Learners find it hard to connect with a faceless e-learning brand. Authentic video content helps them to relate to your brand. They want to know your brand story and you can use behind-the-scenes (BTS) content to tell it. Behind-the-scenes e-learning videos can instantly make a connection with prospective learners. With BTS content, you can showcase your team, how you create your learning materials, offer a glimpse of the learning environment, and much more.
Why behind-the-scenes content increases trust and engagement
BTS content pulls back the curtain and shows the faces, values, and daily efforts behind your courses.
Creates a strong emotional connection
BTS content shows learners the people behind your brand. They get to know who is shaping their online experience. When you humanize your brand, it evokes an emotional response and makes learners feel a personal connection. The more learners realize there are actual humans behind those modules, the more they will appreciate the content and want to learn.
It’s authentic and transparent
You can give learners a glimpse into what it’s like to create e-learning content and what challenges you face. When they can see some of the messy side of the process, it can feel more genuine. If you want to build trust with students, showing your humanity and that you face struggles just as they do will make you more approachable and accessible.
Offers a different perspective
BTS offers a different perspective to learners. It’s like getting a backstage pass to the creative process which can stimulate their curiosity. When they see the effort and expertise that goes into creating learning materials, they are more likely to appreciate them.
Helps build anticipation
Getting a glimpse of behind-the-scenes can help to build anticipation for what’s to come. For example, you could show an example of live streaming of a lesson with learners engaging and asking questions. The learners can picture themselves in this situation.
Examples of behind-the-scenes videos
You don’t need the latest equipment, perfect lighting, or the perfect studio to create BTS videos. For these types of videos, authenticity and seeing the personality behind your brand often matter more than a polished production.
Your founder story
Tell the story of what gave you the idea for your e-learning business and the challenges you overcame to make it a reality.
Meet the team videos
- Introduce instructors or subject matter experts. Feature interviews where they talk about what they love to teach and why.
- Show the whole team behind your e-learning platform. Get everyone from the instructional designers to support staff to introduce themselves.
- Feature different team members as they go about their daily tasks.
Your ‘meet the team’ video can be one that shows the diversity of teachers and pupils. It effectively conveys the values and the freedom in teaching and learning.
Course creation videos
- Show how you write and refine scripts for your e-learning modules. Give insight into the storyboarding process and how different experts have to collaborate to get a good end result.
- Show the recording of voiceovers or video lessons. You could include some footage of the recording studio and editing process.
- Demonstrate how you add interactive elements like quizzes or simulations to your courses.
- Give quick, actionable tips related to your course topics to provide value to learners.
Think of a video that follows a typical day’s work in the e-learning provider studio. It shows how it produces video and audio content for its distance learning programs. Learners feel more connected to the instructor and the course material as a result.
Learning environment videos
- Show a virtual classroom where learners are interacting using live chat and sharing their screens.
- Make an animated video that shows the technology you use for delivering your e-learning courses, such as your learning management system (LMS) or video hosting platform.
- Even if you work from a home office, you can give learners a glimpse into your work environment.
At Study.com, engaging videos give learners insight into what the learning environment looks like when learning online.
Where to use BTS content in your marketing and funnel
BTS videos are most effective at the top and middle of your marketing funnel.
At the awareness stage of the funnel, you can share your BTS content on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or LinkedIn. Sharing of the content could help to drive traffic to your website.
At the consideration stage, you can embed BTS clips in your newsletters or on your course landing pages. At this stage, you want to show your brand’s personality and teaching style. You want to convince learners about the value of your courses and show what differentiates you from the competition.
Using short BTS videos in welcome emails can make new learners feel like part of your learning community right from the start. You can also use video messaging to reach out and create connections. Announce new courses, give limited-time offers, send reminders, and answer questions.
When leads are further down the funnel, they can benefit from e-learning webinars that offer them more in-depth information. Hosting regular webinars or live Q&A sessions on social media will quickly help you to make connections with an audience. Starting off with a short BTS video helps to warm up the audience right from the start.
When you localize e-learning videos, you can reach a wider, global audience. Learners from different cultures who speak different languages can have access to your videos if they have subtitles and transcripts. You could create BTS videos of learners from different cultures interacting with your courses.
Cincopa makes it easy to host, organize, and share BTS content across different marketing channels. You can brand your content, create playlists, and use various interactive elements. Live streaming and video-on-demand BTS content can reach wide audiences.
Tips for capturing informal but high-impact content
- BTS content shouldn’t be overly scripted. Try letting team members talk in a natural way rather than having to follow a strict script.
- Show what makes your brand tick. Do you have a summer pow wow or a weekly sales meeting? How do you celebrate birthdays? Candid moments and unfiltered snippets can highlight your brand personality.
- Today’s learners are loyal to brands that take a stance on social issues. You can show your values and how your team members live them out in BTS videos. For example, you could show team members running in a sponsored race for charity.
- In EdTech marketing, you could share a story of someone who took a course and got good results. This gives learners a person they can relate to and shows that your course program works. Did the person land a dream job or start a successful business after taking your course? Get them to talk about this and share the content on your website and on social media.
- Try to be consistent and rather capture short clips on a regular basis than plan big production days. It’s the small moments that matter.
- Minor editing for clarity is fine, but too much polishing of BTS is a mistake. You need to leave in the human moments that give the content personality.
- Be on the lookout for people and influencers who can help you to create behind-the-scenes content. The influencer you choose should have a highly engaged audience. Even if it’s a small audience, it should be passionate about your subject matter. You could offer exclusive discounts to the influencer’s followers.
- Your BTS content should be real, spontaneous, and emotionally engaging. At the same time, you can’t look as though you’re trying too hard to be relatable or it could just seem tacky or even offensive.
Using video analytics, such as the heatmaps and dashboards on the Cincopa platform, allows you to analyze the performance of your BTS videos and use the insights to make improvements.
Conclusion: Use BTS videos to make your brand more relatable and credible
In the e-learning industry, it’s easy to become faceless behind a wall of modules. Behind-the-scenes e-learning videos can make all the difference. They remind learners that there are real people behind the content that they can connect with. Adding BTS videos to your content strategy won’t just humanize your brand. It will help you to build a loyal community of learners who feel like they know you. The Cincopa video hosting platform hosts your BTS content so you can organize it, optimize it, and share it across many channels. Go to the home page and you can sign up for a free trial.
