Simplify Your Internal Comms Using Visual Storytelling

Speaker A: All right. Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us for our Monkey Business webinar series with Contact Monkey. And I'm just going to wait for a minute to let some people trickle in before we officially get started. So I don't know where everyone is joining us from today, but it's really nice and sunny here in Toronto for a change, which is quite nice. It's been really bad in terms of A lot of snow. Wind.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay, so we're gonna get started. Okay, so today we're going to talk about simplifying your internal comms using visual storytelling, and I'm super excited to have partnered with Venngage for today's webinar. Vengage is an infographic company that is based in Toronto. And from Vengage, we have Sarah McGuire, who is the content lead for Vengage. She's in charge of producing awesome blog posts for the company, and when she's not doing that, she's producing some really stellar YouTube videos. So be sure to check out Vengage's YouTube channel for tips and tricks on visual storytelling and infographics. And I am the other presenter. Today for this webinar, my name is Filza. I'm a content marketing specialist for Contact Monkey. I also write blogs on internal communications and employee engagement, and I really hope that I can add value today by sharing some awesome visual storytelling tips and tricks with you guys. So just a note on the format: you can ask questions throughout the webinar. We will try our best to. Address them as we go along. We will have time at the end as well for Q&A. So in case your question is not answered, don't worry, just pose it at the end of the webinar and we are going to address it. So let's talk about visual storytelling. So I like to call this Visual Storytelling 101, because it is some basic tips and tricks that you can keep in the back of your pocket. You can print some of those tips out, put them on a board in your office because they're super handy. So why should you even consider using visuals in your communications? Do you even need them? I believe you do because visuals are more effective than text at awakening emotions and encouraging audiences to take action. And if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. If you think of popular ads, do television ads stand out more to you or do radio ads Stand out more. Audio is great. I personally love podcasts, but I think visual is way better because if you can show someone, they're going to be so much more excited about, about, you know, whatever you're talking about if you can actually show them images, especially if they're moving visuals. So let's go over some visual storytelling rules to help you create awesome stories using visuals. So the first one is to show rather than tell and try to make your story move. So even if it's something as boring as, you know, making an announcement that we have a new coffee machine in the office, you can make it exciting by incorporating a GIF or, you know, recording a short video to announce the change or whatever it is that you're announcing. Always show rather than tell. And make it move. That's one of my go-to visual storytelling rules. The second one is to try to create a journey, a story with your visual. So if you're using— if you're creating a story or announcing something on company policies, new changes to your company's policy, keep in mind that there are different intersections that you need to inform people about. And those are the who, the what, and the why. So make sure you know who you are communicating to. Make sure you understand what is the topic that you are communicating and the impact it's going to have on your audience. And then also be sure to emphasize the why. Why is it happening and why is it going to be good for your company? And this is one of my favorites. Always try to incorporate human elements in your story because it just, you know, is a natural way of getting people excited and emotional. And the best way to do so for internal comms is to actually feature your employees in your stories. So have their photos, have them as the visuals. And if you're unable to do that for some reason, you can always make up fictional characters such as Mickey Mouse. There's a reason why Mickey Mouse is so popular. And you may be wondering, you know, how can I use a fictional character in internal communications? You know, that sounds crazy. Well, it's not that crazy because companies have done that before. And this is actually a case study from a telecommunications company called Millicom. And what they did was they wanted to communicate new policies and procedures to their employees, but they wanted to do so in a fun way because when you're talking about policies and procedures, they can be very dry and boring. So they decided to create a fictional avatar called Millie and she would talk to employees and communicate the new policies, the new changes. And instead of making it really boring and dry, employees actually got really excited about the changes because they were able to talk to a friendly face about what's going on. And there was transparency in the communications. This is another example from another company, Ascendia. They invited employees to take part in developing their business strategy. And they got employees excited by using LEGO imagery in all of their communications. And they did this because they believed that LEGO would help communicate the fact that the company is all about transparency, friendliness, and trust, because they believe LEGO stands for all of these qualities. And it worked really well, and employees got super excited, because who doesn't love LEGO? So to sum up, show, don't tell. Make your story move if possible. Create a journey. with different intersections of who, what, why, when. Humanize your story by including actual people, actual humans, rather than stock photos. Ignite emotions using creative fictional characters. And on to tip number 2.

Speaker B: Great, thanks, Melza. And storytelling, it's so often talked about in the context of marketing, but it really is equally as important when you're communicating internally with your team, you know, in terms of just building people's investment in the work that they do and the part that they play in all of their projects and in the company.

Speaker A: So now I want to give you all a fundamental tip to help make visualizing information easier.

