And today, with buying committees getting ever larger and more diverse, there’s a growing need for tools that help sellers communicate effectively with many different audiences.

In this article, we’ll look at how Vyond’s versatile video creation tools and quick start templates can be a powerful tool across your sales function and through the sales funnel, helping you enable your sellers with the intel, skills, and messaging they need to more successfully generate pipeline and close deals.

Specifically we’ll look at how engaging, tailored videos made in Vyond can be used internally and externally by:

• Sales trainers (whether they’re situated within Sales or L&D) arming sales teams with crucial context and information
• The sales development representatives (SDRs) or business development representatives (BDRs) on the front lines interacting with your potential buyers
• And technical sales or sales engineering professionals who help both sales teams and potential buyers understand nuances of the product and how it’ll work with their tech stack

Enabling Your Sellers with Engaging, Customized Videos

Use cases for sales trainers

Depending on company size and structure, sales trainers may be part of a standalone function, report up through Sales, or sit within the broader L&D organization.

Wherever they sit, sales trainers are challenged with tailoring training content to different learning preferences, minding the time constraints for sellers with quotas, and keeping training content current, among other considerations.

Having access to a versatile, AI-powered video creation platform makes creating customized, relevant content unusually fast and easy. Sales trainers get access to a wide variety of visual styles (photorealistic, mixed media, animated, to name a few), generative AI tools that let them create bespoke content with a simple prompt, hundreds of AI avatars to use as hosts, a huge library of easily editable video templates, and Vyond’s AI-powered Instant Translation feature, which lets them translate all the text in their videos into 70+ languages with a click of a button.

This deep library of tools makes it easy to create everything from polished on-the-fly demos and walkthrough videos to engaging explainer videos that help sellers digest and integrate new concepts to dynamic summaries and business reports. 

Common use cases:

Make your onboarding content stickier
A new hire’s onboarding experience can make or break their entire experience at the company. So don’t ask them to read PDFs or PowerPoint slides about the processes and tools that’ll be key to success in their new role. Make sure key information sticks by communicating it with engaging videos. 

Have PDFs or PowerPoints you want to convert? Simply upload them into our instant video creator, Vyond Go, pick the style and tone you want, and you’ll have a video draft to edit in literally a minute. Need to create something net-new? Use one of our sales-focused video templates as a starting point, let Vyond Go create a draft based on a prompt, or build something to fit your specific vision in Vyond Studio.

Here’s an example of an editable employee training video template in Vyond:

Bring your customer personas to life
Engaging, character-driven videos can help sales reps absorb key information about their target personas’ motivations and responsibilities better than a few slides full of bullet points.

Recently, one multinational tech company turned their text-based onboarding course on key personas into a series of Vyond videos. Now, instead of reading pages of documentation, all new reps “meet” their key customer personas in a series of videos that convey their responsibilities and challenges, the ways a tool like the tech company’s platform could help them, and their potential objections.

“You’re learning the same information as the text-based course, but you’re learning it through the roleplay of conversations and it’s so much more interesting,” says the senior director of learning experience, whose team created the training. “It’s not boring anymore. People are genuinely telling us that it’s fun, and we’re really proud of it!”

The training team reports the new course is far more engaging, and it also delivers the same information faster. The text-based course ran about 2.5 hours, whereas the new version takes learners 30 minutes maximum to complete—a time savings of 80%.

Create easily editable skills training at scale
Rapid technological changes have shortened the shelf life of both skills and skills training content. Videos created in Vyond shine for skills training because they’re so easy to update (unlike traditional, live-action video production) and they’re more engaging and effective than print materials. 

Case in point: With a robust sales team, Indeed relies on Vyond-based tools training to help keep sellers at peak performance. On one project to increase adoption of a key sales tool, Indeed L&D senior specialist Virgenia Hall used Vyond Go to help turn ineffective voice-narrated slide decks into engaging eLearning videos. “[That] normally would have taken me a full day. With the plug-and-play aspect of Vyond Go, it took me two hours,” she said.

Here’s an example of an editable tech stack tutorial video template in Vyond.  (You can use an AI avatar host or real video footage.)

Prep your conference crews
Industry events can be powerful opportunities for your salespeople to build relationships with customers and prospects. Set them up for success with how-to videos outlining what good looks like for all the activities that go into a conference: traveling, staffing your booth, qualifying leads, and more.

Now that we’ve discussed enabling your sellers, let’s turn to how videos created in Vyond can help your sellers educate and engage their key audiences.

Sell Better with Instant Videos & Tailored Templates

Use cases for SDRs and BDRs

Whether your company calls them SDRs, BDRs, or something else, inside sales reps are often your prospects’ first point of contact with your brand. To succeed, SDRs and BDRs have to personalize their outreach (at scale), show understanding of your prospects’ pain points, offer value, and effectively communicate your company’s value proposition. 

Offering these time-strapped reps with access to instant video generation tools and plug-and-play video templates can go a long way towards helping them make the most of every prospect touchpoint. 

Common use cases:

Gain an email prospecting advantage
Drop a message into a pre-built personalized prospective video template. Or introduce yourself via email with an animated version of yourself (and the prospect) as a GIF.

Here’s one of Vyond’s pre-built prospecting templates:

And here’s account executive Alex Seminary explaining how he uses Vyond to create personalized prospecting emails that have landed meetings with some of the biggest companies in the world: 

Tell a better story about your product’s value prop

Forget the PDF attachments. Introduce yourself and showcase your product’s value proposition with an overview video your prospect will be intrigued to watch.

Here’s a mixed-media template for engaging product walkthroughs:

And here’s a product teaser or demo preview video template:

Re-engage prospects and stay top of mind
Another tactic Vyond’s Alex Seminary uses to stay front of mind with prospects is to create an instant video that summarizes the high points of the meeting and email it to the attendees as a follow-up. Not only does it organically create another touchpoint, it shows how closely Alex was listening and gives meeting attendees something engaging and concrete they can forward to other stakeholders to loop them in. 

Create more memorable case studies
Instead of emailing prospects a bunch of links to static case studies, create a polished video customer story in minutes and send that instead. Use a Vyond video template as a container and upload customer photos and stock assets as needed.

Here’s a Vyond customer story video template that can feature an AI avatar or real human host: 

Address buying team’s questions in an engaging way
When you get questions from your buying team, consider replying with a short video in your email. Add information to a video template or drop in the questions and your answers into Vyond Go and get a custom video, perfect for the moment, in under two minutes.

Use cases for technical pre-sales / sales engineering

People in technical pre-sales or sales engineering roles help ensure that your company’s solution is smoothly integrated into your prospect’s existing technology ecosystem. Technical pre-sales people might consult on prospects’ workflows, deliver in-depth product demonstrations, and answer deeply technical questions about your product’s capabilities and functionality.

Common use cases:

Provide context and spotlight product features in technical demos
A technical audience both wants to see your product for themselves, and understand how it’ll integrate with their other tools and systems and solve big problems. Creating demo videos that incorporate both animated storytelling elements for setting the stage and screen recordings that walk through a product or process is a powerful way to check both boxes. And with Vyond, you can do both easily in a single platform.   

Quickly create new release and product update videos
The need for product education doesn’t end after a prospect signs a contract. Customers need to be kept up to speed on product changes, as well.  With low-lift AI tools and templates at their fingertips, solution engineers can create these helpful videos in a fast, responsive way, which helps ensure customers are getting the most out of the product–and increases the chances that they’ll renew.

How to create custom sales enablement videos quickly in Vyond Go

When it comes to making videos to set your sales team up for success, you’ve got plenty of options—none of which leave you starting from scratch (unless you want to!). 

Vyond offers dozens of pre-built templates, like the examples above, that you can customize to suit your brand and use case. And with Vyond Go, our instant video generator, you can enter a prompt, get a custom video in seconds, and take it into Vyond Studio for fine-tuning.

Here’s Vyond video producer Taylor Morgan demonstrating how to quickly make a customer persona explainer video with Vyond Go:

In a world of continual change, the need to equip your sales reps and help them communicate effectively with your prospects and customers remains constant.

Videos created in Vyond are uniquely suited for engaging and educating diverse audiences and simplifying complex topics throughout your sales organization and along your sales funnel. Learn more about how companies like yours have already discovered the power of engaging, customized videos for boosting sales and enabling their sellers.

Ready to try it for yourself? Sign up for a free two-week trial (includes access to Vyond Go, Vyond Studio, and all our video templates).

The post 11 Ways to Boost Sales and Enable Your Sellers with Videos Created in Vyond appeared first on Vyond.

Sales reps have a lot to remember—like every feature, use case, target audience, nuance, and persona to name a few. Access to sales enablement content that’s clear, memorable, consistent across teams, easy to access, and simple to share makes a hard job a little easier.

In this guide, you’ll discover effective types of sales enablement content so you can train your sellers effectively and start closing more deals. You’ll also see the breadth of formats being used today, and more importantly, what types are best for what contexts.

Here’s an overview of what you’ll learn in this guide:

What is sales enablement content?

Why is sales enablement content important?

19 types of sales enablement content

What is sales enablement content?

Sales enablement content is content that makes the sales process more successful, persuasive, and effective. It encompasses a range of resources that help sellers perform efficiently so they can win more business. Some popular examples include compelling videos, playbooks, and outbound email templates.

While high-quality sales enablement content will help sales pros improve their effectiveness, it adds value in other ways as well.

Why is sales enablement content important?

Sales is a team sport. Every sales team member sees benefits from the right kind of sales enablement content:

• Sales trainers can use onboarding videos to help prepare new hires for their roles, as well as sales scripts and sales playbooks and scripts for sellers of any tenure.
• Sales development representatives (SDRs) and business development representatives (BDRs) can more effectively educate customers and drive sales with a wide variety of content types, including one-pagers and presentation decks.
• Technical sales professionals can show the depth of a product’s features and benefits with explainer videos and product sheets.

Effective sales enablement content results in stronger client relationships and more deals, regardless of which type your team uses. However, it pays to understand your options before deciding which types are right for your organization (and when to use them).

19 types of sales enablement content

Here are the key types of sales enablement content that can help your team drive revenue growth:

1. Training or onboarding videos

Move beyond canned training videos and static PowerPoints. Create custom training or onboarding videos that help sales reps learn how to do their jobs, evangelize your products and services, and connect with prospects and clients. Animated videos are particularly effective at engaging new reps, explaining tricky concepts, and delivering scenario-based training content.

Some common examples of training or onboarding videos include:

• Competitive analysis videos, illustrating the competitive landscape
• Persona videos that help sellers understand their target audience
• Pitch videos to help sellers visualize real-life situations
• Process videos explaining each step of your company’s sales process
• Hard/soft skill training videos to help your team use technology or close deals more effectively

Unlike other training tools, software that creates custom videos can help you speak directly to your team’s needs and demonstrate best practices in a way that standard presentations can’t manage.

Here are some tips for making effective onboarding videos:

• Know your message: What is this video about? What’s your objective?
• Keep it concise: Focus on your main message and avoid unnecessary details.
• Customize your content to your audience: An onboarding video will have a very different angle than a tech training video for experienced sales reps.
• Use multimedia: Incorporate visuals, sound effects, animation, etc., to engage your audience. AI-powered video tools make it easy for non-technical staff to create videos that grab users’ attention.
• Tell a story: Know where you want to take your audience and let the content support the journey.

Discover more about improving employee training with video with this free eBook!

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2. Product explainer videos

What’s better than telling your clients about your products? Showing your clients how your products work. Product explainer videos demonstrate the value of what you’re selling. Use them alone or embedded in your pitch deck.

Product explainer videos are short, targeted videos demonstrating a product or a service. According to 2023 data from HubSpot, 96% of marketers say these videos help boost consumer understanding of products.

Common use cases for explainer videos include:

• Prospecting
• Sales pitches
• Social media marketing
• Email campaigns
• Addressing objections

Plus, once you have a solid explainer video to share, you can use it in multiple places, from your company website to social media to client calls.

Introduction and upselling videos are other helpful variations of explainers. For example, introducing yourself via video enables you to develop relationships with prospects before you even have your first sales call. And with upselling, the dynamic and engaging possibilities of video explainers make it easy to engage loyal customers and persuade them to expand their accounts.

To ensure your explainer video is impactful, keep it short—two minutes or less should do it. Know your audience and your message and target your content. Above all, avoid cluttering your video with too much imagery or special effects. You want your audience to walk away thinking about your message, not the bells and whistles.

