300 hours of video get uploaded to YouTube every minute of every day. That’s 158 million hours of video uploaded each year. The user-generated video (UGV) revolution is more than upon us: it’s already taken over the world. Take, for example, the Top 100 videos uploaded to major video channels such as Facebook, YouTube and Vine. The graphic below from Tubular Labs shows just how dominant UGV has become, representing 20% - 50% of the most-watched videos across major platforms.

 

 

You may believe that this tidal wave of user-generated video is nothing more than a glut of cat videos and Chewbacca moms managed by social marketers. While marketing was certainly early to the UGV game, user-generated video has grown in both sophistication and importance since its humble beginnings. It’s now a full-blown content category that is being leveraged strategically by businesses across a variety of corporate functions. In the last 12 months alone, we’ve seen tremendous growth in the amount and variety of user-generated video use cases at uStudio. Below we’ll highlight some of the novel ways that our customers are using UGV and also provide some tips for managers who are ready to take the UGV plunge.

User-Generated Video Spans the Whole Enterprise

Every member of your company has an HD camera in their pocket, and most of them are accustomed to shooting and uploading videos with their phones. Why not put their skills and creativity to work for your business? Here are a few of my favorite examples of how uStudio’s innovative customers have been using user-generated video in every nook and cranny of their companies.

UGV for Selling

Personalization matters, especially in a relationship-based sales cycles like B2B or hospitality. One of our trendsetting real estate customers deploys UGV solutions globally across its sales force of 140,000+ agents. With its UGV mobile app, each agent has access to a library of customizable video templates that may be relevant for a given client’s situation or stage in the deal cycle. Using their phones (remember: agents are always in the field), the agents can then record a personalized video of themselves introducing, commenting on, or recapping a relevant video from the library. Optional scripts are provided, so the agent can record themselves karaoke-style if desired. Then their personal video greetings can be easily edited together with the original template, and the final file can be uploaded and shared – all from the agents’ mobile phone. When the prospect receives the video, it’s clear the agent made it especially for them. This helps agents generate more leads and increase loyalty among their prospects.

UGV for Learning and Training

Peer review is one of the best ways to evaluate if employees are making the grade. That’s why one of our technology customers decided to incorporate peer-reviewed UGV into its sales training programs. When a sales rep needs to practice a new pitch or level-up, they can now use UGV to do it. The rep merely records himself giving a pitch using his choice of device – phone, laptop, etc – then uploads the video from anywhere, directly into the customer’s CRM collaboration portal, where it can be reviewed, commented on, or shared. What’s more, the best videos can be surfaced and shared with new recruits and within the team to up its game and increase productivity.

UGV for Customer Service

Have you ever tried to help someone repair something remotely and thought to yourself: if I could just see what he’s talking about, this would be so much easier. Nothing matches the power of video for rapid diagnostics and case resolution, which is why one of our clever customers loves to build customer service workflows that utilize video directly inside of Salesforce case records. Customers or field agents can upload a video from the scene and automatically associate it with an open case. The customer service rep can then review the video for help in resolving the issue. Once the video is in the system and properly tagged, it becomes part of a searchable database of videos that can also resolve future problems for other customers. Imagine being able to say to a customer -- “does this look like your problem” -- with a video. Using UGV for customer service not only speeds diagnostics, it helps close cases faster. It also cuts down on video creation costs by giving you more examples in your arsenal for solving future problems.

UGV for Campaigns & Contests

What write-up on user-generated video would be complete without mentioning campaigns and contests? Marketers and trainers have used our platform to manage everything from video fan mail to mystery shopper videos, while internal communications teams have collected user-generated video as varied as employee testimonials to whacky culture-building fare. My all-time favorite was a video karaoke contest for internal employees. This massive retailer couldn’t escape the juggernaut that was Frozen, so they thought they’d have some fun with the theme. They invited employees from around the globe to get together and film themselves singing the movie’s iconic soundtrack and offered a variety of prizes for the best videos. The result was a fantastic team-building activity that ignited interest and engagement across the organization.

These are just a few of many examples of how user-generated video is being leveraged across departments to achieve business objectives. Is your team ready to get started?

5 Things You Must Consider about UGV Before You Begin

Getting started with UGV can seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. No matter how you plan to use user-generated video in your organization, there are five things that all use cases have in common. Below are the decisions you’ll need to consider before you begin.

#1: Asset Management

How you manage UGV assets is the first topic you must consider. This includes asking questions such as:

• Have I designed a mobile-friendly workflow that lets my audience upload UGV from anywhere on any device?
• When the videos are uploaded, where will they be hosted? Should they be mixed in with my professional video library, or do I need a separate library for the UGV?
• Will the videos be titled and tagged by the creator, should my system apply standard metadata to all of the videos, or a combination of both?
• Do I need the ability to change or customize the metadata, e.g. the tags or the thumbnail, after the creator has uploaded?
• How will the videos be searched and used by my internal team?
• How will the videos be optimized for discoverability within my [CRM, CMS, LMS, etc]?
• How will the videos be optimized for discoverability on public search engines such as Google or YouTube, or suppressed if they’re intended to be private?