Speaker B: So, you know, at Venngage, we, we talk a lot We talked to a lot of our users to find out what kinds of problems that they're trying to solve with visuals. And one of the biggest problems that people seem to face is summarizing and communicating boring and complex information in an engaging way, both for internal communications and customer-facing communications. Because, you know, let's face it, few people are going to read long documents in full. Instead, you know, they're probably going to skim and skip over parts, especially parts that they don't think are important. So that means that there's a good chance that they're going to miss information. And that's why as a communicator, you need to find a way to make sure that people see the information that you want them to. And that really is where, you know, visuals can help. What's more, you know, visuals can help you simplify complex concepts, multi-step processes, and they can really make dry data a lot easier to understand and a lot more memorable. And TechSmith actually did a study of over 4,500 office workers and they found that people absorb information 7 times faster when they're given text accompanied by images versus just text. And that same study also found that 67% of people are better at completing tasks when information includes text along with an image or a video to help explain it. So if you're worried that people won't understand your message or you're concerned that they're going to miss important points, you really should try creating a visual aid to reinforce your information. But now we have the problem. When you've got a lot of information to communicate, how do you decide what information to visualize? You know, like how can you find the compelling story behind your dry data or your complex data and information? Also, how do you determine which information would be made more clear in a visual format versus which information should probably stay as a longer text format? So I'm going to give you a simple tip for how you can identify which information would work best as a visual. And we call this strategy digging for content gold. Okay, so what do I mean by content gold? Content gold is just a term that we use at Venngage to describe the pieces of information in your text content that are ideal for repurposing into visuals. So generally, content gold will be things like facts, quotes, statistics, tips and hacks, and steps to follow. So I want to give an example of how you can find content gold in something like a report. So let's say that you've put together a report with some valuable information that you want to share with your team. So there's going to be certain pieces of information that everyone should know, things like, you know, key numbers that you want your team to track, or project timelines and deadlines. And when presented with a full report, you know, there's a good chance that people are going to probably skim and skip over some of the information, especially if the report's like mostly comprised of But you can pull the most important and surprising and exciting pieces of information, the content gold, and you can turn that into eye-catching visuals. So for example, I've just highlighted some parts of this page that you could pull. We've got a table with some important traffic metrics, some percentages that you might want to highlight. So you can take those and you can visualize them using charts or by creating a simple infographic. And this will not only be more interesting to look at, but it can also help you tell the story behind your data by highlighting and visualizing that data. So I think we have a poll now, right?

Speaker A: Yeah. So I love, you know, how some of those visuals are just so great for showing employee engagement metrics. So, you know, There are so many ways that you can demonstrate to the C-suite that you actually have increased employee engagement. And just by using some of these visuals, you have such a more powerful way of communicating your, you know, what you've achieved and accomplished. And we have a poll question. For some reason, the poll is not working. Let me just try this out. So we're going to talk about infographics in a minute. And I'm really curious to ask our audience if they've ever used infographics for internal communications. I'd love to know. So I think the poll is working. It would be great to see. I'm very curious to see if some people have never considered using infographics. So I can see people are voting. I personally love infographics. I think it's just such a good way of Really communicating key information instead of reading a long article. It's so much easier to have those key points in an infographic.

Speaker B: Yeah, and like there's so many versatile ways that you can use infographics to visualize information. I mean, I feel like every time we talk to our users, they're telling us new ways that we didn't expect. So it's really cool to see how people are finding ways to visualize the information and to make things more interesting.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. So people have— I think people have finished voting, so I'm just going to share the results. And 71% say that they have used infographics, which is awesome. I'd love to hear feedback in the chat if you guys have time on whether it helped create better communications for you. 6% have never used it. And 24% haven't used it either but are considering it, which is great. Great. So Sarah is our infographics expert and she's gonna, she's gonna take it from here and talk to you about, you know, everything you need to know about infographics. Cool.

Speaker B: Yeah. So for some of you, this is probably going to be a little bit of a refresher then. But for those who don't know, this will be a nice little introduction into infographics. So the third tip that I want to present is how to visualize information using infographics. Because, you know, once you know how to turn text and data into engaging visuals, you can really use them to spice up your newsletters, your presentations, your reports, your videos, you know, virtually any type of content that you create. And they're a great format for telling the story behind your data and, you know, for really making dry information a lot more digestible for your audience. So first things first, what is an infographic? So simply put, an infographic is a collection of imagery, charts, and minimal text that gives an easy-to-understand overview of a topic. So odds are you've seen plenty of infographics around, even if you didn't know that that's what they were called. They're super popular on blogs, on company resource pages, on social media. And we actually did a study over at Venngage where we surveyed over 300 content marketers, asking them which type of content they found got the most engagement from their audiences. And an overwhelming 40% said that they found original graphics that they created, like infographics, to drive the most engagement. And there is a good reason for that. Infographics are perfect for making boring and complex data more engaging and a lot easier to understand. And like I already said, there's a lot of situations where you could create an infographic. These are just a few that I've listed here. You know, you can summarize new concepts. You can show the steps in a process. For example, you know, a bunch of our users have used them as part of their employee onboarding process or to explain processes to clients. They're also great for showing timelines. So a lot of people use our project timeline templates, and they're also really good for comparing information. As well as visualizing survey data. And at Venngage, we actually categorize our infographics into 9 basic types, and I've listed them all here. I don't have enough time to go into each one in detail, but we do have a blog post over at Venngage that I've put the link on there, and we'll link to it again at the end of the webinar. And that just gives you more of a detailed description of each, and it offers you some examples of each. But basically, the main thing that you need to know is that the type of infographic that you create will depend on the type of information that you want to visualize, as well as what the goal of your infographic is. So, you know, Filza already talked about having a goal, the who, the what, or the why behind your visual. And the same applies for infographics and how you choose to visualize your data. So I want to offer an example. So let's say that you want to summarize the key takeaways from a report. So what would you do? First, you would look for the content gold. So in the case of a market segmentation report like this one, some content gold could be key market trends, your user personas, geographic information about your users, and customer quotes. And then you can just visualize those key pieces of information in a simple statistical infographic. So this one here, you can see it illustrates the different customer segments using icons. And again, this draws on the idea of Being able to put a character or a face to the information, it really humanizes it and it can make it a lot easier for the people on your team to empathize with your users. And sorry, really quick, the charts, they also—