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3. Sales playbooks

Every sales team hopes to provide a consistent—and satisfying!—experience to all their customers. Sales playbooks ensure that sellers can deliver just that. These documents compile best practices and sales documents like pricing sheets, making this information readily accessible to sales reps.

Sales playbooks also function as continuing education for sellers. Whether a sales rep has just joined your organization or has been on the team for years, they can learn something from your sales playbook. Think of it as a repository for the collective wisdom of your team, and a road map for navigating common sales challenges in real time.

But these playbooks are only as good as the effort you put into them. To ensure maximum effectiveness, ask your best sales reps to contribute their insights. And don’t forget to integrate your playbook into your training and onboarding programs.

4. eBooks

What are your target buyers’ most pressing questions? Ebooks are your opportunity to answer those queries and gather that essential intelligence in one easily accessible and shareable place.

Typically 3,000 words or less, ebooks can have multiple functions. You can use them like a blog post on steroids or as a thought leadership vehicle for an executive. They can also act as an FAQ for common questions or a tool at the top of the sales funnel, driving email subscriptions or prospects.

To create effective ebooks that drive leads and build customer relationships, remember your audience’s pain points and goals. What do they need most? A good ebook will be guided by this principle. Also, consider visuals: a chart or graph may help make your point better than several static paragraphs.

5. Case studies

Nothing is more persuasive than success. Case studies allow you to show your customers what your product can do by showing what your product has already done for other companies in the industry.

Case studies can use a variety of formats, from traditional blog articles to testimonial videos to presentations. You can also combine these types, for example, embedding video into a PowerPoint to create a dynamic, engaging demonstration.

Regardless of the form, case studies accomplish one very important thing: they demonstrate concrete results.

To create a compelling case study, you need several things:

• An impressive customer: You don’t need Fortune 500 clients to make an effective case study, but ideally, you’ll feature organizations with name recognition in your industry or area.
• A big problem: The most persuasive case studies document the resolution of big issues–production bottlenecks, major cultural challenges, technical silos, or similar.
• A remarkable solution: Clients want to see measurable change that’s directly attributable to your product.
• Demonstrable results: Faster results, money saved, and stress avoided are common ones. Bonus points if you can include statistics.
• Evidence that you can recreate the magic: Don’t forget to drive home the point that your organization can achieve these results for other customers.

6. White papers

White papers are in-depth, meticulously researched documents that often focus on highly technical material.

While white papers demonstrate how your product solves customer problems, they’re not intended to convert customers on the spot. Rather, they support your organization’s position as an authority on a topic. Any persuading that happens is (nearly) incidental, although white papers can generate leads or build email lists, similar to ebooks. White papers can be targeted either at customers or sales reps.

Remember that this type of content is intended to provide value to readers. Focus on solving their most common and pressing problems. You might also address industry trends, thought leadership, or research.

Above all, ensure that your content is readable and easy to scan. Incorporate visuals and pay attention to layouts and formatting.

7. Webinars

Want to show your customers how your products can solve their problems and achieve their goals? Consider hosting a webinar.

This type of sales enablement content is incredibly effective for explaining how things work—especially if you have subject matter experts who can demonstrate how to use your product or service.

Webinars typically last 60 minutes or less and can be prerecorded or shown live. You can also integrate this content into your other materials. For example, use clips from a webinar as part of a sales presentation.

To maximize your webinars’ effectiveness, ensure you have the right experts on board. You can use someone from your staff or an outside expert who is passionate and knowledgeable about your product.

8. Email templates

If you’re looking to save time, ensure messaging continuity, and improve communication with clients, email templates can help.

Unlike most of the other sales enablement content types on our list, email templates are internal. Intended only for sales reps and other employees, email templates serve as a blueprint for communications with customers and prospects.

Your organization might develop email templates for several reasons:

• Cold outreach
• Follow-ups
• Re-engagements
• Meeting requests
• Thank you notes

The best thing about email templates is that they can be flexible—and in fact, they should be to ensure that your team gets the most use out of them. Provide plenty of customization options, and remember to invest in training your team to use these materials.

9. One-pagers

Think of one-pagers as an elevator pitch for your organization (or one specific product or service you offer). In one concise page, you sum up your value proposition in an easily understandable way.

One-pagers can target many different audiences. You can make separate one-pagers for clients, investors, and even other departments or branches. Share them digitally before or after sales calls and stock hard copies in your booth at tradeshows.

To create effective one-pagers, know your audience—and use your limited space wisely. Identify your audience’s pain points, concerns, goals, and key questions before you sit down to write.

The visual presentation of your one-pagers is as important as the text. So make sure they’re easy to read and understand.

10. Presentation decks

Presentation decks have evolved past the static PowerPoints of the past. You can now enhance or replace decks with video elements and incorporate GIFs and other visual effects to tell your story and connect with your audience. And there’s good reason to—a 2023 study found that video can help your viewers retain up to 95% of your message compared to just 10% when text! You can use these new and improved presentation decks in sales training, onboarding, customer calls, and more.

There are two important things to keep in mind when preparing presentation decks. First, make sure you’re addressing your audience’s concerns and goals. Second, consider developing easily customizable templates for future presentations (or to share with your team).

Want to create more engaging PowerPoint presentations by embedding video clips? Here’s how to do it.

11. Testimonials

Sharing simple customer testimonials is another effective way to win over prospects.

Partner with your colleagues in Customer Success to source these endorsements, and always double-check that you have the customer’s permission to publicly share their praise. (Nothing sours a customer relationship faster than compromising their trust.) Use them broadly—in proposals and sales presentations, as well as on customer-facing websites and social media.

While getting a “quote” is great, a video clip is even more powerful. Ask enthusiastic clients if they’re willing to vouch for you on a Zoom call as opposed to a standard phone call. That footage can then be edited into a polished video testimonial later and repurposed into a variety of other media formats, including quotes with headshots for your website, short video clips for social media, and so on. (Here’s a good example.)

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12. Sales battlecards

How do your products stack up against your competitors? Sales battlecards make it easy to answer this question.

Usually a brief one-pager—sometimes with visual elements like comparison charts—sales battlecards provide easily digestible competitive analysis for your sellers and sales support staff. These are internal documents only and can exist on their own or as part of your sales playbook.

Sales battlecards often focus primarily on your company’s products and services. Generally, these cards outline customer pain points and methods of addressing them, especially in the context of how your product solves their problems better than competitor solutions.

All sales battlecards can be used as training materials, fodder for sales pitches, or ongoing educational resources.

13. Buyer personas

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.

Buyer personas help ensure that your sales and marketing messaging speaks to your audience’s needs, makes sales pitches more effective, and aligns sales team members on target prospects and how to sell to them. Developing effective buyer personas takes a good deal of cross-departmental teamwork, but it’s worth it.

Some examples of characteristics that may go into creating a buyer persona include:

• Job title
• Company information (size of company, industry, specific challenges, etc.)
• Goals and pain points
• Preferred communication methods
• Demographic information (age, gender, location, etc.)

Keep in mind that you’re not limited to static templates and PDFs. With today’s custom video tools, bringing buyer personas to life is easier than ever.

14. Blog posts

Blog posts are another classic sales enablement content type. Sales trainers can share relevant blog posts with new reps to educate them, just as sales reps can share relevant blog posts with prospects to show they understand the prospects’ challenges and offer a great solution.

Blogs are also an incredibly flexible content type. They can be as long or as short as you prefer, targeting highly technical content or commenting on industry trends and emerging research. You can also integrate other content types into your blog posts, like infographics and video testimonials.

To write effective blog posts, your first goal must be to understand your audience. For instance, technical professionals will have different expectations than (most) C-suite executives.

15. Product sheets

If you had less than a minute to describe your product and its value proposition, could you do it? Product sheets make it easy for sellers to summarize their product’s finer points quickly.

Generally confined to one page, product sheets give an overview of a product’s most attractive features. This content type typically features bold visual imagery—including enticing product images—and persuasive writing, as well as a compelling call-to-action.

Sellers may distribute product sheets digitally on sales calls, in person at tradeshows, or work with the marketing team to include them on the company website if appropriate.

16. Customer journey maps

A recent Salesforce study found that 80% of customers consider the experience your company provides to be just as important as your product. Customer journey maps ensure that the customer experience is as smooth as possible.

This sales enablement content type provides a visual representation of that journey and outlines every step customers take during their interaction with your company. Those steps will differ depending on your product, service, market, etc. However, you might see something like this:

• Awareness: Customer becomes aware of the product or problem that needs solving.
• Consideration: Customer learns more about the product and their options.
• Decision: Customer chooses a solution.

To build an effective customer journey map, start by setting goals, e.g., increasing customer retention or upselling existing customers. Then, integrate your buyer personas and dig into the process. What steps does your ideal customer hit along the way to a sale?

17. Product demo scripts

Product demo scripts can mean the difference between a confident presentation and a wasted meeting.

This isn’t to say that sales reps should write down every word they plan to say. In fact, that can seem stilted and forced. However, an effective product demo script should contain essential product information so the audience won’t forget the key points during the presentation.

Your team can also choose to enhance or replace product demos with video, making the scripting process less stressful (and more consistent across seller presentations). Product explainer videos can be particularly effective in these presentations.

18. Sales scripts

A sales script (or talk track) is a list of key points that sellers keep in mind during their sales presentations and client meetings.

Similar to a product demo script, sales scripts shouldn’t include every word the sales rep plans to say. The goal is to be spontaneous and to connect with the client—something that’s easier when you know you have all the necessary information at your fingertips.

19. Win and loss stories

How do you turn failures into future wins, and current success into a guidepost for future sales? Win-loss stories.

This content type focuses on sharing wins and losses among the team. Sellers share how they won (or failed to win) various deals in the hopes that their experiences can help other team members.

Apps like Slack have made sharing these stories easier and more effective. A simple screen recording of a person recounting their wins and losses can work—but it can be even more engaging to bring their storytelling to life with images and animations.

Additionally, win-loss stories are sometimes great opportunities for situation-based training videos. If a frequent win or loss is occurring in your sales team, developing a video that walks through this common scenario can help your sellers learn or refine a particular sales tactic.

Sales enablement content helps your sellers exceed their goals

Your sales team has a lot to keep track of. Engaging and relevant sales enablement content can help organize your sales strategy, ensure consistency across individual sellers and teams, and maximize business from your most loyal customers.

Whether you’re making product explainers, training videos, testimonials, case studies, or win-loss stories, Vyond’s AI video creation platform can help.

See for yourself how Vyond videos can revolutionize your sales enablement strategy.

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But the leaders our beloved creators report to love Vyond too. Why? Four leaders from across L&D, compliance, sales enablement and internal communications break it down:

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What is visual communication?

Visual communication is the art of using visual elements strategically to grab an audience’s attention, clearly convey important information in a way that sticks, and usually spark behavior change. Common components of visual communication, especially when used in digital communications, include text, images, data, and video content.

Here are some common examples of visual communication for business communications.

Visual communication examples

Animated videos

Animated videos are a rich multimedia format that can include visual elements like human and animal characters, kinetic (moving) text, and motion graphics.

Styles can vary widely, from a simple, black and white “whiteboard” look to colorful and detailed.

AI-generated videos

Today’s AI-powered video tools can now create videos for you in seconds based on text prompts or static images you provide.

GIFs

GIFs are looping images that often sometimes include a short tagline overlaid on the image. They’re often used to communicate funny content or as a reaction to something. They’re used regularly across social media channels, in email, and on internal communications platforms like Slack.

Screen recording

Screen recordings are videos showing your desktop or a software’s user interface, helpful for demonstrating workflows and processes.

Images

Images are visual representations of something, like a doodle, a photograph, or a diagram.

Infographics

Infographics are visual representations of information designed to make data easily understandable at a glance. They combine graphics, charts, and minimal text to convey complex information quickly and clearly.

Data visualizations

Data visualizations are graphical representations of information and data, meant to provide an accessible way to see and understand trends, outliers, and patterns. An infographic is a popular example of data visualization.

Stock footage

Stock footage refers to photorealistic images and videos that are broadly available for widespread use.

Webcam video

Webcam videos are recordings created using the camera built into your computer. They’re usually “talking head” style, and can capture one speaker or many (like a replay of a meeting).

