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If you’re like most HR leaders, you’re probably looking for unique and effective ways to motivate, inspire, and engage your employees while they’re at work.

You might have heard of gamification – an approach that uses gaming elements like levels, rewards, and points systems to increase user engagement – and wondered how well this would play out in the workplace. 

The short answer is that gamification can be a truly powerful strategy to improve employee engagement. To understand how and why, however, we’ll need to dive a little deeper. 

In this article, we’ll explore five of the most compelling benefits of gamification in the workplace and discover how it leads to enhanced learning outcomes and a greater desire for ongoing learning. We’ll also cover some of the most commonly used gamification tactics and provide a brief guide to incorporating gamification into your own employee engagement strategy.

How do companies use gamification in the workplace? 

Let’s first take a step back and examine some major use cases for gamification at work:

New employee onboarding

Employee onboarding is a classic use case for gamification.

As new hires progress through various learning modules, watch AI video presentations, and sign critical paperwork, they can track their advancement against a progress bar or with a points system.

Interactive features like quizzes and checkpoints can provide additional enhancements by requiring learners to demonstrate that they've digested the knowledge.

Here’s an example of an AI video presentation for employee onboarding created using Colossyan: 

Learning and development

After the initial onboarding phase is ongoing employee training and development.

You can just as easily apply game-like elements here to enhance the learning process. For example, as they progress through additional training modules, employees could earn points to cash in through a corporate rewards system. 

Task management

At a smaller level, you can apply your gamification strategy to employees’ day-to-day work by gamifying task management.

Consider your sales team. Each team member is responsible for a set number of activities each day, from calls and emails to social media messages and more. You can easily gamify these with progress bars.

You could also add a scoring system to each activity. For instance, a sales development representative (SDR) might get one point for logging a phone call or 20 for booking a meeting. This system can create a little friendly competition in the work environment as SDRs strive to come out on top.

Career progress tracking

Finally, the broader process of monitoring career progress can also benefit from a little gamification.

Say one of those SDRs wants to move up into an account executive role. Their manager could map out the various training programs they need to pass, behaviors they need to exhibit, and new skills they need to adopt before they’re ready to step up. Tracking these milestones can be like monitoring progress in a video game. 

5 benefits of gamification in the workplace 

Gamified learning can have powerful real-world effects on employee performance, company culture, and overall productivity.

Here are five of the most important gamification benefits to consider:

1. Enhanced learning outcomes

Gamification initiatives can improve learning material retention and may even motivate further learning.

Two meta-analysis studies that combined research from different fields demonstrated that “applying gamification in education can improve cognitive, motivational, and behavioral learning outcomes.”

By incorporating gamification in the workplace, you can not only make your team’s work more enjoyable, but also enhance learning outcomes in the process. 

2. Higher employee engagement

Similarly, gamification has the powerful ability to increase engagement among workers. Employees at companies that use gamified programs regularly report an increase in engagement.

In fact, in a study from Talent LMS, 89% of respondents stated that gamified tasks motivate them more than non-gamified tasks.

3. Increased employee advocacy

As employees engage more with their work and feel more fulfilled, their overall satisfaction in the workplace increases.

This satisfaction often enhances employee advocacy, which is when company employees take action to promote their employer through social media posts, personal recommendations, or other mediums. It also has an important effect on retention and hiring, which allows you to improve your talent pool.

4. Better team building

Not all gamification initiatives need to focus on the individual. In fact, you can use gamification to inspire teamwork by adding in a bit of friendly competition.

For instance, departments can compete against one another for points, monitor rankings in real time, and band together to win the current prize.

5. Improved desire for ongoing learning

When applied to the learning domain, gamification not only improves engagement with existing learning materials but also motivates employees to want to learn more.

Gamification provides employees with a little burst of motivation each time they pass a module and fuels their desire to absorb more information and continue upskilling. You can also integrate gamification into your LMS platform for additional benefits.

What features make gamification fun for employees? 

When it comes to implementing gamification in your own company, you’ll need to figure out what gaming elements will improve your employees’ engagement and productivity. Here are some examples to choose from:

Points and scoring

Employees can earn points for certain activities, such as ticking off daily to-do tasks, engaging in additional training, or completing projects. They can view these points in real time and redeem them for prizes like paid time off.

Leaderboards

To inspire positive competition, you can display current scores on a leaderboard, either for individuals or teams. This can also be an effective way to spot underperformers so you can provide additional support.

Levels and progression

Levels are a way to create progression without a number of different role names, reporting lines, or seniority grades.

For instance, new software developers might start out at level one and progress up to level five based on their ability to demonstrate core competencies, complete certain training modules, or take on additional responsibilities.

Badges and achievements

You can grant your employees badges alongside points and levels to highlight specific achievements, such as completing first aid training or engaging in an employee buddy system.

Rewards and incentives

You can use rewards and incentives to gamify work in a variety of ways:

• Employees can collect points and redeem them for desirable rewards like flexible working hours.
• You can incentivize particular behaviors (like achieving 120% of a sales quota for the month) with spot rewards. 
• Group-based rewards, such as a paid team outing, can also be an effective way to inspire collaboration.

Social interaction and collaboration 

A key aspect of many modern games is the ability to interact with others and collaborate socially. Group-based rewards and incentives, leaderboards, and inter-employee competitions can all contribute to greater social cohesion and workplace collaboration.

How to start incorporating gamification into your training 

Interested in leveraging gamification to increase employee engagement with training materials? Follow these five steps to get started:

1. Clarify your training objectives

First, make sure you’re clear on what you want employees to get out of your training plan.

For example, are you:

• Looking to give workers a broad overview of how other departments contribute to organizational success?
• Aiming to upskill employees in particular roles?
• Providing company-wide health and safety training?

Gaining clarity on your objectives, along with who you expect to engage in the training program, sets you up for success in the next steps.

2. Build out a training content plan

Next, design a plan for creating training content that aligns with the objectives you’ve identified.

For instance, if your goal for your training content is to provide administration team members with a greater understanding of financial compliance, you might plan out several learning modules that cover accounting practices, tax requirements, and data security legislation.

3. Design your game mechanics 

Here, you’ll determine what game elements you’re going to include in your workplace training plan.

Will learners accumulate points for each educational video they watch? Will you set up a leaderboard to encourage friendly competition? How and for what will employees redeem their points?

Establishing these elements will help you when it comes time to create your content.

Also read: The 10 Best Training Video Production Companies To Check Out

4. Accelerate gamified content creation using AI 

This step is where many companies get stuck. They know that they want to leverage video for its superior engagement and retention, but they don’t have the time or budget to produce all the videos they need in a timely manner.

That’s where AI video generation tools like Colossyan come into play. With Colossyan, you can use custom AI avatars to access authentic storytelling, create effective employee onboarding sequences, and generate informative learning material in a matter of minutes.

Colossyan also has some built-in gamification functionality and many more interactivity features – such as multiple choice quizzes and branching scenarios. 

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5. Test, gather feedback, and iterate

Now that all of your learning content is ready and you’ve worked out your gamification tactics, it’s time to bring it all together and start engaging your workforce.

Consider rolling out gamified learning in phases to learn from any hiccups as you go. For example, you may want to start by introducing gamification to just one department at a time. 

Be sure to ask for feedback from team members as well to find out what tactics are the most engaging and motivating. You can then implement that feedback as you iterate on your gamification strategy.

Take advantage of the benefits of gamification in the workplace 

Workplace gamification confers a number of important benefits, from increased employee engagement to improved knowledge retention. When it comes to employee training, gamified video content can be a powerful way to improve learning outcomes while increasing motivation.

Colossyan Creator, our enterprise-grade AI video generation tool, helps you create video learning content at scale. It can even help you gamify the learning experience with interactive features like knowledge checks.

Try it out for yourself today.

Implementing a B2B video marketing strategy can be difficult, as traditional video content requires a large investment of time and resources. 

You need to write a script, hire actors, and spend a lot of time editing to achieve good-quality results. 

Even so, videos are the most popular content format used by marketing teams, with 94% of content marketers using videos as part of their strategy. 

If you’re looking to begin creating engaging B2B video content of your own, you’re in the right place. 

In this blog, we’ll walk you through the benefits of a B2B video marketing strategy and share 7 tips for creating good content – including a way that you can scale your video creation process using AI. 

Why implement a B2B video marketing strategy? 

Rest assured, most marketers who invest in creating engaging B2B video content see good results. 