Speaker A: oops, sorry.

Speaker B: Go back to the previous slide. Sorry about that. The charts will also help you to visualize key data points. And a simple infographic like that can be really handy to keep as a reference sheet for your team.

Speaker A: So Sarah, we actually have a question from the audience. Someone is asking, you know, how do you— let me just go to the question for a second. So someone is asking, when should I be using infographics? When should I stick to plain text?

Speaker B: Yeah, you should be using infographics It really depends on the use case. But basically, anytime that you want to communicate data or draw information in a way that will make it kind of more engaging and easier to understand. So, you know, we, we get a lot of people saying, oh, I use infographics because I have a lot of industry-specific information that I need to communicate to my clients. For example, say you're a consultant. You would create an infographic that really breaks it down with visuals to illustrate the concepts and just make it a lot more approachable and digestible. It's also— I'll show you a couple more examples too really quickly of some other use cases. So sorry, I'm just— okay, here we go. So for example, you could also use an infographic to summarize a blog post. And that's because they're really good for kind of visualizing the key points from a longer piece of text. And at Venngage, we actually use blog infographics in virtually all of our blog posts, because not only do they help increase the time on page, but they also give readers something that they can then take away and share on social media. So it's a really good way to repurpose your information visually. And turning a blog post into an infographic is pretty straightforward. You can just pull the main section headers. shown an example here. You'd pull the main section headers, some key points from each section, and then you would use visuals to help illustrate the concepts.

Speaker A: So I'm just going to quickly go over another question that somebody has.

Speaker B: Yeah, sure.

Speaker A: Can you use infographics for explaining business needs? So I would say definitely.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah, you can use infographics to explain pretty much anything, to be honest.

Speaker A: And I believe that you have a whole library of templates on Venngage for every sort of situation, pretty much, you know, whether it's for demonstrating the history of your business, for example, or just showcasing, you know, different milestones or achievements. That your company has accomplished.

Speaker B: Mm-hmm. Yeah, if you want to see a bunch of examples of use cases, honestly, just visit our templates page. So I've got a little GIF of it here. And I really do recommend if you don't have a lot of design experience starting with a template. Infographics can be a little bit more of a challenging design project, but a template makes it super easy. I mean, I don't have a design background. I learned how to design using templates. And so I do want to take a moment to just plug our templates page. It's worth checking out. And well, you can access it by going to Venngage.com/templates, and we will link to that again at the end of the webinar.

Speaker A: Sarah, sorry, sorry, Tindra. Someone, someone else is asking, how long does it take to create these types of infographics with Venngage? So, you know, roughly how long do you think it takes people?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I mean, that depends on how much you want to customize the design. And when you're first starting out, it could take you maybe like half an hour to an hour, depending on if you want to really change a lot of the visuals and the colors. But as you practice more of it and you create more infographics, it really does become a lot easier. And you kind of get a sense of what types of visuals that you want to use, what will work. And actually, a bunch of the tips that I'm going to talk about later on in this webinar can easily be applied to creating infographics as well. So I think once you have those kind of basic tips for design in your back pocket, it becomes a lot easier.

Speaker A: Someone in the chat also has asked a question. Where can we obtain free content to utilize with our data? So Dawn, I'm not really sure what you're asking, but if you're saying, if you're talking about the visual content, then a lot of the Venngage templates are already made. So you just have to kind of add in your data, I believe. Sarah, is that correct?

Speaker B: Correct.

Speaker A: And then you can kind of customize it to your needs as you go along. And I believe you can also add in your branding and colors. So I think, yeah, it's already made. You just kind of add whatever you need to customize it for your For yourself.