Benefits of visual communication in business today

Business communication is ultimately about convincing an audience to take action or change behavior: watch out for phishing emails, learn a new skill, enroll in a new benefits program, sign up for a free trial — you get the idea. And the keys to success change with the times.

In recent years, our experience as online consumers has created expectations for visual communication that spill into our professional lives.

We expect communications to be relevant to us (what else should I watch? What do other people like me buy?).

We expect content to be engaging and entertaining, thanks in part to social media — if it doesn’t draw us in, we can easily scroll on to something that does.

And because so much of our online interactions take place on smartphones, we favor more compact, visual forms of communication that pack a meaningful punch: like emojis, memes, and especially videos.

The great news is, you can take advantage of these general visual communication preferences to more effectively change behavior and inspire action in any business audience — whether they’re employees, customers, partners, or prospects. It’s already catching on: About a third of global business leaders surveyed (32%) have an increased desire for communicating using visuals, according to Canva’s 2023 Visual Economy Report.

When we use visual communication well, we get two major benefits:

Better engagement

Good visual communication content catches our audiences’ eyes and draws them in for reflection, because it’s relevant to them.

Improved information retention

Good visual communication imprints information on our audience, so they can recall it and apply it later.

Both of these benefits make it more likely that our content will inspire action and change behavior.

So whether you’re creating content for external communications — like landing pages on your company’s website or assets for social media — or internal communications — presentations, training videos, and GIFs — thinking strategically about how you can apply good visual communication practices will help you deliver better results. Here are a few tips to keep in mind.

Tips for better visual communication

Tailor visuals to your audience

Audiences today expect content and communications to be relevant to them, and visuals are no exception: they want to see themselves and their interests reflected. With the power of AI, it has become easier than ever to segment and customize your content by audience.

The extra time you spend getting to know your audience — through research, surveys, conversations — and tailoring content for them is worth it for the positive impact on engagement. Here are a few examples.

L&D

L&D teams can create content specific to employees’ roles or departments. The L&D and change enablement teams at Whole Foods Market created templates tailored to each of the roles at their stores, down to the uniforms and terminology, so employees see themselves represented.

Including recognizable figures or references from your organization is another powerful way to boost engagement and relevance. At the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, training specialist Angie Kanak likes to include characters she created for each of the Illinois Supreme Court Justices that her audience instantly recognizes.

And finally, corporate branding isn’t just for external audiences. Officially branded training content signals to employees this is valuable content, created especially for them.

See how Vyond’s new Brand Management Suite makes it easy to create engaging, on-brand videos.

HR

HR pros can reinforce an inclusive company culture and make visuals more relevant by taking care to reflect the full diversity of your employee base in your content. Choose imagery that suits your geographic footprint, like your office sites and regional landmarks. Build in time and budget to translate, localize, and caption materials like videos.

Similar to the training examples above, ask yourself: where could you tailor content by role and department? Where could you include stories from recognizable employees or leaders to help bring policies and processes to life?

Marketing

In marketing, demonstrating you understand your audience is the whole point. At the brand level, it starts with asking what your competitors are doing visually — how can you stand apart?

On your website, tailoring your visuals could mean ensuring your “ideal customers” see themselves reflected in the imagery: solving problems they relate to, in settings they recognize, with your products or services.

In your email program, tailored visuals might show up as messages and email banners segmented by industry or job level, speaking to each audience’s real pain points.

From a channel perspective, it might mean you’re including captions on all of your social media video content to help ensure viewers scrolling by with sound off can read along and still grasp your message.

Sales

When you’re presenting to a customer or prospect, it’s already standard to include their company name and logo in your materials (triple-checked for accuracy, of course!). And if you’re not already, creating custom demos that address specific pain points your audience has mentioned, or you’ve found via research, can be especially effective.

Even before you get to the meeting, during outreach you can introduce yourself and showcase your product’s value proposition with a personalized overview video. Keep yourself top of mind after your conversation by sending a video message starring your own custom, self-voiced character to help prospects and customers remember and honor scheduled meeting times.

Reduce your audience’s cognitive load

No matter your department, one of the biggest challenges with communicating visually is the constant strain on our audience’s working memory, according to Connie Malamed, author of Visual Design Solutions and Visual Language for Designers.

We’re flooded with sensory information. All. Day. Long. For any information to make it into our long-term memory, it has to make its way through our limited, temporary working memory.

Anything we can do to help ease this “cognitive load” for our audience gives them a better chance to grasp and retain the information we’re presenting, Connie says.

Here are a few of Connie’s suggestions for reducing your audience’s cognitive load when you’re creating presentations, videos, website pages and more.

Make your graphics and text easy to process

Your content’s readability matters. Overly intricate font styles and text with low contrast (like gray text on white background) put more strain on a viewer’s cognitive load.

Using simple fonts with high contrast makes information easier to process, reduces demand on working memory, and creates a positive affect in the viewer.

Remove visual distractions

Visuals can either increase meaning and understanding for viewers or distract and confuse them. A few simple ways to dial down visual “noise” in business presentations or videos:

• Avoid placing a logo on every slide and putting text on busy backgrounds
• Remove irrelevant text, like dates and slide numbers
• Remove cutesy but irrelevant graphics

Reduce realism in your graphics

There’s a misconception that photorealistic imagery is always best, especially in learning, Connie says.

But research shows that often, reducing the realism of a graphic can help people learn more quickly: by decreasing the time it takes the viewer to visually scan, it minimizes load on the viewer’s working memory.

This means that an illustration, icon, or symbol might convey information more effectively than a photo or 3D rendering.

This is one reason animated videos — which by nature reduce realism — are such a powerful form of business communication.

Don’t split your audience’s attention

When you force your audience to process two or more different sources of information at the same time, neither of which can be understood in isolation, you’re falling prey to the “split-attention effect.”

In HR, this might show up, say, in your benefits overview video: showing an explanation on one part of the screen and a visual, such as a diagram or animation, on another. Your viewer’s attention can’t be in both places at once.

Deliver information piecemeal and guide your audience along

According to Mona Chalabi, Pulitzer Prize–winning illustrator and data visualization expert, effective visual communication delivers information bit by bit and guides your audience along, from start to finish. Applied in different business areas, this lesson could mean creating content that builds gradually (think presentations that change on a click or interactive websites) to give audiences an opportunity to digest what they’re seeing and let insights build upon each other.

Get creative about visualizing data

Data can be an influential part of your business content, helping you tell a powerful, memorable story. But a wall of numbers isn’t helpful: it’s crucial to point out why your audience should care and put numbers in context.

• Rather than writing out data and insights as text, get familiar with different types of charts and graph options available beyond the typical pie and bar.
• Consider where you can use dynamic charts and graphs to bring your data to life and let your audience interact with it at their pace.
• Take care to ensure you’re not misleading with data — even the most reputable sources have some data-viz lessons learned.
• Per Mona‘s earlier advice, consider revealing data in steps, whether in slides you click through, or by adding clear visual markers that lead you through a static collection of information.

Bonus tip: Mona swears by the power of doodling when you’re ideating on how to communicate something — whether it’s a data set or a big idea. It doesn’t have to look good, she says: in the act of doodling something may come out — even if it’s just a more accessible title for your Excel chart or a different analogy for your presentation.

Refresh visuals regularly

In sales and marketing, it’s a common refrain that audiences need to hear the same message seven times before it starts sinking in. But on the flip side: if your content is forever static, it fades into the background. How can you get the best of both worlds, especially with content audiences may only see annually?

Try repeating the same message with different visuals and examples.

For L&D, eLearning expert and Bloomsburg University Professor Karl Kapp suggests annual compliance training is a perfect candidate for a regular visual refresh.

“The more pathways in our brain we have to a piece of content or information, the faster and more efficiently it will be retrieved,” Professor Kapp says. “By investing in changing your most important training on a regular basis, it makes that training more meaningful, more relevant, and sends a message that you care about this.”

In HR, you might think about this for benefits videos: what tweaks would help set them apart year over year? In marketing and sales, what go-to visual assets — like website images, ads, and social media assets — are your customers and prospects seeing regularly that you could update (or even A/B test) to stop them in their tracks?

How a visual communication platform can help

There are tons of helpful tools out there to help you act on these tips and step up your visual communication strategy. But many of them have a learning curve, even for beginners. Look for tools that are easy to use, but versatile and powerful enough that teams across your company can use them to deliver different formats and styles, all within your brand’s look and feel.

Vyond is beloved by 65% of the Fortune 500 for helping them communicate better visually and making a stronger business impact, while making their lives easier, whether they’re working in L&D, HR, marketing, or sales.

If you haven’t tried Vyond yet but want to see what the buzz is about, get your free two-week trial. (The trial includes access to Vyond Studio and Vyond Go, our AI-powered script and video generator.)

The post How Better Visual Communication Can Help Your Company Win: Benefits, Tips, and Examples appeared first on Vyond.

That’s why we recently partnered with Shutterstock to provide our customers more flexibility and choice, in their Vyond video making with nearly 4 million stock video, audio, music and photography assets.*

If you were in the market for a stock library, good news: now there’s no need to add a standalone account. If you have other stock imagery accounts, this means no more annoying platform-switching or added cost: now you can search for — and integrate — Shutterstock assets directly in Vyond. And if you haven’t considered integrating stock content into your animated videos before, there’s no better time to explore the possibilities. 

Here’s how easy access to new stock assets can help you create more engaging and relevant video content for any audience.  

*Currently Shutterstock is only available to Professional and Enterprise users. Learn more about our pricing plans.

The benefits of using stock content in your animated videos

As Vyond users know, animated videos are a powerful form of business communication. They’re ideal for storytelling and reflecting diversity because of their unlimited possibilities for creating characters and scenes. And they’re uniquely effective at conveying complex ideas in a simple, visual way. 

But in some business communication and learning contexts, there can be benefits to incorporating photorealistic elements as well. For example: 

Your company brand guidelines may require using photorealistic content for certain communications

Some companies have strict brand and style guidelines, especially for external-facing content. Having a wider range of assets to choose from can help you both communicate better and stay on brand in every context. 

Certain departments may prefer using stock content

L&D, HR, Sales Enablement, Compliance and Internal Comms teams love being able to use animated characters, objects, and backgrounds to create engaging scenario-based training, announcements, and explainer videos. 

But their colleagues in finance may prefer using more buttoned-up photorealistic elements when creating videos for certain audiences. Having a full suite of animation options and Shutterstock assets in-platform makes Vyond relevant, engaging and cost-effective for employees companywide looking to communicate better.  

Example of a mixed-media video for a financial services audience

Representing specific locations or landmarks is easier — and faster — with stock photos

If representing a specific, recognizable location is important for your video — like a particular sports stadium or national landmark — you might opt to use stock imagery or video as a background rather than creating its animated equivalent. 

Your audience will probably recognize it more easily that way — plus, just dropping in a photo saves time. (Many Vyond users love creating mixed-media worlds featuring animated characters against photorealistic backgrounds, like this educational series from the City of Roswell, Georgia or this Dutch language tutorial.)

In some cases, sensitive topics can benefit from photorealistic assets

L&D and HR teams are routinely tasked with communicating about important but delicate topics like sexual harassment prevention, mental health awareness, and racial inequity, to name a few.

As Vyond users know, animated characters and scenarios are hugely effective at both driving home the most important ideas related to these topics — and bringing difficult situations to life.

However, in some cases, video creators may feel that using stock photos or footage of real people are more tonally appropriate or emotionally impactful. (For example: photographs of real Black families instead of animated characters in a series about the legacy of Martin Luther King. Or evocative video clips of real people meant to capture the impact of anxiety or PTSD.) 

Whatever your video-making needs and challenges are, we hope these use cases — and our new Shutterstock assets — inspire you to try some new techniques and help you create the content you need for all your video projects.

Don’t have a Vyond license yet but you’re eager to see this Shutterstock library for yourself? Start your free two-week trial and you’ll be browsing the library in a few clicks (no credit card needed – our treat)!

The post How Vyond’s New Shutterstock Partnership Helps You Create More Relevant and Effective Videos appeared first on Vyond.

We often hear from customers that the hardest part about creating videos is getting started. It’s the perfect kind of challenge for generative AI. Enter Vyond Go, the industry’s most versatile AI-powered script and video creator.

