How to leverage your team as your brand’s video talent
Finding the time, money, and talent for making videos can be a real challenge in today’s world. With many teams working with reduced budgets, adding video to the mix can be a challenge. But there might be an untapped creative resource brimming with video talent closer than you realize: your own internal team.
In September, Storyblocks and HubSpot partnered to host a webinar all about how to leverage your team for your brand’s video talent. This webinar talked about how to get the most from your internal team’s creativity, helping you create more and better videos. In this post, we’ll cover some of the high-level takeaways from the discussion.
Hosted by Lauren Zoltick, Storyblocks’ director of performance marketing and Kyle Denhoff, HubSpot’s director of marketing, they walked through the nuts and bolts of tapping into your team’s hidden pool of video talent.
Why your team can be the best option for video talent
When you’re pressed for time on a deadline, talent scouting can consume valuable resources. Instead of putting out a call for actors, you can save both time and money by bringing in team members. After all, who knows your product or service better than the folks who live and breathe it every day at work? Your next on-camera superstar might be waiting for their time in the spotlight. But you’ll never know unless you ask.
Kyle points to recent internal conversations at HubSpot centered around making sure the videos they produce are genuine. There were discussions over whether they should hire established video personalities like YouTubers. While they might be experienced on camera, the extra work involved in teaching them marketing was determined to be inefficient. In the end, “we came to the conclusion that our HubSpotters are true experts at what they do. They’re practitioners. They’re working on marketing strategy, sales strategy, you name it, every day,” Kyle says. “And so I think for us it came down to expertise, and can these people really, actually speak in the language of our audience.”
What to look for when identifying potential talent on your team
When you’re identifying potential video talent on your team, there’s a few different things to keep in mind. For starters, it’s important to remember that not everyone on your team will want to appear on camera. Finding out who is comfortable in front of a camera is an important first step for recruiting internal video talent. Once you’ve identified your team members who aren’t camera-shy, conduct a handful of screen tests to start out. That way you can see whose on-screen presence feels the most natural and professional. As Kyle points out, “I think you want to find folks that have energy when you’re on camera or behind the mic. You want to have to have some personality.”
It’s also important to make sure the team members have the time to film in addition to their regular job duties. Otherwise you could be taking away resources from another department and putting excess pressure on your new recruits. Be sure to get the OK from both the team member and their managers/teams before you start filming. When HubSpot searches for internal video talent, they first align with their manager. Then they clearly define the deliverables so the team member knows what to expect in terms of time commitment. Kyle says managers appreciate that “so they know, OK, if part of their time is going to support our video content, they still have this much time to work on other things that are their core responsibility.”
You should also ask yourself a few questions before breaking out the camera gear. For instance, how many videos are you looking to create each month/week/day? And what topics will you be covering? Getting these answers will give you an idea of how many people you will need for filming. This way you won’t recruit too many or too few internal team members as video talent. Kyle says having that clarity and communication ahead of time can make divvying up resources less of a challenge. He points out that “video is not like blogging. There’s folks who have to take a lot of time to research, script, shoot, edit, reshoot, and get to a final piece of content. So it’s really time consuming.”
Learn more by watching the webinar
We’ve covered some of the things to think about when considering making your team your video talent, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. The webinar goes much further in-depth on how to align your team around your video strategy, including the tools and resources you can provide them with to help them create successfully.
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