Intranet Content Series: Create “person on the street” videos for engagement

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A big part of internal communications planning involves managing an editorial calendar and keeping engaging content coming. For intranets, (purposeful) content is king! Thus, our Intranet Content Blog Series focuses on several practical content tips organizations can use to keep employees coming back to the intranet.

Why videos should be used in your intranet

Late night talk show hosts have made a killing interviewing normal people on the street about current events, history, and geography. Why? Because they’re entertaining! So to boost your intranet’s engagement, today we’re introducing the concept of ‘Street Videos’.

We’ll be the first to acknowledge than intranets should be more than just fun content and humans of new york videos, but let’s remind ourselves what we’re trying to achieve: improved company culture and a stronger cohesion among employees.

So what is a “Street Video?”

You and your team are going to get a topic, show up unannounced at various coworkers’ desks, ask the question while a camera is rolling, and piece video footage from various interviews together.

How to create ‘person on the street’ videos for intranet engagement

The Rules:

Brand the video series: These will build on each other and when successful, your coworkers will look forward to new installments.

Keep a regular cadence: Do one every month. Set a calendar and stick to a rhythm. This cadence along with your other programmatic series will help drive continuous intranet adoption.

Keep videos low-tech and timely: You should be content filming with your smartphone and editing content together in something easy like iMovie. The whole thing shouldn’t take more than a few hours of work.

Develop a personality: Identify someone to be your interviewing personalities. The consistency will help enforce the content and the publicity will call attention to your internal communications function.

Pro Tip: Pick someone that’s fun!

Coach the interviewees to be brief: Start a question with, “In ten seconds or less…” Attention spans are short.

Consciously alternate interviewees: Over time, you want to be sensitive to who participates. Make sure you cover different locations and departments.

Keep the videos short: 1-2 minutes is the goal here for your intranet. You don’t want these things to drag on.

If you want to take this even more seriously, we found a good blog post on man on the street videos with 21 more tips.

Intranet video interview topics to get you started

Ready to go? Here are some intranet video ideas to get you started, but once you give it more thought, we’re sure you’ll come up with even better ideas!

  • Show up at a company event, like a sales kickoff and ask what employees are excited about
  • Quiz people on the company’s products Jeopardy style.
  • If you were a superhero who would you be?
  • Tell me one thing about you your coworkers don’t know
  • Series of binary questions followed by “How come?” (Coke or Pepsi, Ocean or the Alps, Would you rather save a friend or a village, etc.)
  • What are your five minutes of fame?
  • What does [holiday] mean to you?
  • If you could bring back one person from the past, who would it be? And why?
  • Where is the favorite place you traveled to and why?
  • Recite your favorite quote.
  • Who is your role model?
  • What was the last thing you did on the company intranet?
  • What was the best advice you got from a previous boss?
  • Tell me a joke!
  • Tell me about a life-changing experience
  • What are your proudest accomplishments?
  • What advice would you tell your 18-year-old self?
  • Who do you want to win the Superbowl?
  • What is your favorite customer story?

Start your intranet videos series today

Give it a try! You’ll have a lot of fun and you’re sure to get people viewing these intranet videos. With all intranet content, planning is important. You’ll want to do these efficiently and stay ahead of the content calendar so you can try different topics and gain momentum.

Keep your organization engaged! Check out our intranet content blog series:

Creating a roadmap for your humans of New York-style videos
Using the intranet for digital coffee breaks
Intranet content CEO playbook
Essential content every intranet needs
Getting employees to complete their profiles
Intranet topics to engage employees for every month

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