In 2024 alone, Vyond users made 487,000 videos in Vyond Go — everything from animated explainer videos to mixed media social media videos to short scenario-based training videos. Whether you’ve had a chance to take it for a test drive yet or not, we wanted to give you a look under the hood and offer some tips on getting the most from this powerful tool. 

To create a video with Vyond Go, you’ll either enter a text prompt or upload a script or reference document to describe your topic, then click on options in the interface to choose the vibe, format, layout, and location you’d like for your video. Within seconds, you’ll have a fully editable video and script that you can tweak on the spot with Quick Edit, or else bring into Vyond Studio for deeper customization.

The benefit of integrated AI

If text-based AI tools are the ignition, prompts are the keys. 

If you’ve experimented with standalone AI tools like ChatGPT to create video scripts, you know that your outputs are only as good as the prompts you provide. And great prompts require adding a significant amount of detail.

With Vyond Go (which is powered by ChatGPT), we’ve streamlined and simplified the prompting process by conveniently building a number of important factors directly into our platform. 

Let’s take a look, starting from the top.

How to get the most out of Vyond Go

Topic

This is where you’ll give the most detailed, text-based input. The prompt you enter will affect the draft script you get. (Don’t enter details here about the vibe, format, or layout/location you want – you’ll select those later, via the interface.) 

There are two ways you can use Vyond Go here.

1. You can enter a general description of what you’re looking for and rely on AI to deliver a result based on its vast internet training data, or 
2. If you’ve got specific details you’d like included in your video — say, talking points or steps in a procedure — you can paste those into your prompt, or upload a document with that information for Vyond Go to digest, along with the general description of what you’re looking for.

Either way, we’ve found that adding at least 50 words for your topic prompt gets the best results.

Keep these tips in mind: 

• Language: Enter a prompt in your preferred language to get a draft script in English—or choose among 70+ languages if you’re a Professional or Enterprise user
• Length: You can enter as many as 4,000 characters, or about ~700 words; however, note that longer, “stream of consciousness”-type prompts may yield a lower-quality result.
• Structure: Structured prompts are helpful to the AI model and get better outputs. For example: “Create an L&D video based on the below text: [paste in source material for the model to base your video on]”. 
• Duration: specifying a duration in your prompt ( e.g. “write a 60-second video”) doesn’t work…yet. However, including longer sets of talking points in your prompt will yield longer videos.
• Data points: if you have authentic stats and facts about your topic handy, cut and paste them into your prompt. This helps reduce the chance that the AI will pull in an unverified internet stat (or make something up).
• Edit and verify: always run a quality check on your script (are these facts accurate? Is this content tailored appropriately to my target audience? etc.)

Vibe

The vibe you select — formal, informative, casual, playful — will affect your video’s background music, as well as the characters’ personalities and way of speaking. 

Vyond Go features four vibes, which translate to the following speech and character personality outputs:

Keep these tips in mind: 

• Each vibe has its own list of options for background music — a track will be added for you at random. If you’d prefer a different track, you can always adjust that in Vyond Studio.
• If you’re including specific talking points in your topic prompt, make sure they fit with the vibe you select. For example, if your prompt includes details about a major organizational change at a bank, choosing a “Playful” vibe probably won’t give you the results you’re after. 
• On the other hand, if you enter a very short, generic topic prompt, Vyond Go will rely on the vibe you choose for more guidance on what to include in the script. So with a “Casual” vibe, entering a simple prompt like “reorganization” might give you a script draft that opens with, “Hey, guys! I have some exciting news to share about our company!”—which may or may not suit the tone you’re going for.

Format

At the time of writing, you can choose one of seven formats for your video. All formats can work as either Talking Head (1 character), Conversation (2 characters), or Narration (Kinetic Text and Mixed Media Design) layouts. 

Here’s an overview of each format type, along with suggestions for key things to include in your topic prompt to generate the best results.

Keep these tips in mind: 

• If you’re including specific talking points in your topic prompt, match them with the type of format you select. For example, if you choose “Announcement” for a product launch, you’ll want to include a date/time, details about what’s launching, where people can go for questions, etc. Or if you choose “How-to,” be sure to include details about what process you’ll explain and the steps you want included.
• If you enter a very generic topic prompt like “birds,” then Vyond Go will look to the format you choose for more guidance on what to include in the script. So for “birds,” had you chosen “Anecdote,” it will create a personal story related to birds; if “Debate,” it will come up with arguments for and against something related to birds: like how they’re amazing creatures with incredible abilities.

Layout

At the time of writing, Vyond Go supports three layouts: Conversation (two characters in dialogue), Talking Head (one character addressing the audience), and Narration (kinetic text and mixed media).

These video types define the number of characters to feature, whether characters should have a conversation between themselves or talk to the audience, or whether the video will feature an AI narrator and on-screen text.

Each layout offers its own templates, with different combinations of locations and characters, so you don’t need to include those details in your topic prompt. 

We’ll continue to add new locations for more variety – just as we do with other templates and assets in Vyond.

Keep these tips in mind: 

• Right now, you can’t specify a different number of characters in your topic prompt in attempt to override the format settings
• If you need a location that’s not available in Vyond Go but is available in Vyond Studio, it’s currently possible to edit your video using the alternate location. You can replace every scene with your desired template and relink the text-to-speech clips to the correct characters. 

Writing AI prompts for Vyond Go: best practices summary

• Prompt length: For topic prompts, enter at least 50 words (and up to ~700 maximum).
• Prompt structure: Structured prompts are helpful to the AI model and get better outputs
  • For example: “Create an HR video based on the below text: [paste in source material for the model to base your video on]”. 
  • Longer, “stream of consciousness”-type prompts will have a lower-quality result
• Duration: Don’t try to specify a duration for your video — the model can’t yet heed duration as a parameter ( e.g. “write a 60-second video”). But adding lengthier talking points in your prompt will yield longer videos. 
• Number of characters: Don’t try to specify a different number of characters in your topic prompt attempting to override the format settings — it’s not effective yet.
• Data points: Include authentic stats and facts about your topic in your prompt, if you’ve got them. This helps reduce the chance that the AI will pull in an unverified internet stat (or make something up).
• Match talking points to format and vibe: If you’re including specific talking points in your topic prompt, match them with the type of format and vibe you select. For example, if you choose “Announcement” for a product launch, you’ll want to include a date/time, details about what’s launching, where people can go for questions, etc. — keeping in mind the appropriate vibe you selected for what you’re announcing. Or if you choose “How-to,” be sure to include details about what process you’ll explain and the steps you want included, aligned to your chosen vibe.
• Format dictates direction where needed: If you enter a very generic topic prompt like “birds,” then Vyond Go will look to the format you choose for more guidance on what to include in the script. So for “birds,” had you chosen “Anecdote,” it will create a personal story related to birds; if “Debate,” it will come up with arguments for and against something related to birds: like how they’re amazing creatures with incredible abilities. 
• Edit and verify: always run a quality check on your script (are these facts accurate? Is this content tailored appropriately to my target audience? etc.)

Sample topic prompts and videos by content type

We tried out a few sample topic prompts to illustrate the guidance above. Here’s how the output videos turned out – plus the parameters and topic prompt we used to get there.

HR 

Vibe: Formal

Format: Anecdote

Layout: Conversation

Prompt:

• Lessons from a First-Time Manager with an Underperforming Team Member
• Grace was a first-time manager at HipTech, a tech company in Austin
• In her new role, she inherited a team of accountants, and one of her team members was not performing well.
• Grace learned: she should have addressed performance issues right away, that it’s OK to ask for help from her peers who are managers, and to trust her instincts even though she’s new to managing.

Raw video output:

hi

Notes:

The characters, location, and flow worked well. Vyond Go added relevant details we hadn’t included, such as offering the employee resources, and an ultimate outcome: that the employee turned things around.

L&D

Vibe: Casual

Format: How-to

Layout: Conversation

Prompt:

(language cut and pasted from a Vyond Resource post)

How L&D professionals can create digital media that is accessible and inclusive

1. Add closed captions

Closed captions—a textual display of what’s being said, with the ability to be toggled off— help people with hearing and visual impairments understand and enjoy the video content you create. The captions are also necessary for making 508-compliant video content. If you’re making any content for a government agency, the content must be 508-compliant.

Closed captions are an overlay on top of a completed video, as pictured above in this video from Virtual Care for Kids. If captions are built into the video itself, they are called“open captions.” There is no way for viewers to turn off open captions and it’s not possible for screen-reading software to understand them.

With a third-party tool, you can add proper closed captions to any video. Research your options for captioning apps and keep in mind that some programs are platform-specific. For example, Clipomatic or iPhone Clips work well for Instagram Stories.

2. Be mindful of video design

The design of a video itself is a huge factor in how accessible the content is. The wrong design choices can exclude audiences with certain disabilities. For example, if someone in your audience has a visual impairment, an overly-busy video could be difficult to interpret. But there are a couple of ways you can ensure that your video design is friendly to your entire audience.
Keep text away from where closed captions will be. Cluttered screen text can be difficult to read for those who require closed captions. When placing text, keep in mind where closed captions will appear in order to prevent this from occurring.
Ensure that your videos are safe for those with photo sensitivities by avoiding the flash threshold. If videos have quick transitions or bright flashes in succession, they can cross the general flash threshold and cause epileptic seizures. Avoiding flashing effects is also helpful in consideration of people with ADHD, autism, and those in concussion recovery.
Be mindful of your color choices.
Consider representation in your content. Can you cast or include disabled people or animated characters? This won’t make your content inherently more accessible, but it will help disabled viewers see themselves represented in your message.

3. Use alt text on thumbnails

Alt text is copy that both supplements and even replaces an image when necessary. Alt text makes it possible for those with vision impairments to enjoy images and fully digest your content. A screen-reading program will read alt text where the image should be, giving a visually impaired listener an idea of what the image represents. This is equally true for video thumbnails that might be placed on an article.

Alt text also helps with general readability if the image doesn’t load. If a user has an outdated browser or poor connection, the alt text will display in place of the image and ensure that the overall experience isn’t affected.

4. Transcribe visual or auditory media

For those with any kind of visual or learning impairment, videos on their own may not be enough. A transcript of what is said in the video makes it possible for people to slow down and learn at their own pace.

Use a third-party app or integration to transcribe your recorded videos. Transcribe, Rev, and Express Scribe are three great options to start with.

5. Make the right color choices in video
Color vision deficiency affects nearly 7.4% of the population in the United States.
Those with color vision deficiency are often unable to clearly distinguish between red, blue, and green. Avoid layering red, blue, and green in visuals where the colors aren’t pertinent to understanding the message.
Use a contrast checker to make sure your text and background combinations are readable by those with color vision deficiency.

Raw video output:

Notes:

The script did a fine job of translating the talking points into a conversation between the two characters. It didn’t create a conclusion, so it currently ends abruptly after the last tip — we’d want to adjust the script to add an ending.

Sales Enablement 

Vibe: Informative

Format: Overview

Layout: Talking head – Circles

Prompt:

(talking points based on a Vyond template video)

Create an example video for sales development representatives at Zodio, showing how they can talk to prospects about Zodio’s employee engagement platform. The speaker’s name is Brad Jackson, a sales representative at Zodio.

• Brad introduces himself
• Employee engagement has a huge impact on your organization’s success.
• Engaged and connected employees help nurture a collaborative work culture, which results in innovative outcomes. 
• Zodio believes employee engagement can be fun, which is why we baked fun right into our internal communications platform.
• Zodio is a unique employee engagement tool that personalizes each employee’s experience based on their zodiac sign.
• In addition to all the features you expect of a robust employee engagement system, Zodio offers the fun sense of self that comes from astrology.
• You can participate in weekly mindfulness activities based on your zodiac sign.
• Create engaging surveys.
• Organized virtual events and games and more.
• Zodio also provides an engagement tracking feature that analyzes how employees are connecting and engaging over time.
• Want to learn more?
• Schedule a personalized demo with me to see how your company and Zodio are a match made in the stars.

Raw video output:

Notes:

Good result and usable as-is, though we might want to bring it into Vyond Studio to add screenshots of the product, Zodio. The template nicely added chapter titles.

That concludes our tour of Vyond Go! We hope these tips help you save time on video creation — and inspire you to get in there and start experimenting! 