In fact, a recent survey found that 90% of marketers say video has given them a positive ROI, with benefits including increased brand awareness, web traffic, better lead generation, and increased website dwell time. 

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Here’s a look at some of the other top benefits of implementing a video marketing strategy: 

Better conversion rates

Providing visual proof of your solution’s effectiveness makes prospects much more likely to take action and book a demo or start a free trial of your product. 

According to Hubspot, embedding relevant video content onto landing pages has been found to increase conversions by up to 86%. 

Think of it this way – instead of requiring a potential prospect to browse your website to fully understand basic information like your services or customer testimonials, videos help centralize this information and quickly decide whether to proceed with your company. 

Increases engagement

Creating engaging content is key in capturing – and retaining – your audience’s attention. Plus, B2B audiences are often inundated with information, so finding ways to break through the noise is critical. 

Fortunately, video offers a solution that combines both visual and auditory elements to create a more immersive viewing experience for your audience. 

Whereas a wall of text explaining the value of your product would’ve quickly lost your audience’s attention, a brief explainer video outlining the main use case and benefits can help them understand the benefits more quickly. 

Improves understanding 

Depending on the complexity of your offerings, video might be the most convenient way to explain your product information or service offerings in the most straightforward and easy-to-understand manner. 

Video allows you to break complex topics into more digestible segments, giving prospects a complete understanding of how your offerings work. 

Plus, video is an incredibly flexible medium, meaning you can add infographics, animations, and other visuals to help boost audience understanding. 

7 tips for creating engaging B2B video content 

Maybe you’re considering diving into the world of B2B video for the very first time, or perhaps you’re already creating videos of your own. 

Either way, here are our 7 best tips for creating an engaging B2B video that breaks through the noise and helps you connect with potential prospects. 

1. Identify your target audience and objective 

First thing’s first – decide who you’re creating this video for, and what you hope to accomplish. 

Your product or service might have several different use cases, which means you may want to customize your messaging to each segment of your target audience for maximum effectiveness. 

Let’s say your product can be used by both marketing and sales teams. A marketing leader will likely have a different set of needs and pain points than a sales executive, so creating videos targeted to each group is the best way to provide the information they’re each looking for. 

2. Focus on storytelling 

Especially when you’re trying to break down a complex topic or introduce a new product to your audience, focusing on storytelling is the best way to make your otherwise-boring content more personalized and engaging.

The best way to accomplish this when creating content for a B2B audience is by focusing on your viewers’ key pain points. 

Once you’ve identified their key challenges, craft a narrative that showcases how your product or service is able to solve these issues. Be sure to include real-world scenarios that are more likely to mirror your audience’s experiences. 

In other words, focus on showing how your solution can help a user overcome a significant challenge – rather than just listing generic feature offerings – to achieve a more memorable and impactful video result. 

3. Keep it concise 

Attention spans are short, especially in the B2B space. 

Try to deliver your core message within the first 30 seconds of your video, and aim to keep your entire video between 2-3 minutes long for maximum engagement. Highlighting the value of your product or service should be your top priority. 

Over use of jargon is one of the most common pitfalls that B2B video marketers can fall into, which can make your content unnecessarily wordy and confusing. Try to be as concise as possible, while explaining the value of your product or service in the most easy to understand way. 

4. Leverage customer testimonials 

Social proof is extremely important in B2B marketing. After all, there’s a reason why video testimonials were the single most popular use case for video marketing in 2024. 

Potential customers are much more likely to trust your solution if they hear from their peers about how your solution has had a positive impact for them. 

To create an engaging B2B video, you’ll want to include customer quotes and actual footage whenever possible. Be sure to specifically focus on the results you’ve helped them achieve, highlighting tangible numbers around ROI, for instance. 

Also read: How to Upgrade Your Customer Service With AI Video

5. Make it visually engaging 

Videos that feature a software product without additional visual support can easily fall flat. 

Instead, you’ll want to leverage captions, infographics, and images to guide your viewer through your video and keep them engaged for longer. 

Including a host to narrate your video is another way to make your content feel more personalized. Some teams even use AI avatars for this purpose, allowing them to make their content feel more engaging without having to hire actors and manually record content. 

6. Use clear CTAs

Every engaging B2B video should have a purpose, and your call-to-action (CTA) is what guides viewers toward that purpose. 

Once you’ve delivered your key message to your audience, it should be extremely easy for them to take that next step, whether that’s booking a demo, downloading a white paper, or visiting your website.  

Make your CTAs direct, simple, and aligned with the goals of your video campaign. You’ll want to be careful to not include multiple different CTAs either, as this can confuse viewers. 

A strong CTA turns passive viewers into active leads, which allows you to drive measurable results from your video marketing efforts. 

7. Scale your B2B video creation efforts with AI 

According to a study by Wyzowl, a lack of time is the number one barrier to entry marketers face when exploring video content. A third of marketers face this obstacle!

It’s true – creating B2B video content is typically very time consuming and resource intensive. However, many of these barriers to entry have been considerably lowered thanks to AI video tools. 

AI video platforms are an excellent way to scale your video production in a cost effective manner. After all, there’s a reason why 75% of video marketers say they’ve used AI to help them create or edit marketing videos. 

Take Colossyan as an example. Colossyan is an AI video platform that allows you to create videos using AI avatars and text-to-speech narration, meaning you can create high-quality content without any equipment.

Instead of spending valuable time hiring actors or finding an editor with the right skills to bring your project to life, you can skip the filming process altogether and create videos yourself with Colossyan’s easy-to-use editing interface. 

And for the 15% of marketers who don’t know where to start with video content, AI tools can help get your projects off the ground much faster. 

For example, Colossyan’s document-to-video feature allows you to upload a document in a range of different formats and transform it into a video draft complete with images, an AI avatar host, and a voiceover – all in less than 60 seconds. 

From there, you’re able to edit and customize the video draft to your liking. 

Takeaway

There you have it – those are our main tips for creating engaging B2B video content. 

All in all, a focus on storytelling will help you create videos that speak to your audience’s pain points and inspire your viewers to act on your CTAs. 

And don’t forget, if you’re looking for a way to boost your B2B video efforts but don’t have the capacity to manually create content at scale, you’ll want to look into an AI video tool like Colossyan. 

Instead of having to manually storyboard, write scripts, film, and edit every piece of content you create, Colossyan can help you create engaging videos in minutes, rather than days or weeks. 

Come see the Colossyan’s full potential for yourself and try it for free or schedule a demo to learn more.

August 22, 2024 – Colossyan, the AI video platform for workplace learning, has launched a new partnership with Easygenerator, a leading eLearning authoring tool designed to help users quickly create engaging and interactive eLearning courses. 

Colossyan's innovative text-to-speech AI avatars help L&D teams create professional-quality training content without any equipment in just minutes. By integrating Colossyan videos into Easygenerator courses, users can make their eLearning content more visually engaging and interactive. 

Additionally, both solutions eliminate the need for technical skills in the content creation process, lowering barriers to entry for video-based courses for L&D teams and making it easy to update content as it evolves. 

Beyond the technical integration, this partnership reflects Colossyan and Easygenerator’s shared commitment to creating high-quality interactive learning experiences with real impact. 

How to add Colossyan videos to Easygenerator courses 

Colossyan integrates with Easygenerator via SCORM export. To add AI-powered videos to your Easygenerator courses, download your Colossyan content as a SCORM package. 

Then, from Easygenerator’s course editor, select the section where you want to include your video, click on “Add Content,” and choose the “SCORM” option. 

From there, upload your file and configure your SCORM block settings – if needed – before publishing your course. Once your SCORM package is live, your Colossyan videos will now be embedded in your course content. 

About Colossyan 

Colossyan is the AI video platform for workplace learning. The tool enables teams to create professional-quality video content in minutes with the help of AI avatars and text-to-speech narration. 

Colossyan’s cutting-edge features allow L&D teams to avoid the high filming costs and scheduling delays typical of traditional video production and create content that’s significantly more cost effective and engaging than text-only material. 

About Easygenerator 

Easygenerator is a fast-growing and award-winning eLearning authoring solution that helps subject-matter experts create digital learning and performance content. eLearning content is faster and cheaper to create – and easier to update – when it’s produced by subject-matter experts rather than a central learning department. Easygenerator calls this approach Employee-Generated Learning.

While video is one of the most engaging mediums you can serve your audiences compared to stand-alone text or images, the problem is that viewers can’t actually engage with a traditional video. 