Speaker B: And our business plan actually has a built-in brand kit that allows you to save your logos and your colors and your fonts so you can really easily just apply them to any templates. So we've tried to make this as straightforward for you as possible.

Speaker A: And Laura is asking, are there any trends for business communication infographic templates specifically for organizational employee programs, incentives, new technical implementations. So again, Laura, I think what you'd have to do in this case is go to Venngage, look at— have a look at their templates, and then see which one would fit your needs the best for the type of information that you are trying to convey.

Speaker B: Mm-hmm.

Speaker A: So you will have to do a bit of customization, of course, because every organization is so different, and your employee programs are going to be so different from another company's employee programs. So I think you'll find tons of different examples that you can definitely use to communicate organizational changes, employee programs, incentives. You'll just have to play a little bit in the beginning with it. Yeah.

Speaker B: And you know, we have a ton of design guides on our blog too that you can check out. We do frequent roundups of examples for different types of visuals. So that's definitely something that you could check out too if you want to see some examples of how we and other companies have approached the topics you're interested in visualizing.

Speaker A: Sounds good. So we'll continue with a customer journey timeline. Yes.

Speaker B: So this is just another quick example of the type of infographic that you could create. So for example, if you want to visualize your customer journeys, a timeline infographic is a really good way to do that. Again, this one uses icons to illustrate who your different user segments are. And it's also a really nice way to show different concurrent timelines so that you can compare and contrast between your different user segments. So I think I'm going to pass it back over to you now, Filza, because you have some really good tips to share for customizing your newsletters.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm just going to take a quick look at our Q&A just to see if we have any new questions. Is there a difference between infographics and dashboards? Yes. So infographics are just, you know, as Sarah said, all about, you know, you customize it and make it fit to your needs. Whereas a dashboard is something that's built into a tool that you're already using or a platform you're already using. So for example, if you use YouTube or Facebook, you know, you get an inbuilt dashboard where you can look at all the analytics. With Contact Monkey as well, you get a dashboard that's built into the tool itself. So you'll see all kinds of different KPIs and numbers. But you can always use an infographic to illustrate major KPIs, key performance metrics, and other things as well if you want to go— if you want to do it that way. Okay. Just going to quickly look at the chat. Another question, how do you make an infographic come alive? Sarah showed us. So Sarah, do you have any tips on how you can make an infographic come alive?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of great ways to do that. Definitely bright colors, using visuals that really illustrate the information. So that's where the customization comes in, you know, depending on the type of information that you want to visualize. Picking icons that really reflect that, picking a color scheme that really reflects the, the mode or the— sorry, the mood or the tone of the information. So it really is like a case-by-case basis. So again, I would recommend that you check out some of our resources on our blog because depending on the use case, we have a lot of good recommendations for ways that you can really spice up your infographic design.

Speaker A: Yeah. And if you're thinking of animating something, that's a little bit different than an infographic. That's a GIF. I don't know if it's a GIF or a GIF. I kind of use both interchangeably. So that's a little bit different. And so is a video. Yeah.

Speaker B: Although you can animate your infographics. We've done that in the past. And I know, for example, ClientBoost, they're a company who uses a lot of animated infographics on their blog. So that can be really fun too. But that usually is a bit more of an ambitious design project, especially if you're just starting out. But really, the, the opportunities are virtually endless. It's really up to your creativity.

