Unlocking the Power of a Video Library at Work

What is a video library?

A video library, in its simplest form, is a collection of videos stored and organized for easy access and management. It serves as a centralized repository of video content. It's a valuable asset for managing your multimedia content in various contexts, both personal and professional.

Just like a real library, videos can cover any subject. But unlike a real library, your videos are stored digitally.

Personal Use

You can create video libraries to store and organize your personal video collections. You can then store home movies, travel vlogs, or memorable events. Even the video of your dog's 2nd birthday gets a place in your personal video library.

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Entertainment

Almost all of us use video libraries in the evening to relax… In the entertainment industry, video libraries play a pivotal role in streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, or Disney+. They offer vast collections of movies and TV shows.

Education & Research

Educational institutions and e-learning platforms maintain video libraries to provide students with educational content. These libraries feature lectures, tutorials, and documentaries on a wide range of subjects.

They are also crucial for researchers and scholars who require access to historical archives, scientific experiments, or rare footage.

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Professional and Corporate

Your company can use video libraries to manage its training materials, product demos, webinars, and internal communication videos. These libraries facilitate knowledge sharing and training within a company. 

It's video libraries at work that we're going to focus on in this article actually. Let's unlock the power of video libraries together.

Public video library vs. Private video library

A video library can be either public or private, depending on its accessibility and purpose.

Public Video Library

A public video library is open and accessible to a wide audience, much like a public library with books. This can include video content available on the internet for anyone to view, such as:

• Streaming platforms (YouTube, Vimeo,...);
• Public institutions offering free video resources for information or education (Nasa video library);
• Companies building customer video libraries (mostly for marketing purposes, of course).

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Private Video Library

A private video library is restricted in its access. It's like a personal book collection or a library with restricted membership. These are used by organizations, businesses, or individuals who want to manage and control access to their video content. 

Private video libraries are typically used for team collaboration, internal training, corporate communications, or protecting copyrighted content.

5 Benefits of video libraries in the workplace

Centralize all your videos in one place

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A video library centralizes all your video content in a single location, making it easily accessible to your team. You no longer have to hunt through multiple folders or platforms to find the right video. 

This centralization streamlines video management and saves you time. It ensures that all your team members can quickly locate the content they need.

Organize your content in a structured way

In a real library, books are arranged coherently by shelf, aren't they? Well, it's the same with video libraries. A video library lets you structure your content neatly.

You can also organize your video library by:

• Teams;
• Channels;
• Labels.

A video library is the digital organizer you've always wished for. Say goodbye to content clutter and chaos. 

Collaborate easily with your colleagues

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A video library transforms your teamwork into a smooth and dynamic process. It's as if you have a digital meeting room where you and your colleagues can collaborate effortlessly.

With your teams, you can:

• Share videos with each other;
• Discuss projects;
• Comment on content in a comments section or thread;
• Provide feedback on each other's video. You could, for example, make a remark while commenting on a colleague's video. Even better: Claap lets you annotate video directly by pointing to an area of the video with the mouse. That’s super useful for commenting on a demo video.

All thanks to the library’s interactive and collaborative features. It's like having a virtual conference room at your fingertips, facilitating teamwork and creative brainstorming.

Protect your video files

Your video library is like a digital vault for your video files. You can be confident that the video library provides privacy and security for your content.

You can manage access controls and privacy settings easily so your videos remain protected from unauthorized eyes. 

Platforms that offer to host your videos in a video library also protect your data. For example, Claap is cloud-hosted on Amazon Web Services which is a highly secure and well established environment. More about Claap's security policy here.

Engage users

A video library is much more than a traditional library that offers videos instead of books. It creates an interactive and social experience.

Let me think of a metaphor... It's a bit like if, in a video library, the librarian found books for you but also invited your friends to read them with you, comment on them, and even rewrite chapters. Video libraries are like having a librarian who's also a party planner, collaborator, and author's assistant, all in one.

You now understand that a video library goes beyond storage. It's a hub for engagement. You can add comments, discussions, and interactive elements to the videos in your library. Your viewers, whether customers if your library is public or colleagues if it is private, become active participants and share thoughts.

I'll explain a little further on how every team in your company (HR, marketing, design...) can rely on a video library.

How to use a video library

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Consult content

Nothing could be simpler: just browse through the various sections or topics of the library and choose the video you want to watch.

If you're using your company's in-house video library, you'll be able to view the meetings you missed when you were ahead of schedule.

Here's another example: You've been trained on CRM but can't quite remember how to register a new deal? You should find the information you need in the "Training" section of your library.

Bonus for Claap users: if you don't want to waste time watching the whole video, you can view only the key moments of the meeting recordings, or read the AI-powered summaries.