In a worst-case scenario, they’ll just listlessly skim through the video without retaining any of the information you worked so hard to put together.

But with the right interactive video software, you can turn that passive viewing experience into something else entirely. With just a click, interactive video content allows your viewers to unwrap the layers of a product demo, dive deep into a virtual training module, or navigate unique branching storylines.

In this article, we’ll walk you through everything you need to look for in an interactive video platform – from identifying important features to choosing the right video tool for your specific use case.

What is an interactive video platform? 

An interactive video platform provides users with robust tools to create, manage, and share interactive videos that engage viewers in ways that traditional video experiences can’t. 

These types of videos are not only more engaging, but also particularly effective in reducing cognitive load and improving long-term retention of information.

The different types of interactive videos

Here’s a closer look at the different types of videos you can make using an interactive video platform:

• Clickable videos with unique overlays and hotspots
• Branching scenario videos with menus and hyperlinks
• 360-degree shoppable videos for ecommerce
• Live interactive broadcasts with integrated quizzes

And that’s just scratching the surface. 

Compared to traditional video formats, interactive video gives business leaders and their teams a virtually unlimited number of ways to deliver information to their customers and employees – whether that means creating an interactive product demo or employee onboarding training.

The 5 most important features of interactive video software

As you evaluate the different interactive video solutions on the market, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of interactive features these tools can offer. 

However, as long as you focus on functionality to help you increase viewer engagement and maximize your video investment, you can dismiss other features as nice-to-haves.

Here are the key capabilities to look for in interactive video software:

1. Interactive elements

For starters, your video solution of choice should give you access to a range of interactive elements like hotspots, buttons, image overlays, quizzes, and hyperlinks to overlay on your videos. These features allow users to choose paths through different branched scenarios, jump to certain timestamps in your video, and navigate to external links via clickable hotspots.

But more importantly, all of these features should be user-friendly. Otherwise, you’ll be spending all your time learning how to use a new piece of software instead of creating interactive experiences for your viewers. 

Prioritizing software with intuitive, drag-and-drop functionality is one way to ensure that you can get started with these tools right away. 

For example, Colossyan gives its users access to a library of prebuilt interactive video templates so they can start the video editing process within a few minutes of signing up for the platform. All of these templates can be easily edited using drag-and-drop. 

Also read: How to Make an Interactive Video in Under an Hour

2. Analytics and reporting

Granular analytics and reporting functionality are also crucial for optimizing your interactive videos and demonstrating the return on investment (ROI) on your video marketing strategy, video ad campaigns, and any other use case you can think of. 

Seek out analytics features like real-time viewer monitoring, engagement metrics, playback behaviors, conversion tracking, and custom reports. These analytics will show you how viewers are engaging with your video content. They’ll also give you the data you need to make adjustments. 

This could mean adding a call to action at the end of each video to increase viewer conversions, or it might involve using a different type of video template altogether.

3. Customizability and branding

Matching your videos to your brand identity is key if you want your interactive corporate videos to be polished and professional. 

Specifically, you should prioritize solutions that offer custom templates, colors, logos, animations, and overlays – everything you need to ensure your videos stick out in a sea of sameness. 

For example, Colossyan gives users the ability to create their own company brand kit, allowing them to upload their brand logos, colors, text styles, and custom fonts and then use them across all of their interactive videos.

4. Compatibility and integration

Your interactive videos can’t exist in a vacuum – unless you want to make sure no one ever sees them. 

So if you care about increasing the size of your video audience, the software you choose should integrate seamlessly across your tech stack. Look for solutions with application program interface (API) connections or integrations with the customer relationship management tool (CRM), marketing automation, and learning management system (LMS) of your choice.

For teams creating eLearning content, SCORM export may be another non-negotiable. 

Not only will these integrations make it easier for you to distribute your video content, but they’ll also ensure that you can track the performance of your videos across platforms.

5. Security features

Just like with any other tool in your tech stack, robust security is a must. If you plan on publishing or distributing your video content at scale, you should prioritize security features like user authentication and access to data privacy controls. 

These features are necessary for many enterprise scale companies. Additionally, they’ll give your users the peace of mind that your content is safe to view.

Major use cases for interactive videos 

With a little bit of creativity and the right interactive video tools at your fingertips, you can create effective video assets for a wide array of other professional use cases. Here are just a few of the ways your teams can harness the potential of interactive video:

Employee training and development

The first use case on our list is eLearning.

Interactive video is a game-changer for employee training. Scenario-based branching stories allow your employees to choose their own adventure and apply new skills in a simulated learning environment. Then, based on their choices, your video training can branch out and adapt to reinforce certain concepts where needed. 

For example, you could create scenario-based sales training ideos that prompt your sales reps to find the appropriate response to specific product or pricing questions.

Or, could take your interactive training a step further by adding quizzes at the end of each of your video modules. For more complex topics, you can give your viewers the option to replay certain sections and work through your tutorials at their own pace. 

Ultimately, interactive video makes employee training more immersive and helps you improve retention to ensure that all of this new information sticks.

Marketing and sales

If your team needs help with video marketing and lead generation, you can use interactive videos to create a nearly unlimited number of assets for your go-to-market teams. 

For example, you could create and send an interactive sales deck to new leads that allows them to learn about the key aspects of your product or service that are most relevant to their needs. 

Then, you can embed a call to action at the end to increase the chances that they schedule a discovery call with your team.

Customer support and onboarding

As your company scales, you’ll need to increase the size and efficiency of your customer support team. However, rather than increasing your employee headcount, you could leverage interactive videos to provide your customers with self-service options 24/7. 

Let’s say your users need help troubleshooting a certain product feature over the weekend, but none of your customer support reps are available to help. In this case, you could offer them a video library that gives them access to interactive product demos and common troubleshooting scenarios to help them help themselves.

Need some inspiration for your interactive videos? Check our our list of the 5 best interactive video examples.

Event and webinar engagement

Last but not least, you can leverage interactive videos to add a unique participation element to all your virtual events and webinars. For example, you could give your presenters the option to embed live polls, Q&As, chats, and social feeds to turn your attendees into active participants.

This kind of gamification doesn’t just make your live events more entertaining; it also ensures that your attendees receive the full value from your video presentation.

Scaling your interactive video production with AI

It goes without saying that AI is changing the way we use technology – and that same rule applies to how we produce interactive videos.

AI drastically expedites interactive video creation with automation and video editing powered by machine learning algorithms. In layman’s terms, that means you can automate repetitive tasks like splicing footage, adding transitions, and translating audio into multiple languages in a matter of minutes.

A perfect example of this automation is Colossyan’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor, which allows users to customize their video templates, themes, and assets to match their brand style. 

And beyond an intuitive interface, Colossyan offers a document-to-video feature that enables you to transform your existing help desk documentation or sales assets into a fully produced video draft in just a few clicks.

Simply upload your document, select a template, and in less than 60 seconds later you’ll have a video draft complete with an AI avatar, voiceover, and images. From there, you can edit it to your liking. With features like this, it’s never been easier to scale your video production.

Choosing the best interactive video software for your use case

At this point, you should have a good idea of what interactive video features you should look for, but that doesn’t make it any easier to choose the right tool – especially when you have a limited budget and stakeholders to impress.

If you still need help, here’s a simple framework you can use:

1. Assess your needs: To start, figure out who your audiences are and what types of videos you want to make. Then, decide where you'll share them and what success looks like. This will show you which features you need.
2. Research your software options: Use platforms like G2 and Capterra to look at different interactive tools and compare features like video elements, analytics, branding, customer support, and pricing. From here, you can make a short list of the ones that meet your needs.
3. Test-drive the platforms: Ask for demos and try free trials if they’re available. Once you have access, make a few sample videos and get feedback from your team to see how easy to use and useful the different platforms are.
4. Vet the vendors: Once you’ve narrowed down your search, see how long your interactive video vendors have been around and who uses them. Community forums like Reddit and dedicated Slack groups are a good way to find this kind of information.
5. Select the best fit: Finally, pick the tool that best aligns with your budget and objectives and get started.

Start producing interactive videos with Colossyan

With a bit of creativity and the right interactive tools, you can quickly produce high-quality videos at scale for a virtually unlimited number of use cases. With Colossyan, you’ll have everything you need to create videos that will change the way you deliver content to both your customers and team members across your organization.

Want to start producing interactive videos of your own? Try out Colossyan for free or schedule a time with our team to learn more.