Speaker A: Yeah, so I see we have a lot of other questions in the chat. So we're going to get back to these. We'll probably answer these as we go along because there are so many questions that I think are kind of incorporated in the presentation. So we'll address them. In case we don't, Put it in the Q&A at the end and we're going to answer the question then. So tip number 4, you know, give your newsletter a facelift. So why is your employee newsletter important? Why does it matter? Some people— I know a lot of people think that an employee newsletter isn't as important in today's digital age because you have all kinds of social media platforms and different digital outlets to communicate information to employees. But I always, always emphasize that your employee newsletter is one of your most important assets because it offers a strong internal communication line that connects your company with your employees, especially if you're dealing with remote workers from all over the world who don't know what's going on necessarily because they don't come into the office. They don't know the day-to-day and they want to feel connected to your company. So a newsletter is a great way of announcing all kinds of company news events. Product launches that are happening. It's also a formal means of communication. And the great thing about newsletters are that they can be read on any device as long as you're ensuring that your newsletter is responsive. And what do I mean by responsive email design? A responsive email design ensures that your newsletter looks as good on a giant TV screen as it does on your iPhone and offers similar functionality. So make sure that you're always testing your newsletters, your employee newsletters before you send them out. Internally, because a lot of the times your employees may be looking at your newsletter on their iPhones or on their mobile devices. And if it doesn't look good, a lot of email clients like Outlook cause rendering issues, then they're gonna immediately, you know, delete the email or move on to the next email without even reading it. So make sure you're always testing to make sure your newsletter looks flawless. Here are some newsletter tips to keep in mind. Always be sure to personalize your newsletter. So there are tons of tools like ContactMonkey that allow you to send to mass employee distribution lists within Outlook and at the same time personalize the subject line and the body of each email with the name of each employee on your list. So be sure to personalize because people are more likely to look at your emails, open your emails, read your emails if their names are mentioned in the subject line. Hone in on your audience. So understand who exactly are you communicating to and create specific tailored content for that audience. And the next point speaks to this as well. Create targeted and segmented content. So segmented content is something that marketing does really well. They send to different distribution, different lists, and make sure that they have segmented their content according to age, cultural habits, etc. And you can do that with your employee newsletters as well by making sure, especially if you're dealing with employees from all over the world who live in different countries, different regions. Make sure you are tailoring content specific to that region, specific to the cultural traits and habits of the employees in those regions. Use content blocks to divide up your information when you're writing your employee newsletter. Use visuals at each stage so that it's not all text. Ensure responsiveness. Again, this is all about testing your email and making sure that it looks great across all devices before hitting the send button. And this is an example from Airbnb, an external newsletter, and I think it's great for showcasing it to people who want to make employee newsletters and make those stand out as well. The thing that I really like about this specific newsletter is that they really deploy personalization in the sense that they are using the word you everywhere. You know, the next Airbnb inspired by you. So that immediately stands out because whoever is reading it is automatically going to feel special as if they're being addressed personally. The second thing that's really great about this newsletter is that they've divided the information into different content blocks. So you can see they have a visual for each content block and they have a little bit of text to describe what they're talking about without going into too much detail. So you can use this format as well to emphasize different types of things that are happening in your organization. And it really makes it easy for the reader to read without becoming overwhelmed with the information. This is another newsletter example from Moo that I really like. I think if you can animate your newsletter, it really goes a long way in standing out. And these types of newsletters are really great for, you know, for example, announcing the holiday party that your company is having, where you kind of animate the visual and just have a little bit of text where you announce that this is happening and include a link with more information. Because with something like this, it's short and simple and it doesn't take away too much of your employees' time. And just want to give a shout out to our tool Contact Monkey. It makes personalization super easy. You get sent to your Outlook distribution lists. You don't even have to leave your Outlook inbox with Contact Monkey because It simply plugs into your Outlook and it ensures that you, even when you're sending to mass distribution lists, you're personalizing the subject lines and the body copy. And before I move on to our next tip, I'm just going to have a look at the chat. Someone's asking about the tool that works with Outlook for employee newsletters. So that is Contact Monkey. It plugs into your Outlook. You don't ever have to leave Outlook. And it ensures that you can send to mass distribution lists. So you don't have to create new lists like you would have to do, for example, if you were using an external marketing tool such as Mailchimp to send your emails. Okay. So tip number 5, how to use video to simplify your internal communications. So video, if you decide to use it, it can be very beneficial to your overall internal communication strategy. 81% of businesses use video according to HubSpot, and 99% will continue to do so. So it's something that's here to stay, and it's more and more and more businesses are now using video to really stand out from the crowd. And you may be wondering, you know, why use video or how to use video for internal communication. So the reason that you should consider video is because it's a great way to again connect with your remote workers who may not know about, you know, what the day-to-day happenings at your company. A video is a really good way of helping them feel connected. It's also a great way of showcasing your company values, your mission, what does your company stand for. It's also great for tracking engagement. So if you're using a tool like ContactMonkey and if you're sharing video links with your employees, employees, you're able to see how many people clicked on the links that you've sent. If you're including it in your employee newsletter, you can track engagement by looking at link clicks as well. And then again, if you're uploading your videos on a platform like YouTube, you can see how many people viewed the video, how many times they viewed the video, the likes and dislikes that the video got as well, which is great feedback for you. You can also really use video to showcase your company's culture. And if you want to be super effective with your video strategy, star your employees in your videos. Identify those employees who have some influence in the organization, internal influencers, those employees who people go to for regular news updates, advice. Highlight them in your videos. You can also use video for training and onboarding. So instead of having a boring policy manual on your company policies and getting new employees to read that boring long manual, make a video instead where you highlight these are our different company policies. Make it fun. Make it interactive. So much easier for new employees to get familiar with your company. You can also use videos for internal product launches. So if your company has recently launched a new product and before even advertising it externally, you can create a video that explains to everyone in the company how the product works and how this is going to impact the business, the business's bottom line. Such a great way to get people familiar with your products and services internally. And this is a case study from HSBC. And they really used video to up their internal communication scheme. So you may remember that there was a financial crisis in 2008. It had a severe impact on a lot of banks. And HSBC was one such bank. Trust was at an all-time low after the financial crisis, and 50% of employees did not trust upper management. And HSBC was seriously concerned about how to increase employee engagement. They decided to launch HSBC Now on YouTube, where they featured employee stories in the form of videos. And these stories had common themes, like stories about friendship, trust, Triumph, and these were super, super successful. These videos received 42,000 views internally, sometimes even reaching 80,000 views. And it was so massively successful that they decided to launch a mobile video app as well called HSBC Now, which is now available in 6 languages. And so this is a great way of really showing to all of you that video can go a long way in helping helping your employees get excited because they love sharing, you know, their stories. And if you can give them that platform, it really goes a long way in helping boost— helping to boost employee engagement.