Marketing (Social Media)

Vibe: Playful

Format: Announcement 

Layout: Narration

Prompt:

(Actual script)

• We’re heading to LearnCon!
• And we can’t wait to see you at Booth 213. 
• We’ll be showcasing our new instant video creation platform. 
• And customer support experts will be making amazing videos on the fly, just for you. 
• Plus, on Sunday at 6 PM, join us for adult beverages and music at our mixer. 
• Hope to see you there!

Raw video output:

Notes:

A good foundation. To make it more engaging and relevant, would bring it into Studio, add a title card with the company logo to start and add photos of the company’s actual booth and a visual that syncs with the mixer. Start to finish, a 10-minute job. 

Embrace the future of video creation with Vyond Go

As AI continues to shape the landscape of content generation, the key lies in integrating the tools that help create business-relevant, customizable, and on-brand videos Vyond Go leads the charge by seamlessly integrating AI with creative control, transforming your ideas into captivating visuals.  Dive into the possibilities with a 14-day free trial of Vyond Go.

The post Prompting AI: Getting the Best Results from Vyond Go appeared first on Vyond.

Existing and emerging text-to-video AI tools are making it easier than ever to create video content. And they’re only getting better. Here’s a look at the types of AI tools that exist now and what’s coming soon, the leading players, and the benefits of text-to-video generators.

What is text-to-video AI software?

A few years ago, software advertising itself as “AI-powered” and capable of transforming text to video entered the market, promising faster and easier outputs. These offerings generally fall into two categories:

The first are video makers that match keywords in a text prompt you provide to a random assortment of stock photos, music, and video clips that are tagged with similar keywords. The result: videos–usually geared for social media—that can feel stylistically inconsistent and generic.

The second are platforms that allow you to create videos narrated by a selection of human-like avatars that will say whatever text you provide. The result: “talking head” content that, despite advances in the technology, still comes off as stiff and less than genuine.

However, as of 2023, a new, far more powerful category of AI video creation tools is emerging. Unlike keyword matchers and avatar creators, this software is powered by generative AI (think ChatGPT and DALL-E 2) that has the potential to help companies create high-quality video content that’s both original and easily edited.

Let’s take a look at how these exciting AI-powered text-to-video makers work; which are available now and which are coming soon; and how they promise to change the way you make professional-grade videos.

Learn more about AI powered video

Leading AI text-to-video generators

Emerging text-to-video AI tools are being developed by both well-regarded brands adding generative AI functionality to their platforms and new companies working to bring their first product to market. Here are some of the main players. 

Vyond Go 

Even before the launch of Vyond Go in June 2023, Vyond’s animated video creation software was loaded with AI-powered features like Instant Video Translation, Photo to Character, Visual Content Search, and Speech Enhancement that help users automate time-consuming tasks and create content more quickly.

With the release of Vyond Go, the company became the first in the video creation industry to offer an AI-based script and video creator, capable of creating a script and high quality, editable video content, based on a text prompt, within seconds.

Once a first draft has populated, users can quickly polish the video within Vyond Go using a simple text-based editor, or take it into Vyond Studio for fine-tuning.

How Vyond Go Works

1. Enter a prompt or drop in content you want it to respond to.

Vyond Go creates video scripts with the help of ChatGPT, which is integrated with the platform. ChatGPT draws upon its vast Internet-based learning model to generate a script based on your prompt. 

Or, if you include a sample of information in your prompt you want it to incorporate, it will generate content based primarily on that sample. 

Learn more about ChatGPT video scripting from Vyond’s CEO

2. Choose the vibe, format, and location you want for your video

The Vyond Go platform allows you to choose from a multitude of locations (like Home, Abstract Background, Open Office), vibes (like formal, informative, casual, or playful), formats (like announcements, rants, and overviews), and layouts (like conversation or talking head). 

3. Edit the video with Quick Edit—or refine it in Vyond Studio

After typing in your prompt and making your other selections, Vyond Go delivers a script and a starter video in seconds. You can then adjust text and voice-over content within Vyond Go. Or by clicking on the edit icon, you can fine-tune it within Vyond’s standard video creation platform, Vyond Studio–for example, swapping out characters, changing backgrounds, and instantly translating the video into 70+ languages.

Pros:

• Vyond Go is the only product like this on the market, and it’s available as of June 28, 2023. 
• The script and video output created with a text prompt is editable and in a unified style
• All the AI tech exists right in the Vyond platform; there’s no need to use multiple tools to generate or edit content

Cons: 

• Vyond Go doesn’t yet have the ability to generate brand-new animated content based on a text prompt–but that functionality is coming soon
• Thus far, you can use Vyond Go to create content in Vyond’s Business-friendly style, but not their Contemporary or Whiteboard styles

Watch Vyond Go’s Launch Webinar

Adobe Firefly

For more than five years, Adobe has been integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technology across its platform to automate tasks and boost creativity–technology they call Adobe Sensei. 

In April 2023, Adobe entered the generative AI market with the launch of the beta version of Adobe Firefly, its new suite of creative generative AI models. As of June 2023, their offerings include the ability to generate original images, color variations, and other visual effects with a text prompt—elements producers can use to create videos. But soon Adobe hopes to also offer video producers the ability to make edits to already-recorded video, like changing color schemes, time of day, and even the seasons with a simple text prompt.

Pros: 

• Like Vyond, Adobe Firefly offers a variety of AI and generative AI functionality all in a single, already popular content creation and editing platform.

Cons: 

• Though the goal of Firefly is to make design projects simpler, Adobe products are still targeted towards designers. So non-designers may still face a learning curve. 

Text-to-video AI tech still in R&D

A handful of tech companies are developing models that will soon make it possible for companies to create high-resolution video clips of scenes based on text prompts. While they’ve not yet brought a product to market as of June 2023, the research papers and sneak peeks they’re providing online make clear the huge potential for this technology. 

Nvidia, a longtime leader in AI computing, is sharing its research on generating high-resolution video clips with latent diffusion models. Their website features samples of short, funny video clips they’ve been able to generate from text prompts, including ones of a polar bear playing a bass, a lion surfing, and a koala playing the piano.

Meta is previewing their Make-a-Video tool, which aims to create short video clips from both text-based prompts and static image prompts. 

Newcomers like Runway.ml and Opus.ai are also sharing their research, and providing glimpses into what may be available in the near future. 

Pros: 

• Once this class of text-to-video AI technology is more refined and user-friendly, it will be possible to create high-quality video content more easily than ever before. 

Cons: 

• None of these companies are yet offering a viable product. 
• Most of the video clips these tools can create thus far are very short, lower-resolution GIF-length clips. As is, these outputs aren’t likely to be useful to companies looking for video content that fits their brand style. 

Business reasons for using generative AI text-to-video tools

Faster video production 

Generative AI text-to-video makers make it possible to create business-friendly, first-draft video content faster than ever before. Specifically:  

• L&D teams tasked with creating a high volume of training video content can turn around requests in less than half the time they’re used to
• HR teams can use text-to-video tools to ensure they’re communicating effectively about policies or business changes in a timely manner
• Sales departments can use generative AI text-to-video tools to keep up with the demand for creating highly personalized, tailored versions of general sales video content to share with prospects 
• Marketing teams can use generative AI text-to-video tools to respond immediately to urgent news or trends with right-time, right-place video content 

Cheaper, more accessible video production 

With these text-to-video AI tools in place, companies will be able to dramatically reduce their reliance on expensive video production vendors, and make it possible for anyone who has a good idea to create engaging video content, not just the design and video production teams on staff. 

More imaginative content 

Very soon, this technology will make it possible for an infinite number of creative ideas to be realized in seconds, simply by typing in a text prompt. 

The future of text-to-video AI tools for business

This cutting-edge tech category is undeniably exciting. But what will ultimately determine the commercial success of these text-to-video AI tools is their ability to create business-friendly content that’s relevant, editable, and brand-compliant. 

As of June 2023, only a few companies have brought such a product to market. But in the months and years to come, as the technology evolves and improves and the market provides feedback about its needs, more is sure to follow. 

And video creation as we know it will never be the same. 

To take Vyond Go for a spin: sign up for a free 14-day trial today. 

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The post The Best Text-to-Video AI Software for Creating Professional Videos appeared first on Vyond.

AI is changing the way companies create video content. Find out which categories of AI-powered tools can help you create videos faster, the pros and cons of each, and the many ways using this technology can help you meet your business goals.

Table of contents

What is AI powered video?

Examples of AI video maker tools

Generative AI video tools: the pros and cons

The business benefits of using generative AI

The future of AI video maker tools

What is AI powered video? 

While smartphones, webcams, and simple video editor apps have made it incredibly easy in the past few decades to create simple video content for personal use, creating professional-grade videos at scale has remained, for many companies, a serious logistical challenge.

Fortunately, that’s about to change. With the arrival of powerful new generative AI technology—including advanced AI chatbots, text-to-image and text-to-video generators, AI avatar makers, and AI-powered animated video creation software, content creators have more tools at their disposal than ever before to help them create business videos quickly and affordably.

There’s a difference between what AI tools and humans can create, of course. Generative AI models are able to mine the gigantic datasets they’re trained on to create content that reproduces linguistic and visual styles that people have spent centuries perfecting. However, AI text generators are still unable to come up with original ideas, reason through difficult puzzles, and often serve up answers that are categorically false. And image and video generators often struggle to translate text-based prompts into content that both reflects the requester’s intentions and is of a high enough quality to use as is. 

Still—even in its infancy, Generative AI tools are already making it much easier for professionals with limited video production experience to create professional videos. You don’t need years of design, directing, and editing experience to get started: all you need is an idea…and a prompt.

Examples of AI video maker tools

From text-to-audio synthesizers to video generators that transform visuals from one style to another, there’s a huge range of AI tools out there. Here is a quick breakdown of the types of tools that today’s content creators can take advantage of. 

Text tools for creating AI videos

To create an engaging video, first you need a great script. Text-based AI tools like ChatGPT and Bard are advanced LLMs (Large Language Models) that can quickly generate scripts based on text prompts you provide. The prompt is processed by the AI’s deep learning algorithm which formulates a response for the user based on the Internet-sourced data set it’s been trained on–-or based on proprietary information the user feeds it.

As an AI video tool, ChatGPT can help with research, creating a script’s structure, writing on-screen captions, and even suggestions for visuals (though that’s not one of its strengths–yet). Whatever tool you use, it’s now possible to generate a script in a fraction of the time it used to.

Watch “Write Better Video Scripts Faster with ChatGPT” On-Demand

Image tools for creating AI videos

Video creators can use AI-generated static images to quickly create storyboards, or even use the elements directly in their final videos.

AI image generators like Dall.E 2, or Stable Diffusion Online and MidJourney draw on the internet’s rich source of photos, illustrations, and graphics to produce new imagery in response to a user’s prompt. Dall.E 2 also allows you to fill out or extend the area around your preferred image (outpainting) and fill in missing or incomplete areas by evaluating the existing imagery and formulating content that matches the content and style (inpainting). While this feature isn’t offered within MidJourney and Stable Diffusion Online as of mid-April 2023, you can import images created on those platforms into Dall.E 2 and manipulate them there.

Also, both Dall.E 2 and Midjourney now allow you to upload your own images and include them as a reference in your prompt. This allows you to also ask for variations of existing, preferred reference images, instead of having to only work with outputs created based on text prompts. 

Audio tools for creating AI videos

Need a voiceover but don’t have the budget to hire voice talent and book a recording studio? Some AI tools can step in to generate a realistic sounding voiceover in a variety of languages by collecting text input and delivering a synthesized audio stream in a process known as “text-to-speech.” 

Other AI tools can remove background noise from recordings, or even create background music from scratch. Simply choose the genre, mood, length and tempo for a video with a unique, royalty-free soundtrack.

AI video generation software

Some AI video tools apply a similar approach to those for text, image and audio, taking either text or visual input and generating an output of original video content. 

Meta’s Make-a-Video creates video from both text-based prompts and static images. Phenaki uses proprietary technology to create longer videos when given a sequence of textual prompts. 
 

Other AI-powered tools offer the ability to use human-like avatars to deliver scripts directly to the camera. While these tools allow you to generate content at volume, it’s worth noting that most deepfake human avatars suffer from the ‘uncanny valley’ effect: people register that what they’re seeing and hearing is close to, but not quite human, which can be off-putting.)