Add & Edit content

To add content, all you have to do is upload your videos in the library in the right section. You can also edit the video: change its title, add a description, move it from a section to another.

Organize content (just like a library would)

You need to ensure that your content is logically ordered to facilitate video searches. For example, you can organize it according to subject, team or market.

I suggest you first create the "trunk" of your library: the basic structure. Next, you'll be thinking about expanding the "branches".

Bonus for Claap users: collaborate

With Claap, you can add reactions, comments or threads under videos. Your video library becomes a way to keep the conversation going and encourage interaction between your colleagues.

But Claap doesn't stop there. It integrates all your favorite applications (Notion, Slack, Google Meet, Zoom…) so you can continue to collaborate across your channels. 

Why use a video library in the workspace ? [Team Examples]

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HR team

Answer questions asynchronously

HR people spend long hours explaining complex issues to employees. Insurance, company savings plans, compliance, benefits, mobility opportunities... What's more, the agendas of HR and your teams won't necessarily coincide to organize meetings. 

So, to answer your teams' HR questions asynchronously, video libraries are the ideal way. Even better when you know that you can comment and ask questions under the videos.

Make onboardings easy and efficient

Ever found the onboarding process a bit challenging? Well, video libraries may be the antidote to those jitters. They simplify the welcoming of new employees and eliminate the stress of onboarding meetings. All the essential information for new hires is neatly stored in the video library. They’ll quickly get up to speed.

Promote the company to boost recruitment

HR managers can create a dedicated section for company promotional videos and teasers within the video library. When recruiting, they can efficiently offer these videos, tailoring them to the candidate's profile or recruitment channel. It's a seamless process that simplifies their tasks.

Sales team

Engage your prospects

Tired of generic sales emails with misspelled names? Imagine your prospects feel just the same way! To boost engagement, your sales team can now rely on a robust video library to embed compelling videos in their prospect emails. 

And even if they don't call you back, this interactive content is bound to leave a lasting impression.

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Boost your CRM

We know how important CRM is for sales teams. The slightest lack of information could cause a partnership to go bust. 

Instead of adding empty meeting notes to the "activities/interactions" section of your CRM, you can use the video library to store all your meeting recordings. 

Plus, harness the power of AI with Claap, which delivers AI-generated meeting notes and summaries, ensuring nothing crucial is missed in your partnerships.

Train your sales teams

Sales people are big showmen and don't hesitate to pull out all the stops to sign a customer. However, not everyone can do this in the early days of a new sales job... 

Video libraries offer on-demand sales training materials, from pitch-perfect product demos to hilarious objection-handling skits.

Product Team

All your product demos available to your stakeholders

You may spend your time developing new features for your products, and so much the better. For each feature, record a short demo video (we explain how to record your screen here) and add it to the video library. All your demos will then be easily accessible to stakeholders.

Both for internal use and for your customers, product tutorials (the famous "how to's") will be much more fun.

Stakeholders will be able to quickly challenge your demos and tutos directly in the video library's comments to help you immediately see what adjustments need to be made.

Customer service

Improve service quality with interactive after-sales service and FAQ

Video libraries will quickly become your after-sales service BFF. They store product FAQs and instructional videos, allowing customers to find solutions with ease. They're not just static. They're interactive, offering a dynamic resource for addressing common queries and providing post-purchase support.

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Monitor data analytics

Make sure to leverage tracking and analytics tools offered by the video library platform. You will gather insights into video performance, including viewer engagement, drop-off rates, and popular content. 

Be flexible and ready to adjust your course to your customers' behaviors.

Design Team

Instead of blocking two hours in everyone's schedule for a review design session, simply upload your work to the video library and give your teammates access to it. They will be able to give you feedback.

It's even easier with Claap's video annotation tool. Simply point to an area of the video to leave a very precise comment.

Marketing Team

In marketing, we know that any medium is good for presenting and promoting a brand or product... But videos are really the champions of the exercise. They convey ideas that text and images alone could not. 

Video content on e-commerce websites might boost conversion rates by as much as 80% according to an Insivia study.

Sharing video content in a video library will greatly improve your marketing performance. You can allow public access to several sections of your video library, such as: 

• Presentation of the brands. Develop different videos format adapted to several markets or channels (social media, pitch, longer format…);
• Presentation of the product. Demos, tutorials, use-cases, customized videos, benefits;
• Video hubs specially designed for specific marketing events

Internally, your video library may be used by marketing teams to store and comment on your user interviews.

How to set-up a video library

1. Define Your Objectives

Are you creating a video library for training, marketing, education, or entertainment? All of them? Understanding your goals will guide the rest of the setup process.