Speaker B: You know, I think that just featuring your employees in general in your communications is such a good way of really making them feel like, you know, that they are the stars of the story. It's so good for boosting people's morale and getting them really invested in what they're doing.

Speaker A: So we have a question from Laura who is asking, what tools are there for creating videos, or are videos a full production process? So we do have a blog up on our website that I'm going to share with you in an email after the webinar. It has a list of all kinds of tools that you can use for design, including video tools that are— some of those are actually free. But Sarah, who is our video superstar over here, can maybe answer that question Superstar is very generous. Thank you for that.

Speaker B: You definitely don't need a full production team. And realistically, a lot of companies aren't going to have that. I've been growing our YouTube channel for a few months now, and I've just been doing it myself. And there's definitely been a huge learning curve, but I've been using Venngage to make the visuals for it, and I've been editing it in iMovie. And It's certainly not perfect, but it's definitely doable. You can get engaging content out there even if you don't have a master designer suite.

Speaker A: So I think Sanju is asking, how popular is Workplace Now for company videos? So I'm not really sure how many people use Workplace Now. If anyone in the audience has used it before, feel free to answer that question. But Sanju, I will share with you that blog that we have which has some other great video tools that you could start experimenting with and see which one is a good fit for you personally. There's another question from Laura. Okay, we've already answered that, I believe. Someone is asking, for internal comms, when should you use an infographic versus an email if it's all about updates? So I think that really depends. I would say test, try and test both. Infographics I think are going to stand out more for sure. You can create an infographic and send it through email. So that way you can kind of, if you use ContactMonkey, you can track the engagement that you get. So if a lot of people are opening the email with the infographic as opposed to an email that is only text-based, you'll see the difference. You'll see, okay, people are definitely more attracted to the infographic because They're opening the email over and over again and they're answering the email, they're engaging with it. So that should give you a good idea of what works. All right, so we'll move to tip number 6.

Speaker B: Cool. Yeah, so now I want to offer some tips for how you can make your presentations more engaging. And I do think that these really go— the slide deck format really goes hand in hand with video. And I think it is safe to say that we've all sat through our fair share of boring presentations. And for that reason, some people might be a little bit apprehensive about using the presentation format. But the slide deck is far from dead. And in fact, SlideShare apparently gets 5 times more traffic from business owners than Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. So that alone can tell you that people do still appreciate the slide deck as a storytelling format. And returning to the study that we did over at Venngage that I mentioned earlier, we found that marketers found presentations and videos to actually be the 2nd most engaging type of visual content after original graphics like infographics. And the reason for that, is because, you know, slide decks, they're an awesome visual format that allows you to deliver information in a more engaging and more interactive way than perhaps a simple blog post or a report. And the multi-page format makes the slide deck perfect for storytelling because, you know, the text is broken up into bite-sized pieces on each slide. And slide decks can just make information in general be a lot easier to scan and absorb. And the cool thing about slide decks too is that they can easily be repurposed into videos. So now I want to offer 3 essential tips for using visuals to make your presentations more engaging. So the first tip is to create an eye-catching title slide. Basically, you don't want to skimp on your title slide because it really does set the tone for your entire presentation. So you can kind of think of it as the COVID of a book. You need to think about the themes that you want to draw on in your design. And how you can reflect your brand's personality with the fonts, the color schemes, and the images. And the second tip is to use visuals like icons and simple infographics and charts to illustrate your concepts. So if we're looking at slide design like telling a visual story, then you need to think of ways to make your information more engaging for your audience. And that's where visuals come in. You can look for ways to illustrate concepts and to simplify complex data and information using simple visuals. So the example I have here is a slide from a project proposal. And as you can see, they use icons to replace the bullet points. This is a really simple example of how you can incorporate visuals into your design to kind of break up the text. And they also use simple icons to visualize the different amenities that are promised in this project. And this is just another really good way to illustrate concepts and to make the points more memorable for your audience. And the third tip is a really essential design tip. And this applies not just to presentations, it can also apply to videos that you create and to infographics, really any type of explanation visual. And it's to use directional cues. So what is a directional cue? A directional cue is basically a visual cue that guides your audience. Oops, let me go back a few.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: No problem. It's a visual cue that guides your viewers' eyes towards a particular place on the page. So typically people use directional cues to point readers towards a call to action that they want them to take. But you can also use it to direct people towards a specific important piece of information that you want them to see. And they can also be used to help your presentations flow. So I'm going to offer an example of that. So here's an example of a slide deck created by the digital tech thought leader Gary Vaynerchuk. A bunch of you have probably heard of him before. But basically he uses transitional slides throughout his presentation to organize the presentation into sections and to give the readers a sense of progression. So you can see at the foot of his slide, he's got each section outlined. And then he uses simple directional cues like the arrows and a circle around each section to help readers really flow through the presentation, to help them jump back and forth between different points and to just make scanning it a lot easier. So these are just a few ways that you can make presentations more visually engaging. There's definitely a lot more ways that you can do this. So once again, I do suggest that you check out our blog resources and our YouTube channel because there's a ton of ways that you can really spice up your presentations and just make them a lot easier for people to understand.