Lastly, AI-powered animated video software platforms like Vyond provide a more holistic solution, using multiple AI-driven features (like Photo-to-Character avatars, Text-to-Speech generator, Visual Search for assets, and Speech Enhancer) to help teams quickly create engaging, professional-looking animated videos that never suffer from the “uncanny valley effect,” since most animation isn’t meant to look photorealistic. 

Try Vyond for Free

Generative AI video tools: the pros and cons

AI powered video tools are revolutionizing the workplace but they aren’t without their faults. Here are some of the benefits and limitations of AI tools used to create text, video, images and audio.

Benefits of AI-powered text tools 

• Helps you brainstorm ideas. When you’re staring at a page with no idea where to start, an AI chatbot can be a lifesaver. While these won’t produce the final copy, they’re great at providing you with a first draft to play around with.
• Saves serious time. Writing good copy takes time, and with research, writing, and editing, that time quickly adds up. With an AI text generation tool, simply enter a prompt and you’ll have output to start editing and developing in seconds. 
• Can imitate a wide range of styles. In your text prompt, you can add direction on style and tone and include proprietary copy you’d like it to learn from and imitate. This capability can help you with creating “on-brand” content, and can help spark ideas for new ways to solve creative problems. 

Limitations of AI-powered text tools

• ChatGPT is only trained on information found on the Internet prior to October 2021. As a result, its responses don’t reflect the most up-to-date information on topics, especially those that evolve quickly. This is another reason to always review its output before you hit publish. 

• They don’t understand your audience like you do. AI will never be able to understand your audiences’ needs and preferences the way you do – what makes them tick, or pushes their buttons. This is another reason it’s so important to review and adjust their output. 

For more information, check out our guide on how to use ChatGPT to create business video scripts.

ChatGPT Prompts for Business Videos

Benefits of AI-powered audio tools 

• Generates narration quickly and affordably. There’s no need to hire a voice actor, source expensive equipment, or book recording time. With a high-quality AI-powered audio tool you can generate realistic audio with a quick turnaround. 

• Many include instant translation features. Sending copy to translators before you can get your video to a global audience is now a thing of the past as AI tools can instantly translate audio in a huge selection of languages and dialects. 

Limitations of AI-powered audio tools 

• Some AI-generated narration sounds…off. Emotions can be hard for an AI audio tool to replicate. While output is constantly improving, humans generally still possess more range. 
• Accent choices are often limited. Many AI audio tools can’t offer you as many accents and dialects (spoken by people of various genders and ages) as you might like. 

Benefits of AI-powered image and video tools

• Anyone can be a creator. Whether you’re a professional designer or someone who can’t draw a stick figure, you’ll be able to generate useful images and video content quickly.

• Inspires fresh ideas. When you’re struggling to visualize an idea, AI image generators can provide options that help you clarify what you want. 

• Easy to replicate visual styles. From Van Gogh to Andy Warhol to [fill in your favorite artist here]—with a simple prompt (containing either text or a combination of text and image references) you can imitate an incredibly diverse set of styles

Limitations of AI-powered image and video tools

• Their output doesn’t always hit the mark. When the visual delivered to you doesn’t match what you were imagining in your mind’s eye, you have the option to keep prompting for other alternatives. And if you’re using Dall.E 2–you can try adjusting its output with its inpainting or outpainting tools. Even so, these efforts may not give you exactly what you wanted. 

• They’re not reliable for creating “on-brand” visuals. For the reasons above, you’re likely not going to be able to lean on these tools to create visual content that perfectly aligns with your company’s brand style—yet. 

• There are ethical concerns around copyright. While an artist’s work may be accessed freely on the internet, it’s unlikely they gave permission for their art to be used in the AI’s learning model. Currently, in the US, AI-generated work isn’t copyright protected because it isn’t technically made by a human. 

The business benefits of using generative AI 

Companies of all kinds can reap the benefits of using an AI tool to create professional videos. Here are a few of the most common:

Support your company’s employee retention goals

The simplicity and time efficiency of AI video helps L&D professionals keep up with industry changes and internal demands for new or updated training materials for their entire workforce. 

This is especially valuable because timely, effective training is proven to have extremely positive effects on retention. According to a LinkedIn study, 94% of employees say that they would stay at a company longer if it invested in better training.

Create mission-critical content more quickly 

While we know that L&D teams regularly create videos to engage their workforce, they aren’t the only department that can benefit from the speed of AI-powered video tools.

• HR teams can use AI-powered video tools to ensure they’re communicating effectively about policies or business changes in a timely manner
• Sales departments can use generative AI video tools to keep up with the demand for creating highly personalized, tailored versions of general sales video content to share with prospects. (As we know from both academic and industry research, personalized strategies are more effective.) 
• The speed of AI-powered video tools can help marketing teams keep up with the demand for engagement-boosting video content for blog and social media posts–and respond instantaneously to urgent news or trends with right-time, right-place video content. Additionally, the time saved in creating videos from scratch also frees up marketing teams to spend more time A/B testing their video content and making tweaks to boost engagement.

Empower all your employees to communicate better (and have fun doing it)

AI-powered video tools are becoming so easy to use, even employees with no writing and design capabilities now have a way to create engaging video content quickly. 

Not surprisingly, when creating videos is easy, it’s also more fun. In fact, many of our customers have said that using Vyond has made creating videos one of the most enjoyable parts of their job, instead of a time-consuming and intimidating chore.

The future of AI video maker tools

Sure, today’s generative AI video tools still have some kinks to work out. And as always happens when a new kind of technology hits the market, some tools will hit big and flourish, while others will drop off the radar. 

But as the landscape continues to evolve, one thing is for sure: creating high-quality business videos has never been easier, and the world of content creation will never be the same again.

To get started making great animated business videos quickly and easily, join 20,000 companies already using Vyond. Sign up for our 14-day free trial or book a demo to get access to 200+ fully scripted templates, 200+ starter templates, more than 2,300 scene templates, and all of our time-saving AI features. 

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The post The Ultimate Guide to AI-Powered Video: What It Is and How to Best Use It appeared first on Vyond.

While the insights Dr. Jennifer Aaker, Second City’s Lele Mason and Jeannie Cahill Griggs, and Connie Malamed shared may be most relevant to people working in L&D, HR, marketing, or sales, their funny and enlightening presentations will be inspiring and useful to just about anyone.

We highly recommend watching (or rewatching) the session replays in full; you’ll find links to do that throughout. But in the meantime, here are a few of the big ideas that stuck with us the most.

To be a better leader, bring more story and humor to work

During a time of massive change, record-low levels of trust, and prevalent remote work, we’re seeking human connection more than ever, says Dr. Jennifer Aaker, professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

Today’s environment is changing what we want from leaders: once revered and mysterious, leaders now need to connect and be understood as authentic, fallible humans.

Stories and humor are powerful ways of building connection. And story gives meaning to the whopping 1/3 of our lives we spend at work.

Here are three lessons from Dr. Aaker’s session on the power of story and humor at work—and why they’re needed now more than ever.

^{Dr. Jennifer Aaker on why we need story now more than ever}

1. Keys to a good story

As you bring more story into your work life—whether you’re explaining a new change to your team, building training courses, or creating business video content—it’s helpful to know what makes a good one.

Dr. Aaker shared a few characteristics of stories that land well with us on a neurological level.

• There’s a goal: You have a reason for telling the story

• There’s a hook: It captures the audience’s attention

• It engages in an authentic way: It’s not overly contrived
• There’s a call to action: At the end, the audience understands what they should think, feel or do

Keeping these four qualities in mind will help you develop stories to connect with your audience, whether they’re employees, prospects, or customers.

2. Humor has a place in business — and we need more of it

Humor has been shown to inspire confidence, build bonds, enhance creativity, and boost resilience. Dr. Aaker cited a study from Wayne Decker on managerial humor and subordinate satisfaction that found leaders with a sense of humor were rated as 27% more motivating.

Here’s the problem. We fall off a “humor cliff” in our lives right around the time we join the workforce, Dr. Aaker explains.

A 2013 Gallup survey asked 1.4 million people in 166 countries, “Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?” In younger years, “yes” levels were high. But starting at age 23, people start saying “no” – and it doesn’t increase again until about age 80.

And the poll found that when we do laugh, it tends to be on weekends, indicating it’s a problem related to work in particular.

3. Tips for bringing humor to work

Dr. Aaker insists that when it comes to humor at work, the bar is low: don’t think you need to bring in a full standup routine. She shared a few guidelines for bringing a little more levity to your workday:

• Never ask yourself, “will this make me sound funny?” Instead ask, “how will this make others feel?” Start with moments of truth. Truth lies at the heart of all humor.
• Then, create surprise and misdirection — a swerve from the expected can create delight.
• Mine your life for truth – then exaggerate and compare/contrast.

It can also help to recognize your own and others’ “humor styles,” based on where our brand of humor falls on a spectrum of subtle to expressive and affiliative to aggressive. You can take the humor style quiz on Dr. Aaker’s book site, Humor, Seriously.

Watch Dr. Aaker’s full session for more insights on humor, connection, and the power of story.

Watch Dr. Aaker’s Session

Adopt a “Yes, and…” mindset for better communication and collaboration

Improvisational comedy, unlike stand-up comedy, is all about collaboration: team members build upon each other’s ideas to create scenes in the moment.

Good “improv” requires a few key ingredients: active listening; a willingness to consider, accept, and build on others’ ideas; validating and restating others’ needs; and delivering ideas with confidence. All these skills and behaviors are valuable in our work lives.

Chicago’s Second City is a world-famous training ground for improv comedy talent with alumni like Joan Rivers, Bill Murray, Tina Fey, and Stephen Colbert.

Lele Mason and Jeannie Cahill Griggs of The Second City Works (the theater’s corporate training and teambuilding arm) demonstrated improv’s lessons for our work lives through a series of short activities.

Here are our top three takeaways.

1. Listen to understand

How often do you find yourself able to block out distraction and listen intently to your coworkers (or customers)?

In improv, active listening is non-negotiable. “We treat listening like a muscle in our art form, because we’re making things up as we go,” says Jeannie. “If I’m completely not listening to Lele, I might not realize it at first — but the audience will realize it. They’re always our ‘tell’ and they’re always keeping us honest.”

At work, active listening means listening to understand instead of waiting to respond or push our agenda — whether we’re brainstorming ideas for our next eLearning course, mapping out marketing campaigns or getting Sales’ feedback on a new enablement asset.

When we listen to understand we’re living in the moment. This naturally generates empathy and allows us to better pick up on our conversation partner’s unspoken cues.

2. Embrace the power of a “yes, and” mindset

Collaboration is about exchanging and responding to ideas. And when we respond to others’ ideas, those responses tend to fall into three buckets. Each generates different energy.

“No, because”

This is your standard “no.” This closed mindset instantly snuffs an idea by burying it in challenges, not offering solutions, and failing to explore the approach behind the idea.

It can be easy and tempting to shut down ideas with a quick “no, because,” especially in busy times. And sometimes a “no” is justified, Lele says. But we should watch closely when and how we’re saying no.

When people hear “no” frequently, they may internalize it, feeling their teammates are saying no to them—not just their ideas. We risk losing out on good future ideas because these team members stop contributing.

“Yes, but”

This mindset comes across as “yes, with concerns” or a “polite no.”

“We call it ‘no in a tuxedo,’ says Lele, “Or as I like to say, ‘Beyoncé with a stop sign.’ It looks amazing but you’re not going anywhere.”

With a “yes, but” mindset, someone says yes to your idea—and then offers completely different suggestions that push their own agenda.

This mindset can sometimes be a way to gather more information about an idea. But when it’s us using it, we need to check in with ourselves to clarify, “am I really interested in saying yes? Or am I trying to further my own agenda?”

“Yes, and”

“Yes, and” is the philosophy that improv is built upon. It’s an open mindset that invites curiosity and reserves judgment about others’ ideas. It encourages team members to offer smaller contributions toward a greater whole, rather than steamrolling with one fully formed idea.

“At Second City we say ‘bring a brick, not a cathedral,’” says Lele. “If we’re talking about building stories and working together, ‘yes and’ is a great place to start. And then, if we need to scale it back, we can get to the ‘yes, buts’ and ‘no, becauses’.”

A “yes, and” mindset is a key to building a more collaborative culture.

^{Lele Mason sums up an activity about the “yes, and” mindset and why it’s a key ingredient for successful collaboration.}

3. Speak with confidence

Improv requires acting like an expert and selling a concept, even when you have no idea what you’re talking about. The key to believability? Confidence.

