Video marketing has become common place on Internet sites for businesses. You see it everywhere, including business home pages, product reviews, training videos, and even on YouTube channels. But how many of you have experienced corporate firewalls and proxy settings from blocking your ability to view the videos?
The question is significant in the business-to-business targeted videos. If you make a video for your product and services and its targeted to other businesses, you need for your target audience to be able to view it while at work.
I can imagine some of the supporting arguments for why policies are set to restrict videos:
- We don’t want employees watching videos at work
- That would cause serious issues with network bandwidth and performance
- We don’t support all the add-ons required for some video formats
- Playing videos at work would be a distraction to other employees
My belief is that if you need restrictive policies like this for employees then you probably have the wrong employee for the job. Employees should be professional enough to adhere to policies and to use their working time to engage in activities that are related to the betterment of the business and achievement of its goals. Video has now become common place enough for businesses in use that it should be available as a mechanism to both send and receive information. A better alternative is to augment the existing Internet usage policy (if necessary) explaining the expected use of videos in the workplace.
Here are few examples of how video usage could help in business activity:
- An IT team is reviewing products for a project portfolio system and three of the four vendors on the list have produced video walkthroughs of their product.
- A marketing team is trying to review television commercial ads from a competitor to see how they are promoting their latest product.
- A corporate communications team is reviewing media releases about a news story that mentions their product / brand.
What is your experience with either producing and posting videos or viewing videos from work? Have you had trouble with your target audience being able to view videos you have produced? Have you been restricted from viewing videos for research and had to watch them from another location?