Educate, inform, entertain: which video training format fits my goals?
Which video training format should you choose based on your goals? We tell you everything!
Remember high school, when the teacher wheeled in the TV cart? It was either a good sign, because you were about to watch a movie instead of working, or a bad one, because they were about to show you some painfully dull training tape from a bygone era that had nothing to do with anything anymore. Or maybe one of your first jobs, where you spent the first three days just shadowing a coworker step by step with no real training plan in sight. Training has changed.
These days, training videos are produced to be just as engaging and eye-catching as social media content. There’s something for every taste and, more importantly, for every goal.
Which video training format suits you best? Let’s break it down together.
1. Tutorials
Tutorials are step-by-step videos that teach you how to do something in a hands-on way. They’re common in crafts, cooking, and mechanical repair, and they usually pair with written instructions. These are short videos, often featuring real-time or sped-up clips, and they frequently shoot the work from an overhead angle.
Think Domestika and Craftsy.
2. Webinars (live or recorded)
Webinar-based training is usually filmed in real time and rarely runs longer than an hour. It’s a great way for an expert to share knowledge. Recording it makes replays and accessibility easier, while streaming it live lets you interact directly with your target audience.
3. Interviews
One host plus one expert equals a relevant conversation that doesn’t feel like sitting through a training session. The expert lends credibility to your brand, and this format can be repurposed into short clips across various channels.
4. Case studies
Case studies tell success stories (ideally!). They’re extremely useful for showing how a theory, practice, product, or service plays out in real situations. They help make a concept tangible and move it out of the theoretical realm. They’re also a very powerful marketing tool.
5. Explainer videos
Explainer videos are short formats that use animation and graphics to break down a complex topic. They’re playful, colorful, and dynamic, which supports a different kind of learning.
6. Interactive learning videos
Adding interactive elements to a training video keeps your audience actively engaged. These elements can include quizzes, multiple-choice questions, or even games. You can build them in through gamification platforms, Learning Management Systems (LMS), or simply by playing with pacing in the edit!
7. Video series
Video series are made up of episodes, each covering a single topic, that together build toward a bigger picture. Any of the formats above can work within this structure. It’s also a well-loved approach, since it lets learners consume content at their own pace, whenever suits them, in a progressive way.
Check out our work for CAIJ and Climatoblabla.
We’ve come a long way from that 3-hour training tape edited back in 1982, right? There’s a training format for every taste and every context. But beyond the format itself, the key question to ask when designing or producing a training program is about your target audience: who will be watching this training? What are their consumption habits? How old are they? How much time do they realistically have? Do they have access to a desk, an iPad, or just their phone?
Planning and a well-established process are the keys to great production. To learn more about our process and plan your next training project, get in touch with us.