Make sure to design a workflow that accounts for all the main stakeholders: the videomaker; your internal team, including publishing and legal; and the viewing audience. Then make sure your video asset management tools are set up to support your ideal workflow.

#2: Distribution

Now that you’ve got the videos in your system, they’re yours! You are free to use and promote them at will. Here are a few distribution considerations that are unique to UGV:

• Who will be publishing the videos? Will it be a member of your team or do you expect the creator to self-publish (e.g. in their personal Facebook feed)? How will you track or stay connected to self-published videos?
• If videos are being uploaded directly to you, where will you be publishing the videos? Will they be mixed in with your existing channels and sites, or do you need to create a separate, stand-alone channel or site for your UGV?
• If you’d like to distribute inside an existing business system, such as your CRM or LMS, do you have an existing video integration or will you need to integrate?
• Will the videos be set to auto-publish? This provides instant gratification to the video creator and makes his efforts worthwhile.
• Or, do the videos need to go through a review and approval process before publishing? This may be important for legal or quality-control reasons.
• Do you have the appropriate transcodes for the destination(s) where you plan to publish or can you set your system to auto-generate those transcodes?

Make sure to carefully-weigh the benefits of auto-publishing with the need to control and curate content before publishing. If you’re not planning to auto-publish, find a way to reward the creator immediately and thank him for sharing his content. Once you’ve got your video distribution plan in place, you can focus on access controls.

#3: Access Controls

Access controls vary widely based on the type of UGV you are making. If you’re hoping that a marketing video goes viral, then you will likely want to expose that video to as many viewers as possible. But if your sales team is sharing internally their latest product pitches, or a customer is vid-mailing you from the field with a service issue, you’ll want to sharply restrict access to those videos. Make sure to identify:

• How will my system authenticate the creator, who may not be a recognized member of my company’s accounts?
• Will the creator need a username and password to upload?
• Do the videos need to be uploaded behind my corporate firewall or should they pass through directly to public sites?
• Should the videos be private or should they be crawlable by search engines?

Every step of the workflow, from upload through to publishing and measurement, will require you to make decisions about who and how the content should be accessed.

#4: Packaging

Video packaging options has come a long way in recent years. With the advent of HTML5 players and interactive player frameworks, you can do so much more with video beyond sticking it on a page. That goes for UGV as well. Here are some packaging considerations for your user-generated videos:

• Are these videos designed to go viral? If yes, have I optimized the players for social sharing to extend their reach?
• Are these videos intended to stimulate dialogue? If yes, where and how within the playback should I enable features such as commenting, tagging or annotations?
• Do I expect these videos to reach a global audience? If yes, do I need to enable automatic closed captioning and in which languages?
• Will these videos be hosted in a place that I own or on a public platform like YouTube or Facebook? If they’re on a public platform, is it important to create a more branded look-and-feel than the ones provided by those platforms. e.g. Should I use a player wrapper?

These are just a few of many interactive options now available for your videos. Make sure to identify the best case scenario for how your videos will be consumed and shared, then design your interactive players to enable it.

#5: Analytics

No matter how you’re utilizing UGV, if you’re investing money to achieve a business outcome, you’ll want to prove success. That means clearly defining measurable goals and making sure your video analytics are set up to track them. For example:

• Where should the analytics be captured and displayed? Do they need to be integrated with your marketing automation or CRM tools? Or should they be integrated into an analytics package such as Google Analytics or Tableau?
• Do you need stand-alone analytics for your UGV initiatives, or should they be combined with your overall video data?
• Do your need to see granular analytics at the named-user level per video creator, or is aggregated upload and viewing data sufficient?
• If you’ve added interactive elements to the video playback, have you set up a tracking mechanism for those?
• Do you want to display publicly the video analytics as a way to incentivize more participation?

This last point is my personal favorite and unique to UGV. Don’t forget that UGV initiatives live and die by user participation. If no one’s uploading and sharing video, your UGV project will be dead on arrival. Sometimes a great way to stimulate adoption is by sharing real-time data with your audience to prove ‘everybody’s doing it.’ Consider the analytics not just as the final step in your campaign but a critical piece throughout to incentivize engagement.

Ready to Get Started with UGV?

Clearly, the opportunities for using UGV are plentiful and as unlimited as your imagination. All you need is a solid strategy, a clear workflow, and the right video platform to support you. If you’d like help getting started, give us a call. We’re always glad to help customers design the perfect workflow for their UGV initiatives.

Additional resources:

Read more about uStudio’s professional video services.

Check out these interactive player examples.

Share the video below with others who may have questions about UGV.