Employee training is a necessary evil; you know it’s important, but between your daily tasks, KPIs, company revenue goals, and personal responsibilities, it’s hard to find the time to get it done. 

And when you consider that an employee onboarding and training process can range from a few days to an entire year, finding the time to create up-to-date training can feel virtually impossible.

This is where online video training makes a huge difference.

Creating a few simple how-to videos will allow you and your teams to scale up your employee training programs across multiple topics, including onboarding, sales training, cybersecurity training, leadership training, and much more. And with the influx of new AI video creation technology, it’s never been easier to start producing high-quality videos at scale.

In this post, we’ll share six examples of different how-to videos you can create within your company and how you can use AI to streamline the production process.

The benefits of creating how-to videos for employee training

At first glance, creating a series of how-to training videos seems like a daunting task – especially when you account for the research, lengthy production timelines, editing, and revisions involved in putting out a single video.

However, the benefits far outweigh the cons. For starters, video assets like these are evergreen and become permanent fixtures in your onboarding and training workflows once they’re complete. 

Here are some of the other major benefits of creating how-to videos for employee training.

Decrease employee onboarding times

How-to videos are a fantastic way to streamline the onboarding process for new hires. Rather than spending hours in your initial training sessions, you can direct new employees to pre-recorded videos on all the essential procedures and policies needed to start working at your company.

Not only does this free up time for your existing staff, but it also allows your new team members to learn at their own pace and rewatch these videos when they have questions. 

Keep your teams up-to-date on new processes

No matter how long employees have been with your organization, they’ll have to keep up with processes that are constantly evolving. How-to videos provide an easy solution for keeping everyone updated on any changes within their direct team or across your organization.

By leveraging AI video technology, you can easily create new how-to videos to ensure your teams are consistently up-to-date on new processes and procedures. 

Increase accessibility and inclusion

Not only is creating how-to videos important for your employees who may be visually impaired, but it also benefits your team members who learn best from a combined visual or auditory medium like video. Unlike text-based mediums, a good how-to video should help you explain complex concepts in just a few minutes.

Plus, employees at fast-growing companies don’t necessarily have hours to spend poring over text-based manuals or SOPs with step-by-step instructions, so a how-to video allows them to watch and process new information at their own pace. 

Enhance employee engagement and retention

Video is more engaging than plain text alone. Videos evoke stronger emotional responses than text, keeping viewers interested and engaged for longer periods.

And it’s not just because of the visual element; by using dedicated video creation software, you can add interactive elements, like polls or quizzes, that just aren’t possible on a text-based document.

Greater cost efficiency over time

While video production sometimes requires a greater upfront investment of time and money, it’s much more cost-effective than repetitive in-person training sessions – especially over the long term when you amortize the costs and time savings over months or years.

6 how-to video examples for corporate training

You can create how-to videos for a virtually unlimited number of use cases. As a general rule of thumb, if a detailed company process requires a tutorial or lengthy explanation, you can probably create an instructional how-to video for it instead. 

However, for the purposes of this article, we’ll walk through six types of how-to video examples for you to reference. Even better, we've included templates for each of these video tutorials and trainings so you can get started right away.

1. Compliance and ethics training

At most companies, employees are required to complete mandatory compliance courses on topics like anti-harassment, data privacy, and health and safety. This is due to the wide range of federal, state, and local regulations that make compliance training a requirement. 

And when you factor in any additional industry-specific standards and internal company policies, that’s a lot of material to work through.

However, by creating a series of how-to videos on your employees’ mandatory compliance training, they’ll be able to breeze through the content and get back to their day-to-day responsibilities. Here’s a quick example of a compliance training video that you could create within a platform like Colossyan:

Get the video template.

2. Continuing education

Creating a series of how-to videos is also a great way to support your employees’ ongoing skills development. For instance, a manufacturing plant could record video guides on how to operate new machinery. Or a tech company could publish tutorials showing employees tips and tricks on how to get more value from their internal tools or tech stack. 

This training could extend to soft skills as well, like how to give effective feedback or strategic planning and decision-making. Here’s an example that we created with Colossyan to illustrate our point:

Get the video template.

3. Leadership training

Similar to continuing education for your employees, managers and team leads can also benefit from video lessons focused on leadership. With the right video creation tools, you can quickly produce videos on how to delegate difficult conversations, run a weekly 1:1 meeting, or give a fair performance review. 

Here’s an example video on coaching and mentoring that you could give to your managers:

Get the video template.

4. Sales training

For sales teams, ongoing training in new sales techniques is a must. But instead of building a repetitive slide deck or waiting to meet in person once a quarter, you can create how-to videos that walk your reps through specific tactics and strategies based on your company’s sales process.

For example, your sales leaders could create video clips modeling effective cold calling, how to respond to objections on a sales call, and negotiating strategies. These efforts will standardize best practices across your sales teams and ensure your reps are making the most out of every potential customer engagement.

Here’s an example sales training video to help illustrate our point:

Get the video template.

5. Product training

Regardless of their department, everyone in your company needs a baseline understanding of the products and services your company provides. 

However, as your organization scales and you expand into new verticals or release new products, it’ll become increasingly difficult for new hires to learn and retain all of this information.

This is where instructional videos come in handy yet again. With a little effort upfront, you can publish a series of videos to ensure that everyone in your organization understands your company’s core service offerings, who you serve, and what makes you stand out in the marketplace.

Here’s an example of a product training video we created using Colossyan:

Get the video template.

6. Cybersecurity training

According to Harvard Business Review, the number of cybersecurity threats companies are facing each year is steadily increasing. This is largely due to the fact that companies are using more SaaS and cloud applications than ever before, creating more opportunities for hackers and bad actors.

Creating detailed cybersecurity training and best practices is crucial for neutralizing these threats. Everyone in your company should have a basic understanding of how to identify and avoid any potential threats that could harm your business.

To implement this training, you could create a series of how-to videos on topics like identifying phishing emails, strong password practices, safe information handling procedures, and immediate steps to take in the event of a cybersecurity breach.

Here’s an example of a cybersecurity training video made with Colossyan:

Get the video template.

Common problems with corporate video production

At this point, we’ve made a pretty strong case for why you should start using how-to videos for your employee training. But producing these videos can pose some big challenges for your teams.

Lengthy production timelines

First of all, one major hurdle is the lengthy production timeline associated with formal video shoots. Coordinating the schedules of your videographers and on-camera talent, editing and producing, and then making any necessary revisions can take weeks or months at a time. 

And if your company is growing at a rapid pace, these videos might already be outdated by the time they’re published.

High production costs

Professional cameras, lighting, microphones, and editing equipment represent a sizable initial investment, which can make video content cost prohibitive for some teams. And even if you plan on using an animated explainer video instead, hiring a skilled animator will still eat up a good chunk of your budget. 

Sure, these costs may not be a problem for large companies, but they could be a deal breaker for small businesses that need to put their dollars elsewhere.

Research and script writing

Finally, even with dedicated in-house teams at the ready, ensuring that your subject matter experts have time to prepare and review your video scripts can be seriously time consuming. 

Unless you’re at an enterprise company, most employees wear many hats; prioritizing tasks related to preparing video training could get backlogged behind your team’s more immediate responsibilities.

Despite all of these bottlenecks, you shouldn’t dismiss how-to videos just yet. Fortunately, there are solutions available. We’ll show you exactly how to use AI to both improve and streamline your team’s video production capabilities.

How to use AI to improve employee training videos

Everyone’s rushing to find new ways AI can help them streamline their existing workflows, automate repetitive tasks, and spend more time on higher-value activities. In other words, AI technology is largely being viewed through the lens of quantity rather than quality.

But what if you could use AI to improve the quality of your work too?

The good news – this is entirely possible. Here’s how you can use AI video tools like Colossyan to both streamline production and improve the quality of your how-to videos.

Use custom AI presenters

You don’t need to wrangle your employees’ schedules or worry about hiring on-camera talent to start producing videos. With AI video creation platforms like Colossyan, you can generate realistic AI presenters to read your scripts and deliver video training.

Even better, these AI presenters are fully customizable: you can choose the presenter’s voice, visual appearance, rate of speech, and persona to match your specific needs. 

And once you’ve finished customizing your AI presenters, you can use them again for future video presentations to ensure consistency – which is much easier than trying to schedule a reshoot or record new video footage with human actors.

Enable multilingual support and auto-translation

For global companies, developing localized training resources is a must. But creating these specific trainings in various languages requires a significant investment of an organization’s time and resources. 

