “C-suite users are in an ideal position to use video themselves to communicate information to external stakeholders, investors, customers, and to their internal employees.”
Customer support and education teams can also use video more. “Sales, field workers, and other lines of business can look at replacing email, which has been a common method to communicate with their customers,” Maddox added.
Second, review the types of communications that are being sent to customers and to their employees and identify whether or not video would enhance that experience. “It’s just getting into the mindset that these things are possible,” said Maddox.
“Think back to the idea of the renewal of the insurance policy. Would I rather have read a lot of documents on what that renewal looks like, or be guided in the renewal and click to buy at the very end? The latter is more immersive, still informative, and at the end of the day, the level of effort on the customer goes down.”
What does the future hold for companies who make the leap? According to Maddox, “media-oriented companies will work with a variety of video content, from single messages to full, on-demand streaming delivery. And it’s all for the purpose to engage audiences and to achieve specific business outcomes. As you advance, think about using AI and machine learning to assist.”
Creative teams and business users alike will be able to gain insight to customer preferences, said Maddox. “And they will find it just as easy to have a video-based conversation as they did with email, but now with added value for more visual and emotional connection.”
Finally, Maddox advised to continue to evolve your content strategy, using insights that further advance a company’s maturity in thinking and acting like a media company. “Push yourself to understand how video can support you and your customers in this next evolving relationship that you’re building between yourselves.”
At Brightcove, we help you break through the digital noise. Whether your goals are to build followers, drive brand recognition, create pipeline, grow revenue, or communicate with employees, you need a streaming-first strategy and a streaming-first partner.

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E-commerce continues to be a major contributor to overall global retail sales, and all indicators point to significant growth over the coming years. From 2014 to 2022 alone, e-commerce sales grew by 327% to $5.7T . Forecasts show no signs of slowing down and expect that figure to reach $8.1T by 2026.
While e-commerce has grown rapidly, it has always faced one significant challenge. Consumers have to purchase from online shops and marketplaces without ever touching, feeling, trying on, or experiencing the product. Thus, it’s critical to communicate the value, features, and benefits of a product so the customer can come as close as possible to experiencing it.
When selling through bulletin boards or during times when image quality was low, communicating and creating an experience through words was paramount. As marketplaces took off, getting the perfect set of photos has been a top priority for businesses and independent sellers alike. And now with the explosion in social commerce and the extraordinary growth of platforms like Shopify, video is quickly becoming e-commerce table stakes.
Benefits of Video in E-Commerce
We regularly discuss the benefits of video marketing, but many of these benefits are amplified when strategically used for e-commerce. According to our research, 84% of consumers are convinced to purchase after watching a video.
E-commerce videos bring numerous benefits beyond simply selling a product. They can introduce your brand story to new customers and help build familiarity and loyalty for existing customers. In both cases, there’s a clear emotional connection that video fosters between your businesses and your audiences.
Video also provides the closest thing to creating an in-person experience. It gives customers around the world, on any device, up close and personal access to your product and brand. Whether showcasing the product in use, giving a 360-degree view, or broadcasting a live shopping event, video can break down barriers in ways that photos and text simply can’t.
For marketers to truly reap the benefits of e-commerce video, they need a video tool that integrates with their existing tech stack and the channels they use to market to their customers. Brightcove has the integrations you need to make this easier than ever.
Using Video to Boost Shopify Conversions
Shopify is the world’s leading e-commerce platform. Millions of merchants across 175 countries have used the platform to drive over half a trillion dollars in sales . While these figures show the vast opportunity the platform provides, it also means they face stiff competition from sellers across the web.
Luckily, Shopify merchants have several options for using video to boost sales, increase brand awareness, and grow their businesses. From a brand perspective, videos are a great way to introduce new customers to your company while building community and loyalty with existing customers.
One of the most obvious benefits is that videos provide an enhanced way to showcase your products. They allow you to go more in-depth about functionality, specifications, and other details that text and images simply can’t communicate. From feature highlights to visual storytelling to showcasing the product in use, an on-demand library of product videos allows users to truly experience the product before purchasing it.
Brightcove makes it easy to manage your videos in Shopify. Through our integration, you can connect to your video library and publish your videos directly to your Shopify e-commerce store. The integration eliminates the need for additional tools or apps by allowing you to seamlessly publish and manage your videos all from a single platform.
As with all video initiatives, understanding how your videos are being consumed will allow you to continuously optimize and boost performance. Using Brightcove analytics, you’ll be able to better understand which Shopify videos are most effective at engaging customers and driving conversions.
Using Brightcove to Power Social Commerce
Social commerce has seen its popularity skyrocket in recent years. Between 2020 and 2022, social commerce grew by almost 70%, and the social commerce market is expected to top $2 trillion by 2025 . According to Sprout Social, 68% of people have already used social media to make a purchase . They also report that an astounding 98% of users indicated they planned to make at least one purchase through social shopping or influencer commerce in 2022.
You may already be using Brightcove to publish content to social platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. With our Instagram integration, you can also leverage video to build brand awareness, increase conversions, and drive advocacy there as well. If you’re not already using Instagram for social commerce, there’s no better time to start than now. According to Instagram, 44% of people use Instagram to shop weekly , and as the stats above highlight, you can expect this number to continue to grow.
The Brightcove Instagram integration allows you to seamlessly manage, distribute, and track videos with the security and reliability that our platform is known for. In addition to the analytics from Instagram, you’ll also be able to dive deeper into key performance metrics through Brightcove’s native analytics.
Leveraging Salesforce to Extend the ROI of E-Commerce Video
Beyond boosting sales on Shopify and social media, e-commerce videos can provide you with valuable insights to both increase conversions and attract new customers.
For example, when you combine your video analytics with a powerful marketing automation platform (MAP) like Salesforce Marketing Cloud, your approach to e-commerce video becomes much more strategic, honed, and effective. Instead of simply asking which videos get the most engagement, you can take a much more targeted approach with questions like, “From whom specifically are particular videos getting the most engagement?” In a data-driven world, insights from the video performance of key segments or individuals are a competitive differentiator.
Extending the value of e-commerce videos through Salesforce Sales Cloud and into Marketing Cloud starts with audience segmentation. Salesforce allows you to segment audiences by a variety of criteria that make the most sense for your efforts. These could include purchase history, location, customer lifetime value, demographics, product pages visited, or any other information you collect on customers and website visitors.
Using the Brightcove Salesforce Sales Cloud integration, you can analyze the video viewing behaviors of customers as they engage with your content. All of that data syncs with your instance of Salesforce, allowing you to see which videos resonate with your highest-intent audience and leverage them with other potential buyers.
With Brightcove’s Audience Insights solution, you can further enrich Salesforce and turn all of this great data into actions:

Repurpose top videos. Top-converting videos can be reused in several places: your Shopify or Salesforce Commerce Cloud product pages, your Instagram Story Highlights, email promotion landing pages, or YouTube ads. This approach also works with top-engaged videos by customers with repeat purchases or high customer lifetime value (CLV).
Reach more customers. By understanding which videos are most popular with specific segments, you can create lookalike audiences and target them with ads that drive to these same videos. Similarly, you can use the video in email promotions to other members of that same segment who haven’t seen it yet.
Retarget or nurture customers. Customers who have viewed specific pages, products, or videos are particularly valuable because you know they are actively in the buying process. By retargeting them with paid promotions or emailing them those promotions, you can encourage them to take the next step in their journey.
Re-engage or convert customers. Identifying customers who didn’t complete most of a video (let’s say less than 20%) allows you to offer them a different video that may resonate better. You could also isolate people who watched more than 70% of a video but didn’t purchase. Since they expressed interest, you have an opportunity to offer them additional discounts or promotions to complete the purchase.

Centralize Your E-Commerce Video Strategy with Brightcove Marketing Studio
Using video for e-commerce offers a wide range of benefits. Not only does it help drive sales, but it supports brand building, community development, and increased conversions.
Using Brightcove Marketing Studio, you’re able to manage all of your video e-commerce efforts, from Shopify to Instagram, through a single platform. Combine these with the power of Salesforce, and you’ll have an effective omni-channel approach for your e-commerce video initiatives.
The ease of use and additional layer of insights will position you to maximize the opportunities that marketplaces and a quickly growing social commerce landscape provides.

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