As a business owner, you’re always thinking about ROI.

You want to make the most out of every task you complete. As you should!

If something doesn’t move you closer towards your goal, grow your company, or move the needle on sales, you shouldn’t do it… right?

Not so fast!

Try as you might, you will always have tasks that you don’t want to do – but have to.

You know the type. Those ones. The unenjoyables. The drudgery. Things like managing people, reviewing KPIs, communication, or any number of equally uninspiring to-dos.

You can eliminate or delegate most of them, but you can’t escape all of them. The good news, however, is this: there are tons of mundane business tasks you can make ten times easier, faster – and more fun, even! – by using video.

Want to know what those tasks are, and how to pull it off? Read on!

Your “video communication toolbox”

But first, let’s address a basic question: what do we mean by “using video”?

In other words – if you want to make good use of the tips below, how seriously should you take your video recording? Do you need a fully-fledged film studio with a green screen, props, and everything? Or is it enough to have a webcam and a microphone?

No worries – you don’t have to become the new James Cameron to benefit from using video in your day-to-day business tasks! All you need is a way to record your computer screen, your face on the webcam, or both.

If you keep this low bar in mind, you’ll soon discover tons of tools at your disposal. Things like Loom (if you’re using Chrome), Screencast, and other programs… It doesn’t matter which one you choose, as long as it works for you. Just pick one and move on.

With that said, let’s figure out how you can unleash your video-recording superpowers to make your business tasks much faster – and a bit more enjoyable!

1. Impressive, high-touch customer outreach

If you run a small business, you probably talk to most of your customers personally. And even if you don’t, you try to find the time to communicate with high-value prospects, new customers, and your oldest clients.

It’s an important task, there’s no two ways about it. It generates sales, and increases the odds that your customers will stick with you for the long term. But it’s still boring and time-consuming!

So next time you have to send an email to a customer, instead of writing a carefully phased response, why not record a short video instead?

For starters, it’s much faster than typing. Plus, a recorded video has a much higher perceived value than an email. When a customer sees one, they can’t help thinking, “Wow, they sent me a video. They are putting a lot of effort into this!”

Finally, as we all know, video is much more memorable than text. That means, if you make one and send it over, you will reduce the number of follow-up questions a customer might have.

Hurray for not getting stuck in a back-and-forth email exchange that will demand even more of your time!

2. Warm and personable internal communications

Good communication between you and everyone who works for you is essential. And it’s even harder to avoid than talking to customers… so you might as well get really good at it, right?

Most of the time, you can just come over in person and tell your employees what you want… But what if you travel a lot? Or maybe you employ people remotely, or on contract? Or maybe something big happens, and you need to talk to your team before you have an official meeting about it?

That’s where video comes in handy. You can use it to:

  • Give rapid feedback to employees about their work.
  • Issue company-wide updates and announcements.
  • Make holiday videos to congratulate everyone.

A good rule of thumb is – if anything happens that makes you want to send an email to everyone at the company, a video will do the job just as well, or better.

Being visual is one of the best practices of internal communications – and with good reason. After all, if you could choose between reading a long, formal message from the CEO… or watching a passionate video address, what would you choose?

We thought so!

3. Impossible-to-misunderstand business processes

As your business grows, and you hire more people, it becomes more and more important to have an established process for each task. Otherwise, after you hire your 100th employee, you might realize that everything is on fire (hopefully metaphorically) and no one knows how to work in a company that’s 5 times the size it used to be!

But if you have well-documented processes in place for everything, it makes things much easier. That way, when new people come in, you can just hand them a checklist – or have them train under a senior employee who will show them the ropes.

With video, you can take this one step further.

Instead of telling people how to do something, or having them watch someone else do it in person, you’ll show everyone how they need to perform a certain task. And because you’ll have it on record, you will be able to use the video in your onboarding process again and again!

You can use video to show your employees and contractors how to perform all sorts of tasks – for example:

  • How to access and update your company CMS, at no risk of messing up your website.
  • How to pull customer information from your CRM system, so they can use it in the sales process.
  • What to do when a customer writes in asking for a refund, and how to know if you should honor that request.

And more!

In short, if you want to delegate most of your tasks as a business owner, you have to give your employees all the information they need, about every critical process at the company. And there is no better way to do that than video.

4. Exciting and welcoming employee onboarding

Speaking of onboarding… Most companies turn this necessary step – something that’s supposed to be an exciting journey – into a downright torturous process.

If you want to make onboarding more fun for your new employees, and much less stressful for your old ones, there is one simple solution. You guessed it – video!

Video can improve or replace every part of the onboarding process that used to take lengthy orientation, boring emails, or hands-on training from a senior employee. For example, wouldn’t it be great if every new employee received:

  • A personal greeting from the CEO, to welcome them into the company and make them feel right at home.
  • A video describing their work responsibilities, performance expectations, and the level support available to them from the company.
  • A short, friendly video introduction from a current employee, and other employee-generated content designed to familiarize them with the company.
  • Videos explaining your company’s mission, its policies, and other things every new employee should know.

If your company is on the larger side, using video for onboarding can be much more engaging and humanizing than group orientation, official emails, and never-ending policy statements. If your current model doesn’t engage your newest employees as strongly as you would like, try video!

Remember to keep it simple

Our final word of advice is, keep it simple. With video, it becomes very easy to get carried away: upgrading equipment, doing fancy editing, making new content, even putting together a dedicated video team…

But none of these things are necessary. Sure, at some point you might think, “Hey, we really need our own TV show for employees!” Then you might have it made, and it might become a hit with your team – in which case, more power to you!

However, that’s not the purpose of these tips. We wanted to share them with you, so they can can save you time and put a smile on your face. And with any luck, on the faces of your customers and employees, too!

So please try them as they are, and see if they make a difference – and we hope they will. Enjoy!