Speaker A: Awesome. So let's get— go on to tip number 7. We're going to talk about virtual reality. So I think it's a very interesting topic. And a lot of businesses, especially in corporate communications, have started using virtual reality to illustrate new concepts. And it's such a great way because it offers you a chance to totally submerge yourself in a new environment, whether it You know, trying out a new experience such as, you know, going to visit Mount Everest, for example, in a virtual way, or illustrating or trying out a new office and how it looks like without actually leaving the physical premises. And it's something that's super interesting because a lot of people in corporate communications have been inspired by this success of Pokémon Go, if you've heard of that. And these are clear signs that we're ready for these technologies. They may seem very advanced, but I think there will be a point in time where a lot of the stuff that we're doing, a lot of concepts are going to be illustrated all through the use of virtual reality. And this is a case study from L'Oréal. The L'Oréal Beauty Lab in New York City now has a new secret weapon in the ongoing battle for key retailer partnerships and employee engagement. They have an ultra-high-resolution 4K immersive visualization solution. So what L'Oréal does is that it uses VR to bring the store to different parts of their retail teams, whether it's the local Walmart or a different branch in Hong Kong. They've used VR to illustrate future store concepts. They've also used it to illustrate qualitative packaging and testing. The packaging and see, you know, how people respond to it before it actually goes out externally. You get a true feeling for products, you get a true feeling for shelves and store layouts before development ever begins. And this is another example from Facebook. Facebook Spaces is a VR app developed by Facebook. You can invite and interact with up to 3 of your Facebook friends using a VR device. So imagine joining a virtual reality meeting when you're working from home or you're traveling. So employee engagement would be super high. high in a case like that. So I think it's something that you should start considering and looking into, especially if you are working within internal communications, because it can really help engage employees, especially if you're thinking about the future of work. I've been reading so many articles that talk about how in the future all work is going to be done remotely. And if that is indeed true, then I think virtual reality can change the game and really help engage employees in a super interesting way. So tip number 8.

Speaker B: Cool. Yeah, so to round out our collection of visual communication tips, I want to just give you some quick essential pointers for how to make your reports more engaging. Because I know that a lot of people, you know, reports are kind of— it can seem really dry and no one really has fun reading reports normally. But even if you don't want to repurpose your reports into infographics or slide decks or videos, you can still make your reports a lot more engaging and you can really tell more stories using them by using visuals. So I'm going to give you a few quickfire tips for enhancing your reports with visuals. And I'm going to just dive right in. So the first tip, and this is one that can really apply to any type of visual that you create, it is to balance your text with visuals. So, you know, big dense walls of text, uh, they can basically be like sleeping pills for people. Um, they're definitely something that you want to avoid if you want to engage your audience. And that's why you should try to break up your expanses of text with visuals like photos and charts and illustrations and tables. And as a general rule of thumb, um, aim for at least a 50/50 balance of text and visuals on a page. Just to give your readers' eyes a break. So I've got a couple of examples on the side of the slide here of how you could do that. And, you know, even if your report requires you to be more text-heavy with your design, you can still really try to balance out the paragraphs with visuals. And infographics and charts and diagrams are perfect for doing that. The next tip is to always incorporate your branding into your report design. You know, whether you're creating an internal report or a public-facing report like a white paper, you should always incorporate your branding into your design. And that goes beyond just including your logo. It also means, you know, picking colors and fonts and visuals that reflect your brand's personality. And this will keep your communications consistent.