Applied to the workplace, this doesn’t mean you should try to be a know-it-all on unfamiliar topics. But when it comes to a subject you know – own it. That conviction has an influence on your audience, whether they’re customers, employees, or project stakeholders.

“You know what you know. It’s okay to not know something and say that, but when you know something, say it with confidence,” says Lele. “If you believe it, your audience believes it.”

Watch The Second City Works’ session replay to learn more about how bringing improv skills to the workplace can improve collaboration and communication.

Watch The Second City Works’ Session

For more effective visual communication, reduce your audience’s cognitive load

Learning is a high bar to achieve. It’s about much more than getting a message in front of an audience and making sure they remember it, says Connie Malamed, author of Visual Design Solutions and Visual Language for Designers.

To foster successful learning, L&D pros need to gain and sustain learners’ attention, make sure learners comprehend, understand, and remember new information, and are able to apply and transfer that knowledge in new situations.

What gets in the way?

One of the biggest challenges with communicating visually for L&D teams – and professionals across all disciplines – is the constant strain on our audience’s working memory.

We’re flooded with sensory information. And for any information to have a chance of getting stored long term, it has to make its way through our limited, temporary working memory.

As visual communicators, anything we can do to help ease this “cognitive load” for our audience around the information we’re presenting gives them a better chance to grasp and retain it, Connie says.

Here are a few pieces of advice Connie shared for reducing cognitive load in presentations and videos.

1. Make the graphics and text easy to process

Overly intricate font styles and text with low contrast (like gray text on white background) put more strain on a viewer’s cognitive load.

In one study, researchers showed a group of people a writeup about a stretching exercise in a difficult-to-read typeface. Participants said, “I don’t think I can do this.” But when other participants were shown the same writeup in an easy-to-read font, they said they were confident they could do the exercise successfully.

Another study found that when people were shown two true statements in either low-contrast font or high-contrast font, they were more likely to believe the statements that were easy to read: those in high-contrast font.

The lesson: readability matters.

Using simple fonts with high contrast makes information easier to process, reduces the demands on working memory, and creates a positive affect in the viewer. Whenever the viewer has a positive affect, it’s motivating, and they’re more likely to learn, Connie says.

2. Remove visual distractions

Visuals either help or hurt our message, by either increasing meaning and understanding for viewers, or distracting them. Connie shared a few quick ideas for toning down visual noise:

• Avoid placing a logo on every slide
• Remove irrelevant text, like dates and slide numbers
• Remove cutesy but irrelevant graphics
• Avoid putting text on busy backgrounds

In a nutshell: “To reduce cognitive load, focus on the critical part of your message. Then remove extraneous elements,” Connie says.

3. Reduce realism in your graphics

There’s a misperception that ultra-realistic imagery is always best to support learning, Connie says. But research shows that often, reducing the realism of a graphic can help people learn more quickly.

Depending on the subject matter, an illustration, icon, or symbol can sometimes convey information more effectively than a photo or 3D rendering.

^{Connie Malamed outlines why reducing realism in graphics can help improve the audience’s understanding}

Reducing realism can remove distractions, decrease the time it takes the viewer to visually scan, and minimize load on the viewer’s working memory.

Watch Connie’s session for more tips on reducing distractions and increasing meaning in your visual communication.

Watch Connie’s Session

With a live audience topping 3,000, speakers got more questions than they could answer in the moment. We got a few more minutes each with Dr. Jennifer Aaker and Connie Malamed to get answers to your overflow questions. Watch bonus material from the Spring 2023 Masterclass.

The post 9 Insights on Communicating and Collaborating Better from the Spring 2023 Vyond Storytelling Masterclass appeared first on Vyond.

Table of contents

• What is ChatGPT for business?
• Pros and cons of ChatGPT for business videos
• What makes a good ChatGPT prompt?
• 20 ChatGPT video script prompts
• How to improve ChatGPT-generated scripts
• Sample ChatGPT script makeover
• Some final (Vyond-generated) thoughts

 What is ChatGPT for business?

Few new technologies in recent memory have shaken up the business world as dramatically as ChatGPT.

Developed by the startup OpenAI and launched in November 2022, ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM) machine learning system that can understand spoken and written prompts and generate new, conversational responses based on the billions of pages of (pre-October 2021) Internet content it was trained on. Not only is the current GPT-3 model capable of analyzing vocabulary, context, and syntax to create new content and make predictions and decisions, but it’s also able to refine its answers when given more information and acknowledge its mistakes. 

As you know if you’ve taken ChatGPT for a spin, the interface is able to respond intelligently and imaginatively to just about any prompt. Within seconds, it can deliver everything from a silly rhyming poem about Taylor Swift to Internet-sourced advice on improving your finances or a how-to script based on company information you feed it yourself. 

AI is actually augmenting human creativity and productivity. Instead of replacing human workers, AI is being used to assist and enhance their abilities. By taking on repetitive and mundane tasks, AI allows humans to focus on more complex and creative endeavors.

Reid Hoffman
Founder of LinkedIn

A few months in, ChatGPT is already proving to be a useful tool for many content creators, including professionals in L&D, HR, Internal Comms, and Sales Enablement roles who are tasked with producing employee and marketing communications. 

However, figuring out how to most effectively use this powerful new tool isn’t totally obvious, even for early adopters with a head start. That’s why we created this guide. 

In it, you’ll get:

• Clarity on the pros and cons of using ChatGPT to make video scripts based on both Internet-sourced information and text you provide directly
• 20 ChatGPT prompts to use to generate scripts for common L&D, HR, Internal Comms, and Sales Enablement video content
• Tips on how to transform ChatGPT’s output into a more engaging, relevant, and effective final product
• And finally, one sample ChatGPT script makeover, courtesy of Vyond’s writers and video producers

Pros and cons of ChatGPT for business videos

ChatGPT has both great potential and noteworthy flaws. You should consider both as you’re experimenting with it. 

As of the writing of this article (February 2023), here are some of its most significant benefits and limitations.

ChatGPT benefits: 

• ChatGPT is great for brainstorming and first drafts. Fear of the blank page and lack of inspiration can be paralyzing. Using ChatGPT to quickly brainstorm new ideas, explore potential themes, and generate starter copy can help you get unstuck and move forward.
• ChatGPT can create content based on the information YOU feed it. Beyond producing responses to prompts based on the pre-October 2021 Internet data it was trained on, ChatGPT can create content based on the information you provide in your prompt. (We’ll explain how to do that in a bit, and cover whether sharing proprietary information with ChatGPT poses a security risk.)
• ChatGPT can mimic a wide range of writing styles and tones. Prompting ChatGPT to produce content in various styles allows you to get a quick read on which approach to a concept is most appropriate and effective.
• ChatGPT generally produces clear and grammatically correct copy. ChatGPT writes in a direct, concise style that many writers aspire to, and its output is largely free of grammatical mistakes.
• ChatGPT frees you up to focus on editing and refining. With ChatGPT assisting with brainstorming and early draft creation, you’ll have more time to carefully revise its starter content into more engaging and relevant final products.

ChatGPT limitations:

• As previously mentioned, ChatGPT is only trained on information found on the Internet prior to October 2021. As a result, its responses don’t reflect the most up-to-date information on topics, especially those that evolve quickly.

• ChatGPT sometimes gets it wrong. When prompted to use the Internet data it was trained on, ChatGPT will sometimes generate fabricated answers, create false citations–and produce biased responses. This is why carefully reviewing its output is always critically important. 
• ChatGPT doesn’t understand your content’s target audience nearly as well as you do. Yes, you can plug in some details about your audience into your prompt. But ultimately you know what makes your clients and employees tick–their pains, needs, and concerns–in a way that ChatGPT doesn’t—and can’t. This is why we included a section in this guide on transforming ChatGPT scripts into something great—because human touch is necessary. 
• ChatGPT isn’t great at offering suggestions for visuals. It understands how language works. It does not understand how images work. In the scripts we generated, the visual descriptions were generic and needed significant improvement.
• ChatGPT won’t steal your information, but you might still want to take precautions. ChatGPT isn’t capable of digesting your inputs and using them to answer other people’s questions; by design, your interaction with it exists in a vacuum. However, between you and ChatGPT, there are many Internet services, vendors, and API providers that could potentially steal or read any information you upload. For this reason, if you feed ChatGPT proprietary information as part of your prompt, consider redacting any sensitive or classified details, just to be safe.

AI algorithms trained on huge amounts of images or text can be capable of impressive feats. But because they mimic human-made images and text in a purely statistical way, rather than actually learning how the world works, such programs are also prone to making up facts and regurgitating hateful statements and biases — problems still present in ChatGPT.

Will Knight
Business Correspondent, Wired

What makes a good ChatGPT prompt? 

No matter your job role, or what you need to write, the starting point with ChatGPT is the same. To get output from the algorithm, you need to give it a prompt. 

ChatGPT writes convincingly, but it doesn’t have ideas of its own. It’s neither sentient nor omniscient. Instead, it repurposes what it has found on the internet. So the quality of your prompts is all-important. 

A prompt can be as simple as “write me a script for a recruitment video” and it can be written in any way you like. But for the best results, we’d recommend including the following elements as a baseline:

Who: What kind of person do you want ChatGPT to act as—and who is the target audience for the video? 

What: What’s the deliverable you want? And what’s the intent and topic of the content? 

How: What kind of tone should ChatGPT use? 

(Optional) User-sourced data: You can also provide ChatGPT with specific words or phrases you want ChatGPT to include, or feed it large chunks of text to digest and use to create a response. In the prompt, indicate the specific language you want ChatGPT to incorporate or process by placing it within quotation marks. 

Here’s what a prompt with these elements might look like:

Act as an employee training manager. Write a two-minute script for an animated video with a voiceover telling junior engineers what to do in case of an emergency shutdown alarm. Set the video in an oil refinery. Write in an informative and reassuring tone. Include the following information in your response: “Emergency Shutdown steps: Safely store and secure all hazardous materials. Close gas valves and secure gas cylinders.  Ensure cryogenic liquids are properly vented. Check moisture-sensitive materials and equipment”

20 ChatGPT video script prompts 

Now that you understand the anatomy of a good video script prompt, spend some time playing around with variations on the ChatGPT webpage. If you’d like more ideas on what to include or how to phrase your request, try using one of these 20 sample prompts as a template. 

They’re each around 100 words long and can be easily adapted to include both language you’d like included verbatim and proprietary information you’d like ChatGPT to respond to in its output. (To be clear, the language within brackets and quotation marks isn’t to be typed in as is; it indicates where you’d add information you want ChatGPT to integrate into its response.)

Three notes before you dig in: 

1. It’s worth repeating that the default results ChatGPT delivers will be based only on Internet data from before October 2021 (which, as of this writing is 17 months ago). Therefore some of the results you get may provide a workable structure for your video but contain details you’ll need to change out with more current or company-specific information. 
2. We kept these sample prompts short on purpose, but ChatGPT can accommodate prompts that are much longer. With models like this, input data is measured in units called “tokens,” not words. And as of February 2023, the limit for a single prompt was 2,048 tokens, which is about 1,500 words, according to OpenAI. This means that you can feed ChatGPT your own information, up to about 1500 words at a time, and prompt it to create outputs based on that information. 
3. That said, keep in mind that the longer the deliverable you request, the more likely GPT-3 (and LLMs in general) are to veer off-topic. Therefore, you’ll likely get better results if you break long projects into sections, create a prompt for each one, and then stitch together the responses into a unified whole after the fact.

ChatGPT Prompts for Learning & Development:

1. New manager training 

Act as an L&D specialist. Write a training video script for someone who has recently been promoted to manager. Their new job is in the tech industry for a company called CreateIT which strives to solve your IT problems with the most innovative solutions. Write in a professional, clear, and friendly tone. Include narration and directions for the visuals. Include the following information in your response: “[User enters preferred best practices for meetings here]”

2. Job skills tutorial

Act as a food hygiene specialist. Write a one-minute training video script for a restaurant called “The Sandwich Haven.” Include two characters, Dave and Erika, who interact with each other. Erika is teaching Dave how to make their best-selling sandwich while explaining important food hygiene guidelines. Include sandwich puns and jokes. Write in a friendly, knowledgeable tone. Include the following information in your response: “[User enters preferred best practices, details, and guidelines here]”

3. Accessibility Awareness

Act as an accessibility expert. Write a 90-second accessibility awareness video script featuring two characters—an office manager and a wheelchair user—who work for Write Right, a communications agency based in Chicago. Communicate the main points with dialogue. The script must mention accessibility adaptations for individuals who are neurodiverse, practical accessibility needs such as wheelchair access, as well as other necessary accessibility requirements. The tone should be friendly, clear, and approachable.