2. Select a platform & create an account

To host your videos, you may think about YouTube or Vimeo. But if you want to enhance collaboration with your video content, you might choose a platform with collaboration tools such as Claap. 

The choice depends on your specific needs and budget.

Then create your account and you’re good to go.

3. Add content

You just have to begin uploading your videos to the chosen platform.

4. Organize your video files

It's super important to structure your video content in an efficient way so you and your team don't waste time finding documents.

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To do this, I suggest structuring your content by topic, common themes, projects, teams… And make sure to add tags to your videos to improve searchability.

You'll find all these tips in the best practices section at the end of the article.

5. Set Privacy and Access Controls

You have to clearly define who can access, edit and manage your precious content. 

You can choose to make it public, when it comes to videos addressed to customers for example. 

If you prefer to keep your videos within your company, you can dedicate a workspace for each topic or each team. Each workspace has its own privacy settings. That means that you can set up different privacy settings for your teams, your collaborators (freelancers, contractors) and your clients for example.

6. Engage with Your Audience

Everything's in place now. It's up to you to be the grand maestro of the video library! Encourage your co-workers to leave comments, feedback and ask questions. A Gallup study proved engaged teams are a key to success. They bring a whopping 21% increase in profitability.

7. Analyze Performance

Finally, analyze engagement metrics. You will better understand what works, and should be ready to adjust your sails if needed.

If nobody's ever been to that Excel training course you uploaded two months ago, maybe it's because it's not that good and nobody understands it? Have you tried making it interactive by recording your screen when doing your Excel tricks instead? Just saying…

4 ways to leverage your video libraries with Claap

Fast-growing unicorns like Revolut, next-gen startups like Figures, and individual contributors within all kinds of enterprises use Claap to optimize collaboration between their teams, and in particular video libraries.

Let’s unlock the power of video libraries with some of those cool Claap collaboration features. You'll enjoy trying them out for free through our 14-day trial (no credit card required).

1. Video annotation to provide precise feedback

Users can pinpoint specific zones within a video and provide precise comments on the content within those zones. 

This means that instead of offering general feedback, you can focus on particular moments, scenes, or details, making your comments more targeted and actionable.

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2. Rich threads to engage them all

With Claap, you don't just reply to your colleagues' content additions. You ✨reply✨ to them instead with comments, rich threads, images, emoji reactions or even polls.

3. Powerful audio transcription

Claap’s magic helps you to effortlessly create an audio transcript from any recorded or uploaded video in mere seconds. The transcript is accessible in 100 languages. 

Feel more comfortable with a few summarized key points rather than the subtitles of a 1-hour meeting? We're the same. Claap supercharges your videos thanks to AI generating summaries of your recordings in seconds. 

4. Top-notch integrations with your favorite applications

With Claap you can keep using all your favorite collaboration platforms (Notion, Slack, Trello, Google Docs, GitHub, Jira, Linear and others). Claap will bring more context to your existing tools.

Want to send a demo in Slack? Go ahead! Need to attach a video presentation before sending the invite to your Google meeting? No problem. Want to add context to your project explanation in Notion? Just embed your Claap videos there.

Best practices to manage your video library efficiently

Structure & organize your library effectively

Organizing your video library into logical categories is crucial. For example, a marketing team can categorize videos by product, campaign, or target audience. 

The team will easily locate and share relevant content. This ensures that users can quickly find the videos they need, enhancing the overall user experience.

Keep the library updated

You need to continuously update and review your video library so it remains relevant.

Removing outdated or irrelevant content, correcting errors, and optimizing videos for quality and accessibility keeps the library fresh and user-friendly. 

Don’t forget for instance to regularly update your training materials and onboarding content. That's a lot of time saved when it comes to onboarding your future employee, believe me.

Optimize your metadata

For easier navigation, you should maintain a standard approach to metadata (metadata refers to data that provides information about the content and structure of pages). 

To optimize navigation in your in-house video library, choose the titles, descriptions and, above all, the tags of your videos with great care.

This advice is all the more important if your video library is public. In this case, you'll want to be at the top of your game in terms of SEO. You should then use standardized metadata for each video, with relevant keywords to boost visibility. 

Think carefully about your title tags, meta-description tags, meta-keyword tags and header tags. You'll also need to take care to offer subtitles or transcripts. No time to waste writing a script for each of your videos? Claap can help you get an effortless transcript in seconds for your videos.

To wrap it up, using video libraries at work is like having your very own Netflix for productivity. It's not just about binge-watching cat videos during lunch breaks (although that's a bonus). It's about centralizing, organizing, and supercharging your work-life.

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