With traditional video, for example, if you need content in five different languages, you’ll need to record your footage five different times – with an actor who speaks each language. 

However, with AI tools like Colossyan, you can automatically translate your video script into 100+ languages and generate realistic voices for each one. That means no more recording footage multiple times – simply select your language, and your script will be translated for you. 

This improves the accessibility of your how-to videos and ensures that employees across your global teams get the same level of training, regardless of their native language.

Include interactive elements like polls and quizzes

One big problem with your typical training video is that it’s a passive, one-way experience. But with AI video software, you can easily add interactive video elements like knowledge checks, polls, reflective questions, and quizzes. Not only does this help reinforce learning during training, but it also helps keep your employees accountable and ensures they’re engaging with the material you’ve created.

Create engaging how-to videos with Colossyan

With a bit of creativity and the right AI tools at your disposal, you can quickly produce high-quality how-to videos for your employees in a matter of days. And with Colossyan, you’ll have everything you need to create videos that will change the way you onboard and train team members across your organization.

Want to start producing high-quality training videos of your own? Try our tool for free or book a demo with our team to get started.

When it comes to creating engaging video content, connecting with your audience is key. You want them to feel like you’re speaking directly to them, even through premade content. 

The question is, how can you make your audience feel like your content was tailor made for them, even when you’re creating content at scale? 

The answer is personalization. This can come in many different forms – incorporating company branding, using spokespeople, or adding cultural customization are just a few ways you can do so. 

In this blog, we’ll explore the benefits and use cases for personalized videos – as well as five ways you can better personalize your content. Let’s dive in. 

What is personalized video?

A personalized video is content that’s created for a specific group of people or individual viewers, featuring elements that reflect their unique preferences, behaviors, or specific needs. 

The goal of personalized video is to make viewers feel like the content is directly addressed to them, making for a more engaging experience for each viewer that resonates on a more personal level. 

Benefits of personalized video content

Personalizing your video content undoubtedly requires extra time and effort. So why do it? Well, there are actually several benefits to doing so. 

Here’s a look at a few of the main advantages: 

Keeps your audience engaged for longer 

Did you know that personalized videos are 35% more likely to retain viewers compared to non-personalized videos? 

Ultimately, videos that speak to audience needs and preferences make for a more compelling and meaningful viewing experience, which increases the likelihood that your viewers will watch your content all of the way through. 

Just think about the last time you received a completely general sales pitch – you probably felt less than inclined to answer it since it didn’t address your specific use case or pain points. The same is true of video content – proper personalization is imperative in inspiring audiences to take action. 

Boosts conversion rates 

Data suggests that personalized videos have an approximately 16x higher click-to-open rate with 4.5x more click-throughs than non-personalized videos. 

This is likely because personalized content speaks to a viewer’s background, preferences, and needs, making them more likely to engage with the content than they otherwise would’ve. And ultimately, more leads in your sales funnel is likely to lead to more conversions. 

Builds brand recognition and loyalty

Over 90% of marketers agree that personalization helps strengthen and advance customer relationships. Simple efforts to improve the personalization of your video content can have a large impact on how connected customers feel to your company, increasing their brand loyalty. 

Best use cases for personalized videos

With all the positive benefits that we’ve just covered, you’re probably wondering how you can begin personalizing your video content as soon as possible. 

Well, some videos are better candidates for personalization than others. For example, content targeted at a specific audience has the most potential for optimization. 

Here are some different use cases that work especially well for video personalization: 

Employee training videos 

While it may be easy to create generic training videos that lack any sort of branding or personality, training videos are actually one of the best use cases for personalization. 

For starters, having your training videos led by a recognizable figure within your organization may boost engagement with the content since it isn’t coming from a stranger. 

Even if this sort of personalization isn’t possible for your team, adding your company logo throughout your training videos helps create alignment between your company values and the content of the video. 

Customer support content

Customer support content naturally lends itself to personalization, as videos are typically created to help customers resolve a specific issue. 

That said, you may want to consider additional video personalization to boost customer satisfaction with your knowledge base. One way you might do this is by featuring a customer’s dedicated customer support manager in the support video content they receive, that way there’s alignment between the person they’re in touch with and the visual content they watch. 

Sales demos

Sales outreach is already very personalized as it is, with sales representatives usually including your name and a detail from your background in their outreach. 

While it’s easy to add a personal touch to a LinkedIn message or an email, demo videos can be harder to personalize, especially at scale. This is an area where an AI video generator might prove beneficial, as you can personalize your video script to your audience in seconds, without having to actually rerecord any of your content. 

Healthcare 

In the healthcare industry, credibility is extremely important. As a result, any content surrounding patient questions, protocol, or care instructions may benefit from incorporating logos of the hospitals affiliated with the content, or even AI avatars of the doctors themselves. 

This way, patients feel they’re getting information straight from a credible source, rather than a generic video.

5 ways to personalize your video content 

There’s more than one way to upgrade the personalization of your video content. Here’s an overview of some of the top ways you can help your visual content better connect with viewers. 

1. Branded avatars

You’re probably wondering – what’s a branded avatar? 

Branded avatars are AI avatars that embody a brand’s personality or identity, typically through featuring company logos on their clothing. Not only can they help boost brand awareness, but they can help keep your videos looking consistent in every piece of content. 

For those looking to personalize their AI video content, branded avatars are an easy way to add credibility to your videos and better reinforce alignment between your brand and the content being discussed in the video. 

For example, when creating workplace training videos, including a branded avatar is an easy way to hold your audience’s attention for longer and make them feel as though the videos were created specifically for them, instead of training content that’s been recycled by multiple organizations. 

2. Company ambassadors 

If your company already has a spokesperson who is well-recognized among your internal team or customers, integrating their likeness into your videos is an easy way to make your content feel more personalized. 

Many insurance companies excel in personalizing content using this technique. Just think of Jake from State Farm or Flo from Progressive – millions of Americans recognize them and immediately understand their brand association just by seeing their face. 

The challenge with using a company spokesperson is scalability. Getting the face of your company to appear in dozens of videos can be extremely time consuming without an AI video tool to turn their image into an AI avatar.

Fortunately, many AI video generation tools support custom avatars, allowing you to create training content hosted by your CEO, founder, or other ambassador – complete with their actual cloned voice – without them ever having to stand in front of a camera. 

Colossyan is one tool that supports custom avatars – and you can even clone your voice to make your avatar both look and sound like you. Here’s how Colossyan’s custom voices work: 

3. Interactivity 

Interactive video content allows you to personalize videos based on user behaviors. For example, branching scenarios – which act as a sort of “choose your own adventure” framework – allow videos to be personalized based on the user’s understanding of the content. 

While this approach to personalization can be time consuming, it can be extremely beneficial in ensuring that each viewer is served content that’s relevant to their level of understanding. This way, if a viewer chose an incorrect answer on a multiple choice knowledge check, they could be provided with a scenario-based video of why that answer was incorrect, for instance. 

4. Department-specific content 

There’s often a high degree of variability between what various departments may be working on at any given time. Not to mention, each department will have its own set of needs, challenges, and goals, which may mean that one set of workplace training videos isn’t totally applicable to the entire company. 

Segmenting your training videos by department is not only potentially more useful for your team, but it also paves the way for greater personalization within the content, allowing you to directly tie each team’s objectives into the material. 

5. Cultural localization

While a video in English can be watched by anyone who speaks English, it may feel more tailored to viewers in specific countries when it reflects their specific accents, dialects, and cultural preferences.

For example, a viewer in the UK may feel like a piece of video content was tailor made for them if a narrator was speaking in a British accent, for instance. The same goes for currencies, cultural norms, and even the idioms you may use within the video. 

These may seem like minor adjustments, but localization can have a big impact on audience engagement, in addition to demonstrating an understanding and appreciation of the audience’s identity. 

Level up your personalized video content with Colossyan

For teams looking to personalize their video content at scale, there’s no better solution than an AI video generator like Colossyan. 

Colossyan allows you to create professional-quality video content complete with AI avatars and voice narration. There are dozens of different ways you can use Colossyan to add personalization to your videos: 

• With AI avatars of all different ages, ethnicities, and professions, use avatars that look like your audience
• Create a custom avatar of a brand spokesperson to allow them to be featured in content at scale 
• Make your videos interactive by adding multiple-choice quizzes to check audience understanding 
• Automatically translate your videos into 100+ languages, plus a range of different dialects and accents 

And that’s not all – we’ve just released a new branded avatar feature that allows users to further personalize their content to their audience. 

