As if TikTok, Instagram’s Reels, and Snapchat haven’t zapped Gen Z’s attention spans enough, YouTube is now experimenting with a feature that allows users to automatically jump to the best parts of a video. How to create effective employee communications in light of such an environment is what prompted this post.

I work with customers on many aspects of technology adoption and more recently around the use of Microsoft Viva, the employee experience platform, to support AI Transformation efforts, specifically Copilot for Microsoft 365 (disclosure).

I’ve written much about that and am also in progress with a trend report that covers many aspects of that: Future of HumAIn Work

In this post I’m just capturing the steps I followed to create a short video that could be used as an explainer for how to use Viva Amplify to drive communication efforts in support of technology adoption. The audience is intended to be those responsible for technology adoption.

This really was a test of some video creation tools and an approach – I’ll cover all that after you watch the video below.

Approach

• Use video, this is the first point. It is super effective especially to get key points across as well as if you want to demo technology. But the challenge with video is what I started this post with.
• Hence, capture the essence in as short a time as possible. My target was a minute but the video above is 1:32, this will do.
• YouTube Playlist format. I wanted to create a format that can be repeatable and added to a YouTube Playlist covering many different aspects under one subject. My video above is not ready for showtime so I haven’t uploaded it to YouTube yet but that will be the ultimate destination, in a playlist.
• Make it so you can target certain audiences, this video above is focused on those responsible for technology adoption as the subtitle states at the beginning and later, separately, end users will be targeted. The playlist title and description can probably cover this better.
• I wanted to use tools that are in the Microsoft ecosystem so that others that have access to the tools (e.g. customers and their employees), can easily recreate their own videos without extra outlay.

Video Creation

I used two tools in the main, those listed below with a brief explanation how. The standard tier of Clipchamp’s work version is included in Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Premium and Business Standard licenses. The standard tier and the premium tier are also available as standalone subscription options for business and enterprise Microsoft customers. More here. The snipping tool comes standard in Windows. More here.

• Clipchamp.
  • Clipchamp does offer AI creation capabilities, but it didn’t achieve (yet) what I needed it to. I know Sora from OpenAI is achieving amazing things, but I don’t think its capable yet of achieving the precise things I would need it to. One day hopefully it will.
  • I normally use Canva’s video creation tool but I pay for the premium version so this wouldn’t do considering my objectives. Having said that, Canva’s tools set a high bar. I’m not a pro or great video creator so they do make it really easy, especially with their vast template library.
  • Clipchamp has some great templates and my video above started with one. Not as many as Canva but what it lacked in terms of templates it more than made up for with more advanced video editing capabilities – it’s more of a pro tool than Canva I would say. Maybe Canva’s acquisition of Affinity will change that.
  • For now, Clipchamp is a really cool tool that offers a lot of capability, and I am really impressed with it.
• Snipping Tool
  • The video function is great for screen capture.
  • The beauty of this tool is its simplicity, no feature bloat yet, long may that last.