4. Importance of DEIB explainer 

Act as a diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) specialist. Write a one-minute video script that explains the importance of DEIB and how a DEIB workforce can benefit a company named Real IT. The video will explain the importance of DEIB to current employees and the company’s shareholders. Include information on the benefits of DEIB and how it will benefit Real IT’s service offerings. The tone needs to be clear, personable, and confident.

5. Soft skills explainer 

Act as a professional development trainer. Write a 5-minute video script for a soft skills workshop that explains how to improve decision making, communication, and problem solving skills. State why these skills are important to the product design industry. Characters should include a trainer and a class of students learning the skills. Write in a friendly, professional tone.

ChatGPT Prompts for Human Resources: 

6. Open enrollment benefits summary

Write a 90-second video script explaining HealthCo.’s open enrollment benefits. Explain that there is a limited open enrollment period and employees have until March 6th to submit their benefit choices for the year. The tone needs to be clear, friendly, and approachable. I will provide benefits details. My request: “Benefits details: 10% increase in premiums on PPO plan, the new dental provider is SmileRight, pet insurance benefits increased 50%, life insurance plans for smokers no longer available, childcare voucher up 25%, gym membership now free for all full-time employees”

7. Data security compliance training 

Act as a security compliance expert. Write a 90-second video script for a compliance training video for staff at a large marketing firm based in California. They have a database with more than 500,000 contacts and must be compliant with CCPA guidelines on data privacy. Include information about what employees need to do to be compliant, how to adhere to these guidelines, and what happens if any of these guidelines are broken. The audience is the marketing agency’s employees. Use this quote directly: “Our customers’ data must be protected at all times.”

8. Job openings announcement 

Act as a senior recruiter working for Eola Pharmaceuticals, a company that specializes in products for women going through menopause. Write a 45-second video script for Clara who is looking to hire three new scientists to join the lab in Denver. The audience is potential new employees who will want to know what the company does, its main values, company benefits, and how to apply for the job. Include the steps in the recruitment process. Write in a friendly, enthusiastic tone. Include the following information in your response: “[User enters job details here]”

9. New hire onboarding 

Act as a member of the HR team at a construction company based in Carson City, Nevada. Write a two-minute video script for a new hire onboarding video. The new hires are all construction workers who need to know the best practices and regulations of being on a building site in Nevada. Write in a knowledgeable, friendly tone. Include the following information in your response: “[User enters company information details here]”

10. Sexual harassment prevention video 

Act as an HR manager. Write a 3-minute video script on sexual harassment in the workplace for managers at a clothing manufacturer. Include a definition of sexual harassment, information on how to report harassment, and the policies in place to protect employees. It must comply with harassment laws in California. The tone is authoritative, sensitive, and clear. Follow this style: Caption: What is sexual harassment? Voiceover: Sexual harassment is any kind of unwanted behavior of a sexual nature that makes you feel humiliated or intimidated, or that creates a hostile environment.

ChatGPT Prompts for Internal Communications: 

11. Annual report highlights 

Act as a Chief Financial Officer. Write a 60-second script for an annual report summary video that celebrates the company’s success. The tone should be upbeat and encouraging. Include the following information in your response: “[User enters information about the company’s top salesperson, net profit, most profitable product, sales targets that were hit and missed here]”

12. New family leave policy 

Act as an HR director. Write a 60-second video script explaining the company’s new family leave policy to all employees. Include the quote “We know that both parents need the time to bond with their new baby.” The audience is all company employees. Write in a casual, empathetic tone. Include visual suggestions for an animated video. Include the following information in your response: “[User enters policy details here]”

13. Employee Appreciation 

Act as a CEO grateful for the hard work your employees have put in this year. Write a 45-second long video script to send to employees in appreciation of their efforts. Write in an energetic, enthusiastic, friendly tone.

14. Monthly sales update 

Act as the VP of Sales for a car dealership called Car Hub. Write a script for a video that can be used each month to update the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) on the company’s monthly sales figures. The script must be able to be reused each month. The tone needs to be clear and formal. Include the following information in your response: “[User enters details here]”

15. Company culture and values 

Act as if you work in HR. Write a 90-second video script describing your company’s culture and values. Audience: potential new employees and customers. Describe the culture in a positive way. Include “compassion for the environment” as a company value and include placeholders for 3 more values. Write in an energetic, informal tone. Include 3 characters interacting in the script. Include a story about an employee named Alice who recently joined the company.

Chat GPT Prompts for Sales Enablement: 

16. Product explainer (for prospects)

Act as an account executive. Write a video script for a 60-second explainer video that explains how to use your new product—a self-cleaning microwave. Explain to the user how to use the product and leave placeholders to highlight four key special features of the product. The audience is potential buyers of this new microwave who have visited your website and attended a webinar. In the script, include an interaction between a sales rep and a potential buyer. The tone is friendly, casual, and persuasive.

17. Competitor comparison

Write a 45-second script for an animated video that compares Salesforce and Hubspot. The audience is any company deciding which platform to use. Analyze both Salesforce and Hubspot, give the pros and cons of each. The script should be conversational and contain humor. Include visual descriptions throughout that reflect the narration.

18. Customer case study 

Write as a successful marketing agency that is showcasing the success of their work. Produce a 90-second script for a case study video that demonstrates how you helped a client, StuffCo, that was struggling to grow their e-commerce business. Talk about how retargeting ads and a funny social media presence made a big difference. At the end of the script, include a call to action to the marketing agency’s website. The tone should be positive, enthusiastic, and friendly. Include the following information: “[User enters increased sales data and specific testimonial quotes here]”

19. Cold call best practices

Act as an expert in cold–calling. Write a script for a video detailing five best practices. Your audience is a group of sales reps struggling to make successful cold calls, who are trying to increase their success rate by at least 15%. Include a metric detailing how you can measure the improved success of the reps. Write the script following the traditional storytelling structure: a beginning (set the scene and describe how the rep is struggling to cold call); a middle (the rep learns new tricks) and an ending (the rep’s success rate has increased). Write in a positive, casual tone.

20. Data security overview 

Act as a data security expert. You work for Vyond. Write a video script that sales reps can use to reassure potential buyers of Vyond’s enterprise-grade standards for data security. Include a brief description of Vyond and what data security is. The script should be 90 seconds long. Write in a persuasive, knowledgeable, and friendly tone. Include the following information in your response: “[User enters details here]”

How to improve ChatGPT-generated scripts

Whether you’re using one of our suggested prompts as a template or writing your own from scratch, you’ll likely find that the first script that ChatGPT offers leaves room for improvement. Here are some ways to improve that first draft. 

• First, try out a few more ChatGPT prompts. Before you start editing the script yourself, consider adjusting your ChatGPT prompt and regenerating a few more responses first. Add more details, change the tone, and clarify the structure you had in mind. Then use whichever elements you like the most. 
• Differentiate the characters. If your script features multiple characters interacting with each other, take the time to give them distinguishing traits or dialogue that an audience will have an emotional reaction to. Audiences respond to stories. And good stories require distinct, relatable characters and conflict, however minor. 
• Improve the visual descriptions. The visual descriptions ChatGPT serves up in its video scripts are usually generic and uninspired. (At this point, ChatGPT is a far better script writer than production designer.) The on-screen text and visuals you choose for your videos are just as important as the narration or dialogue. So strive to create visuals that are unexpected, engaging, and that pair well with your narration and dialogue. 
• Cut repeated or redundant elements. ChatGPT will sometimes say the same thing in different ways, adding unnecessary words. Look for instances of this and cut them.
• Be more tactical about length, pacing, and transitions. You don’t want your videos to drag. So ask yourself: Is every scene or line of dialogue accomplishing something important–or is some of it window dressing? Are there more interesting ways to jump from one section to the next? Could you jump into a scene sooner? Might your three-minute video be better if it was half as long? And so on.
• Watch out for contradictions. In one script ChatGPT generated for us, visual directions were included (“a shot of a quiet office”) which was at odds with the dialogue (“our office is always busy, filled with a buzz”). Be on alert for these inconsistencies. 
• Check and refine the language. ChatGPT’s output can sometimes sound clichéd. If you find your copy includes too many industry buzzwords or overused expressions, tweak your script accordingly. 

Sample Chat GPT Script Makeover 

We thought it would be instructive to edit some ChatGPT-generated content. So we prompted ChatGPT to create a short recruitment video and asked a few of our scriptwriters and video producers to both edit the results and explain why they made the changes they did.

ChatGPT Prompt:

Write a 45-second recruitment video script for a junior finance officer for DDP Logistics, a global logistics company based in Florida. Responsibilities include basic accounting, data entry, reconciliations, data verifications, and variance analysis. Need to be good with computers. Include “Very proficient in excel, salesforce, and powerBI.” Benefits include a competitive salary, health insurance, annual bonus, pension plan, and gym membership. Do not mention any financial decision-making. They will get regular training and mentorship. Applications are now open, include a placeholder to add the web link for applications and an email address you can contact about the applications. Write in an enthusiastic, friendly, and approachable tone.

Chat GPT Output:

[45 seconds video starts playing]

[Intro music and company logo]

[Narrator speaks in an enthusiastic and friendly tone]

Attention all finance enthusiasts! Are you looking to join a dynamic and fast-growing global logistics company? Well, look no further! DDP Logistics is seeking a Junior Finance Officer to join our team in Florida.

[Cut to images of a finance department at work, data entry, reconciliations, etc.]

As a Junior Finance Officer, you’ll be a valuable member of our finance team, where your responsibilities will include basic accounting, data entry, reconciliations, data verifications, and variance analysis. Plus, you’ll need to be proficient in Excel, Salesforce, and PowerBI!

[Cut to a shot of someone using a computer]

We’re looking for someone who’s good with computers and has strong attention to detail.

[Cut to images of benefits such as a gym, training room, mentorship etc.]

In return for your hard work, DDP Logistics offers a competitive salary, health insurance, an annual bonus, a pension plan, and a gym membership! Plus, regular training and mentorship will be provided to help you grow and succeed in your career.

[Outro music and company logo]

[Narrator speaks in an enthusiastic and friendly tone]

So, what are you waiting for? Take the first step in your finance career and apply now! Simply visit our website [INSERT WEB LINK HERE] or email [INSERT EMAIL ADDRESS HERE] for more information. Join the DDP Logistics team and make your finance dreams a reality!

Our assessment:

The ChatGPT script provides a decent foundation to build on. It uses a standard structure for hooking a viewer; covers common responsibilities and benefits; and has a call to action. That said, we felt the script was lacking in a few areas, which prompted us to make these changes:

• Replaced some terms related to the role and audience that weren’t exactly right
• Cut down the copy to quicken the pace
• Fixed a few minor grammatical errors
• Added the word “you” more often, to more directly appeal to the viewer
• Significantly revised the visual suggestions, which were very generic
• Replaced them with visuals that played off the information conveyed in the voice-over, added a consistent main character

After we edited the script, we decided to actually create it in Vyond. Here’s the final result:

Some final (Vyond-generated) thoughts: 

ChatGPT, while imperfect, is a powerful tool to be celebrated and embraced, not feared or ignored.

Prompted with intention and used with care, ChatGPT is already helping thousands of content creators push past writer’s block, generate fresh ideas and first drafts, and produce high-quality finished products more quickly than they could otherwise. So if you’re hesitant about leaning in, don’t be. Understanding its capabilities and getting comfortable using it will make you better at your job. 

In the months ahead, we’ll keep an eye on how OpenAI and other companies producing Generative AI tools navigate concerns around intellectual property, citation, and privacy. And as newer versions of ChatGPT emerge, and the model improves, we’ll continue to test out new prompts, identify evolving best practices, and update this guide as needed. 

And to see for yourself why millions of users love using Vyond’s AI-powered video creation technology to bring their wildest script ideas to life, sign up for our 14-day free trial.

The post How to Use ChatGPT to Create Great Business Video Scripts: 20 Prompts and Editing Advice for L&D, HR, and Sales appeared first on Vyond.