How to add a logo to an AI avatar’s outfit in Colossyan

Adding a logo to your AI avatar’s outfit is simple with Colossyan. Here’s how: 

Begin by creating a new video, or opening an existing one. Then select an avatar that supports logo addition (filtering can help you identify eligible avatars). When your avatar is in shoulder view, you’ll see a modal to add a logo. 

Upload your company’s logo, place it on your avatar, and preview it. That’s all it takes – your branded avatar is ready to be used in your videos. 

Looking for an enterprise-ready AI video solution to create branded video content at scale? Try Colossyan for free today or schedule a time with our team of experts to learn more. 

What lies at the heart of an effective training and development program? For most of those who are in charge of learning management, it’s the content that learners engage with.

That learning content needs to be relevant, engaging, readily available, scalable, and up-to-date. But it can be difficult to make that happen. 

Most organizations that do achieve this have a large team dedicated to producing, maintaining, updating, and optimizing learning content. Others leverage modern AI content authoring tools to create realistic, engaging content at scale.

In this article, we’ll help you join the latter group. We’ll explain what content authoring tools are and examine the challenges involved in the standard content creation process, the benefits of using AI-generated content to fuel learner engagement, and best practices for sustaining quality while scaling production with AI.

Understanding content authoring and relevant tools 

Content authoring is the process of creating educational materials, specifically in the context of eLearning or online courses. However, this process doesn’t necessarily cover educational content delivery or learner engagement.

The content production process typically happens within a content authoring tool. These are specialized software platforms preloaded with features and functionality that support and streamline the content creation process.

These tools often feature:

• Intuitive drag-and-drop user interfaces that don’t require any previous design or coding experience
• Premade templates to speed up content creation
• Support for multimedia formats and mobile devices
• Gamification and interactive content features like quizzes, simulations, and assessments
• Native integrations with learning management systems (LMSs)

Colossyan, for example, is an AI video authoring tool that offers all of these features.

Why high-quality content authoring is imperative for successful eLearning initiatives 

Without content, you’d have nothing for people to engage with and learn from.

But what distinguishes high-quality learning content from average content? Let’s look at a few ways in which the best content excels:

Engages learners

Great content captivates users’ attention with interactive features, relevant and concise content, logical learning progressions, and gamification features.

The end result is that learners are more engaged and spend more time actively focusing on the content rather than mindlessly clicking through and completing modules to check a box.

Promotes higher retention rates

High-quality content that is engaging, relevant, and well-structured improves learning outcomes and enhances knowledge retention. Since the whole point of the exercise is to learn something, improved retention is always a good outcome to shoot for.

Related: What Is Structured Content Authoring? A Guide for Success

Enhances brand credibility

We’ve all seen corporate training modules that cause us secondhand embarrassment due to their poor quality. 

On the other hand, high-quality, engaging, relevant, and interesting training enhances your brand reputation and credibility. It makes customers trust you more, and it makes employees proud to work for an organization that takes workplace training seriously.

These are some pretty big upsides, right? So why isn’t everyone making this kind of content?

The challenges of scaling content authoring 

Producing an internal training module every now and then isn’t particularly difficult. But executing a full-scale content authoring program that covers everything from new employee onboarding and ongoing leadership training to customer educational materials is another beast entirely. 

This process also comes with a few common challenges:

• Resource allocation: Most organizations don’t have people with the expertise, experience, or desire to run a full content authoring team, nor do they have the budget to hire these people.
• Consistency: Without a dedicated content authoring team, companies end up tasking department heads with creating internal learning content. This translates to a lack of consistency across company content.
• Content management: In this scenario, content isn’t located in a central content management system. Instead, it's usually scattered across several laptops and Google Drive accounts, which makes it difficult to reliably access.
• Turnaround times: Authoring new content can take time, especially when multiple stakeholders need to approve it or when the person creating the content already has a full schedule with their primary responsibilities.
• Relevance and updates: When companies barely have the time and resources to put together new content, they rarely have an opportunity to go back and update existing modules either. As a result, most corporate training content is horribly out of date.

Don’t lose hope yet. Despite these difficulties, AI content authoring is uniquely positioned to solve all of these problems.

The benefits of AI-driven content authoring 

Our customers have seen firsthand how AI is revolutionizing learning and development. These six key benefits of AI improve upon the standard content authoring process:

1. Efficiency

AI content creation is much more efficient than traditional methods. 

This is because text-to-speech tools allow you to skip the process of manually recording training footage and replace that content with footage of AI avatars – or even a simple voiceover – reciting your material instead. 

For example, with Colossyan, our AI video generation platform, you can create a new training video in a matter of minutes. This same video would take weeks to produce with standard film equipment, actors, and editing.

Not only does this allow for a faster content creation process, but it’s significantly more cost effective as well. 

2. Consistency 

Anyone creating a large volume of content will want their materials to look and feel consistent. With a high-quality AI authoring tool, you can save and store content preferences for future use.

For instance, using a set template for all of your content can improve the uniformity of your materials. This is also true of brand kits, which help you ensure that every learning video uses the same fonts, logos, colors, and AI avatars to enforce your brand image, no matter who at your company creates the video.

3. Scalability

Since AI allows for a much faster content creation process, it eliminates the lengthy production turnaround times that make content production unscalable. 

AI allows you to create great eLearning content from just an idea thanks to Colossyan’s prompt to video workflow. And with an AI script assistant, the process of perfecting your script is a lot more efficient, allowing you to develop video content at scale. 

Scalability is especially difficult for teams whose content is centered around a particular actor or brand representative. Fortunately, many AI video tools offer custom avatars, allowing you to create videos using AI actors that look identical to your human actor. They can even sound like them too. 

4. Editability

AI content authoring’s flexibility and scalability also make it easier than ever to ensure that learning content is up-to-date.

Let’s say you have a set of new employee onboarding videos. A few things may have changed since you produced these videos, from reporting lines to internal processes, so you need to update the content.

If you produced them the traditional way with real-life actors in a film studio, you’d have to start from scratch, write a new script, and refilm your footage. But with an AI avatar video, you can jump back into your content authoring tool, edit the script as necessary, and export the new clip in no time.

5. Language translation

One of the best things about the state of work today is that many people work remotely, which gives businesses access to a global workforce and a much greater ability to enter new markets. But the problem with this is that people in different countries often speak different languages.

AI content authoring can ease this challenge by automatically translating your content into a variety of languages. Colossyan’s video creator translates into 100+ languages, and even offers several accent options for enhanced localization.

6. Cost savings  

All of the above benefits, from faster content creation to easier editing, add up to one thing: more cost-effective content production. 

Video content traditionally has high barriers to entry, requiring immense amounts of funding for equipment and staff costs. 

But with AI, small- and medium-sized businesses can produce full-scale internal learning programs complete with professional-quality video footage that would’ve been 80% more expensive to traditionally produce. 

Best practices for maintaining high content quality with AI 

Now that we’ve covered the benefits of integrating AI into your content process, let’s cover some best practices to ensure high-quality content:

Provide human oversight and implement quality assurance measures 

You wouldn’t publish a piece of eLearning content that a human content creator produced without a final check-over and sign-off, right? The same should apply to AI-driven content authoring.

Especially when you’ve used AI to help write your video scripts, you’ll want to do a final check to ensure that the content is aligned with your intended learning objective. This might involve having a subject matter expert review the content before it goes live, for instance. 

Establish effective feedback loops

As happy as you might be with a piece of content, what’s important at the end of the day is how learners feel about engaging with it. Do they find it entertaining? Do they learn something valuable from it? Or is it boring or confusing?

Establishing feedback loops, such as post-module surveys or long-form interviews, is a great way to understand how learners feel about the content you’re producing. You can then use this feedback to inform future content creation plans.

Start slow and scale consistently  

Here’s one last tip: don’t jump into the deep end right away. Instead, start small, create a few learning videos with AI, and examine any assumptions or uncertainties you might have about the tool. You will learn valuable lessons from this process. 

You’ll also discover how quickly you can produce content, what kinds of materials you need to get the most out of your AI model, and who else you might need to involve in the process.

Afterward, as you get a handle on how your AI content authoring tool works, you can scale up production and start implementing more advanced functions like interactivity features and gamification. 

Colossyan: Our user-friendly AI video content authoring platform 

While there are plenty of great eLearning authoring tools out there today, only a handful use AI as the content generation engine. Colossyan, our easy-to-use, cloud-based AI video generation platform, is one of these.

With Colossyan, you can choose from upwards of 150 diverse AI avatars to use in your video content. With dozens of premade video templates and a built-in brand kit, you can create visually consistent videos that can be automatically translated into over 100 languages to serve a global audience. 

‍Try Colossyan for free today to see its powerful features in action. Or speak with our team of experts to learn more.

PowerPoint has long been the standard presentation tool in the corporate toolbox, but that doesn’t mean it’s the most engaging or efficient way to give a presentation. 

Video is typically overlooked as a way to give presentations, because it has historically required teams to record footage, hire actors, and spend hours editing using specialized software. 

But now with improvements to generative AI, a video presentation maker like Colossyan is all you need to create an engaging and dynamic presentation. You can create higher quality video content in less time than a slideshow – and without cameras, microphones, or expert editors. 

In this blog, we’ll walk you through the advantages of video presentations, how to make one in five easy steps, and a few use cases for AI video presentation tools. 

Why opt for a video presentation over a PowerPoint? 

Let’s face it: PowerPoint presentations can be clunky. 

They heavily rely on the presenter to convey information verbally, which makes it challenging for those who missed the presentation to gather information from the slides alone. 

While you can attempt to solve this with a Zoom or Google Meet recording, video presentations allow you to skip the hassle of slides altogether and distribute information much more effectively. 

Here are a few of the advantages of using video presentations over PowerPoint slides: 

Better information retention

Studies show that the human brain is far better at processing and retaining visual information as opposed to text-only content. 

In fact, viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it on video, as opposed to 10% when reading it in text. 

Video presentations aren’t just more convenient – they also contribute to better learning outcomes. 

More easily shareable 

For teams with a large headcount, or for those working in a remote setting, it can be difficult to get everyone in the same place for a live presentation. 

Instead of dealing with the cumbersome process of recording yourself giving a presentation (and sometimes giving it multiple times when people miss it the first time), you can just send your team a link to your video presentation, and everyone will be on the same page. 

Faster content creation process 

While traditional presentation software tools are relatively easy to use, producing a high-quality output can be time consuming. 

Fortunately, when you use AI tools to create video presentations, you can automate a lot of tedious work. For instance, instead of manually writing a presentation script, tools like Colossyan offer an AI script assistant to speed up this process. 

Plus, a well-crafted video ensures a perfect presentation delivery every single time, without needing to rehearse over and over again. 

Pro tip: Check out our list of the 6 best video presentation software tools to explore in 2025.

How to make a video presentation with AI (in 5 steps)

Instead of just turning your PowerPoint files into an MP4 file, AI video tools can help take your video presentations to the next level with features like AI avatars and text-to-speech narration.

Below, we’ve outlined the five steps needed to create content using a video presentation maker called Colossyan: 

1. Create your video draft 

First things first: you need to lay the foundation for your video presentation. There are a few ways you can get your video draft off the ground in Colossyan: 

Use a template 

Starting from scratch can be extremely time consuming. Templates are a great way to get your draft set up in less time while still ensuring your presentation has a strong visual appeal. 

Colossyan has dozens of templates available, and you can even sort them by use case to ensure it has all of the elements you’ll need for your presentation. 

Transform a document into a video draft 

Maybe you’re creating a presentation about a report your team just put together, or perhaps you already have a PowerPoint and you’re looking to bring it to life. 

With Colossyan’s document-to-video workflow, you can turn PDF, PPT, DOC, and TXT documents into a video draft in less than 60 seconds. 

Our tool will pull information from your document and add it to a fully customizable video draft, complete with AI avatars, text-to-speech narration, and images. That way, you can make a few edits and your presentation will be all ready to go. 

Start with a prompt 

Maybe you’re in the early stages of ideating on your presentation. In that case, a prompt-to-video workflow may be more appropriate for your needs. 

Instead of uploading a document, a prompt-to-video workflow allows you to enter an idea for your video. You can also specify your audience, tone, and other video details. 

Once you’ve selected a template, Colossyan will create a video draft based on that prompt in less than 60 seconds. 

Here’s how it works:

2. Write your video script 

Writing a concise video script can be challenging, but it’s an important step. 

Start by thinking about what you’d say during each slide of a traditional PowerPoint presentation, and turn that information into a script for each of your video scenes. 

If you plan on using AI avatars, you can also integrate conversations between characters into your script. Dialogue is incredibly useful for scenario-based storytelling, and isn’t something that traditional presentation formats allow for. 

And in case you want a little more assistance with scripting, Colossyan offers an AI script assistant that can help brainstorm ideas, edit your tone of voice, or even correct your grammar. 

3. Select a voice for your text-to-speech narration 

When it comes to AI-generated video presentations, you have two options when it comes to your narration: AI avatar presenters – which serve as digital humans whose lip movements are synchronized with your script – and simple text-to-speech narration with no visual component.

Many teams opt for AI avatars to make their content more engaging and visual. Colossyan offers 150+ different stock avatars to choose from, allowing you to select an AI actor that best represents your audience’s demographics or profession. 

Not only can you change the appearance of your video presenter, but you can also fully customize their voice, accent, and language. 

In fact, it’s never been easier to give presentations to audiences who don’t speak your language. Colossyan videos can be automatically translated into over 70 languages in just a few clicks.

If you find yourself frequently making AI video presentations, you may want to consider making an AI avatar of yourself. Custom avatars allow you to create video content – using your own likeness – at scale in far less time. 

Pro tip: Clone your voice to create video presentations that sound just like you. Plus, cloned voices can be translated into 30+ languages. 

4. Customize your visual elements 

Now that the basics of your video presentation are in order, it’s time to take your visual components to the next level. 

Aside from AI avatars, there are a couple of other components that go into an AI video presentation: 

Brand colors and logos 

Brand alignment is one of the most important considerations for those making corporate presentation videos. 

To help you keep a consistent brand image across your content, Colossyan offers a brand kit feature, allowing you to upload fonts, logos, and colors that can easily be used in every video you create. 

On-screen text 

PowerPoints heavily rely on on-screen text to help readers understand the content being explained. 

To add text in Colossyan, click on 'Text' and choose between Title, Subtitle, or Body Text. You can also add subtitles to make your content more accessible and easier to understand.  

Stock images

Stock images are one of the easiest ways to help audiences visualize information. Colossyan has a searchable library of stock images ready for use. 

Additionally, if you can’t find the right stock image, you can use the AI image generator to create exactly what you’re looking for. 

5. Generate your video presentation

Once your script, visuals, and AI avatars have been edited and customized to your liking, your video presentation is nearly ready. 

The final step is to generate your video, during which process your avatar’s lip movements will be synched with your script for a humanlike video output. 

Once generation is complete, your video presentation is ready to be shared! 

Exploring the main use cases for AI video presentations 

Video presentations are a great way to create and distribute content more efficiently, but it’s a better fit for some use cases than others. 

Here are some of the top ways you can use AI video presentations (with examples): 

Training content 

Creating and deploying training content can be an extremely time consuming process, which is why AI video presentations can be a great way to both speed up and scale this process. 

Plus, training materials are notoriously difficult to keep updated. AI video enables you to simply update your material, click generate, and send the final presentation video to your team. No need to schedule a meeting with your team every time your training content evolves. 

Check out this sales training video created with Colossyan: 

Employee onboarding 

Expanding your team can be costly, as a recent study showed the average cost of onboarding a new hire is $4,700. 

This is not only because it takes awhile for a new hire to get up to speed, but also because onboarding a new employee requires other employees to devote valuable time to helping them onboard – taking away from their productivity in other areas. 

AI video helps solve this by automating some of your onboarding processes, helping your new employees get brought up to speed with fewer live meetings. 

Not to mention, once you’ve created onboarding video presentations, the same videos can be reused for all new hires, and they can refer back to them if they have questions later on. 

Related: How to Make a Great Employee Onboarding Video

Product demos

Live demos are a core component of many sales workflows. The trouble is they’re difficult to scale without additional manpower. 

That said, product demo videos, including explainer videos that provide a broad overview of a product, are a great way to introduce potential customers to your product or service before things progress to a meeting with a sales representative. 

Studies show that this works too – 96% of consumers have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product, and 79% of people say they’ve been convinced to purchase a B2B app or software because of a video. 

Start creating video presentations today

Creating video presentations has never been easier. You no longer need camera equipment, microphones, or fancy editing software. 

Instead, you can use AI to create high-quality video content that’s more engaging than traditional PowerPoint presentations. 

And when video presentations are faster to create, easier to edit, and don’t require any on-the-spot public speaking, what’s not to love? 

Come see the power of video presentations for yourself and try Colossyan for free today. Or, to learn more about our enterprise solutions, schedule a time with our team. 

When you think of a personalized avatar, you might be reminded of a video game character avatar. 

However, recent developments in avatar creation technology allow AI avatars to be used for much more than static digital characters. In fact, engaging and lifelike AI avatars can now be used to improve the retention and engagement of your video content. 

Research shows that audiences view realistic-looking AI avatars as more trustworthy and preferable for lecture-style training – not to mention that AI avatars can simplify your video production process across the board. 

So, how do you make a custom avatar to use in videos? We’ll walk you through the steps to create an avatar of yourself in Colossyan – it only takes four steps, and best of all, it’s free!

What is an AI avatar?

Simply put, an AI avatar is a digital representation of a real person. Creating one often requires uploading images or videos of yourself or another person. Then, AI technology creates a realistic digital human that you can use in online videos, communication, and other content. 

AI avatars are useful when creating video content, as they can appear in video content without having to be filmed every time. Simply add a script, and your AI avatar will accurately lip sync your script automatically. You can even translate your avatar’s dialogue into more than 100 different languages. 

What’s a custom avatar?

Looking to create your own avatar? Then you’ll want to look into custom avatars. 

A custom avatar is a type of AI avatar that’s specifically designed to look and sound just like you, or just like one of your brand representatives. 

Custom avatars are more personalized than stock avatars, as they will reflect your body language and facial expressions. 

Custom avatar tools like Colossyan also allow you to clone your voice, ensuring your custom avatar will both look and sound like you. With voice cloning, your personal avatar will be able to speak more than 30 languages in your own voice.  

Benefits of AI avatars

Whether you decide to use an avatar maker to create your own digital avatar, or use Colossyan’s stock avatars instead, there are many benefits of AI avatars:

• Cost savings: You can reuse AI avatars in dozens of different videos at no additional cost, which makes them less expensive than human instructors.
• Speeds up video production: Digital avatars allow you to skip the manually filming process altogether, meaning your video production process can take minutes instead of weeks. 
• Personalized experience: AI avatars are more customizable than traditional actors, meaning you can personalize them with branded clothing, and even change their voice and accent according to your target audience. 
• Realistic interactions: AI avatars mimic human expressions, gestures, and body language to provide immersive, realistic interactions.

Most online avatar creators also offer a library of premade avatars that you can choose from, all with different styles and facial features. For example, Colossyan offers a diverse library of over 150 avatars you can use.

How to create an avatar of yourself

While stock avatars are a great way to quickly get the ball rolling on your video content, custom avatars can bring the personalization of your videos to the next level. 

With advancements in Colossyan’s instant custom avatar technology, creating your own AI avatar can take as little as a minute, using just seconds of recording time. 

Plus, instant avatars created with Colossyan will retain their original background and body movements, meaning you can create dynamic and realistic avatar videos using this new technology. 

To create your own custom avatar, simply sign up for Colossyan and follow these steps. 

(P.S. – creating an instant avatar is free!) 

1. Record your AI avatar footage

To create an instant custom avatar with Colossyan, you’ll need to start by recording between 20 seconds to one minute of input footage of yourself. 

Keep in mind that your background, clothing, and hand movements in this video will all be reflected in your final avatar, so ensure everything is up to your standards before you hit record. 

Here are a few tips for recording your Instant Avatar footage: 

1. Camera settings: You can film on your phone, but make sure you record at 1080p, 30fps, with HDR turned off for the best result. 
2. Act naturally: Switch your position every 10 seconds for the most natural-looking result. Remember that your custom avatar will have the same hand gestures and body language. 
3. Keep your mouth closed: Your lips will be synced with the script you provide later on, so it’s important to keep your mouth closed when filming. 

2. Clone your voice 

In order for your instant avatar to both look and sound like you, you’ll need to clone your voice. 

Fortunately, creating a custom voice is extremely easy in Colossyan – simply upload a one minute voice recording of yourself. You can say anything in your recording, as long as there’s no background noise.

Once your voice has been cloned, you’ll be able to translate your voice into 30+ different languages. How cool is that?

And if you prefer to skip the voice cloning, Colossyan offers dozens of stock voices that you can pair with your custom avatar and translate to 100+ different languages instead. 

3. Preview your avatar

Once you’ve uploaded your video clip and cloned your voice, you’ll be directed to Colossyan’s video editing suite. 

Your instant avatar will be ready to be previewed in less than 60 seconds so you can ensure you’re happy with the results. 

If your avatar is to your liking, you can add it to your desired video scene within Colossyan’s editing interface. 

4. Generate your video

After you’ve customized your script and added all of the necessary video scenes, you’re ready to generate your final video product. 

The generation speed depends on your video length, but it will usually take just a few minutes. Once your video is done processing, your personal AI avatar video is ready to be shared!

How to create an avatar from a photo

Don't have time to shoot a short video clip of yourself? Good news – Colossyan supports photo avatars!

The avatar creation process we outlined above will remain the same, you'll just need to upload a static image instead of a video clip.

When you create an avatar from a picture, the same visual guidelines also remain true. You'll want to upload a photo with natural lighting and ensure your mouth is fully visible. Keep in mind that your photo background will remain the same when you generate your avatar, so be sure to find the right location for your photo.

Although photo avatars are a great way to create an avatar quickly, creating an avatar from a video is still your best bet to receive a natural and dynamic result, as you'll be able to create an avatar with hand and body movements, making your avatar seem more realistic.

5 ways to use an AI avatar of yourself

Building an AI avatar of yourself isn’t just fun – it also supports and enhances a variety of projects. You can take advantage of this technology in the following ways:

Produce training videos

AI presenters reduce training costs by allowing you to create multiple videos without expensive equipment, software, or actors. Additionally, you’re able to adapt the look and sound of your AI avatar depending on the audience you want to reach. 

This means you can create high-quality training video content without needing to pick up a camera or hire on-screen talent. Instead, opting for a digital avatar to serve as your instructor enables you to create content at scale. 

Simulate role-play situations

Thanks to their dynamic quality, digital avatars are perfect for simulating real-life scenarios. This allows trainees to role-play various skills that may otherwise be difficult to practice. 

For example, Colossyan offers a conversation mode which allows for dialogue between multiple avatars, paving the way for quality scenario-based training. 

One AI avatar might assume the role of a customer and another might serve as a customer service representative, showcasing the right communication and negotiation skills to exhibit in certain scenarios. 

Personalize learning experiences

With brand kits and the ability to add company branding to your avatar clothing, your AI avatar’s look and feel can be customized to match your brand voice and values. 

Avatar personalization is a huge advantage when creating company-wide training materials. You can create videos using a custom avatar of one of your company executives, allowing your training materials to be delivered by a familiar face. 

Plus, AI avatars are highly customizable when it comes to accents and dialects. When creating training content for your London office, you can give your avatars a British accent, and switch their AI voice to an American accent when creating videos for your New York team, for example. 

Related: 5 Ways to Personalize Your Video Content for Better Results

Customer service

AI avatars are ideal for customer service as well. They can answer questions, walk viewers through product demos, narrate explainer videos, and provide additional customer education for your products or services. 

Create multilingual content

The process of creating multilingual video content is typically very expensive. To create a video in five different languages, you’d need to reshoot your footage five different times, with five different actors who speak each language. 

Instead, you can easily reach employees and customers in their native languages with multilingual AI avatars. AI avatars can be translated into dozens of different languages in a few clicks, meaning you can make your content widely accessible in far less time. 

Plus, it’s a much more cost effective solution than outsourcing to a translation service. Colossyan can automatically translate your AI avatar’s speech into over 100 different languages, including Chinese, Spanish, and Japanese.

Create the perfect AI avatar of yourself with Colossyan

Creating an avatar online is an effective way to personalize your content and create interactive videos.  

To easily create avatars that look and sound like you, you’ll want to use a free avatar maker like Colossyan. Not only can you create custom avatars of yourself using our tool, but you can also create cartoon avatars that look like you, as Colossyan’s instant avatar feature also supports image uploads. 

Sign up for Colossyan to design your free personal avatar today, or book a demo with our team to learn how Colossyan provides cost-effective video creation to support your business needs.