Speaker A: It will—

Speaker B: and it will help you create a more clear and developed brand voice. So I have an example here of a report that I really like from the marketing agency IPG Media Brands. And on their site, they describe themselves as a dynamic and agile company. And you can see how their report design really reflects those values. Because not only do they use their brand colors, but also the visuals that they use have a futuristic feel. You know, there's a lot of movement on the page. And so this is just a way that they've been able to help tell their brand story via the design choices that they make. So that's something that you should always keep in mind if you're trying to design a compelling report. And here's another tip that again, it applies to reports, but it really applies to any type of data visualization that you create. And it's to use a highlight color to draw attention to key information on your page. So color really is one of the most important elements in design, not just aesthetically, but also functionally. And you can actually use color to control where the reader looks on the page. So all you need to do for this is to pick a bold contrasting color that will stand out from the rest of the page. And then to use that for all of the numbers and text that you want to emphasize. So in the example here, you can see how a bold red color has been used to draw attention to the key data on the page as well as to the header of the page. So this is just a really simple way, you know, anywhere where there's the most color on the page, that's going to automatically draw your reader's eye. So it's a good tip to have in your back pocket. And the last tip that I want to offer is to use a visual motif throughout your report. So what is a visual motif? Basically, it's a design element that is repeated throughout your design, like a particular shape, Or image or color, and using a visual motif just helps to keep your design consistent because another rule of thumb when it comes to design consistency is key. And so a good way to come up with what to use as a visual motif is to pick a design element that reflects the theme of your report. So in the example here, we've got a social media proposal, and as you can see, they use a little. Speech bubble motif throughout the report design. And this just really helps to kind of tie it all together, to make it consistent, and to really help tell the story behind the information.

Speaker A: And if you're working in internal communications, what you can do instead of using stock images in your reports is to actually use, you know, employee faces and feature them to really make your report come to life. So we're done with all of our 8 tips. And this is the part where if anybody has questions, we can answer them. So I'm just going to take a quick look at the chat to see if we have any new questions. So we have someone asking, any tips on how to use infographics for statistical analysis of data? Such as box plots or descriptive statistics of a report. Sarah, do you have any tips for that?

Speaker B: Um, yeah, definitely. If you— there's a lot of ways that you could use an infographic for that. And, you know, always visualizing your data is always a great way to identify things that you might have missed. You know, you can see trends that way. You can see any inconsistencies. So I think it just depends on what the goal of your visual is. You know, is your goal to analyze the data yourself to figure out what's going on? Or is the goal to communicate that data to someone who maybe doesn't know much about it? In which case you're going to need to prioritize, dig for the content gold like we talked about, and figure out what pieces you don't want them to miss. And then to use design tricks like picking the right chart to visualize it, using color to highlight the important information in order to make sure that they understand. So it kind of depends on the use case. And we do have some guides to visualizing statistical information as well on our blog. So again, I do suggest that you, you check that out.

Speaker A: So Ronnie has asked, is an infographic best used in Microsoft or Mac software computer systems? So Ronnie, I think you can use them in any system because they're pretty easy to use. Laura is asking, what is the process to distribute an infographic through Outlook that would be responsive on different devices? So I think there are several ways to go about it. So you can maybe attach your infographic as an attachment when sending an email. You could also include it in your employee newsletter. And then you can use ContactMonkey to test the responsiveness of the overall newsletter and make sure that the infographic is looking great. So that's what I would suggest. Sarah, do you have anything to add to that?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, the only other option that I can think of is, um, on Venngage, if you create an infographic, you can also get a private sharing link. So that is something that you could also include, um, in your newsletter. Um, so they could view like the full-size infographic, but otherwise I would just say either attach it or export it in a size that will be small enough for a newsletter.

Speaker A: And then someone's asking, how do you add infographics to videos? So that is interesting. Sarah, I know you've done, you've done quite a few videos where you talk about infographics.

Speaker B: Yeah. So there's a couple ways that you can do it. I don't think that there's one right way. It really depends on what you're trying to show. What I've done so far in videos is if I want to kind of just show the entire infographic, I'll kind of scroll over it section by section. If I just want to highlight, say, a data point from a longer infographic, I'll just crop out that section of the infographic and I'll show that on the screen. So it really does depend on what part of the infographic that you want to show. But the really cool thing about infographics is it really is easy to, to break them down and to pull pieces from them to use in, you know, videos on social media. So if you do create like one good infographic, you can really keep repurposing it over and over in a bunch of different ways.

Speaker A: Yeah. And Ronnie, this recording will be available. So you will, you will get an email where you will have a link and you can just click on the link and watch the recording again. Laura, Laura is asking, she wants to send the infographic in the body of an Outlook email and whether the best strategy would be to send it as an attachment, share the link, or send it in a newsletter. So I would say if it's a really big infographic and you're illustrating a lot of different points and elements, then maybe copy paste it into the body of Outlook or include it as an attachment. That's entirely up to you. And then maybe have like a couple of lines in the email where you explain to employees what the infographic is going to illustrate. The other thing that you can do is also incorporate it into your newsletter. But you'll have to kind of test both and see what gets the most opens and views. And then you can use that as the go-to strategy in the future depending on the analytics, if you're able to track your email opens, link clicks, all that stuff.

Speaker B: Mm-hmm.

Speaker A: I'm just gonna take a look at the chat because I I think there are a couple of comments. So someone's asking, I usually download my infographics. What happens when I click publish?

Speaker B: Oh, on Venngage? If you click publish, then it will publish to our community page. And so that just means that you'll be able to get a public viewing link for it. So if you don't want it to be published on our community page, then I would suggest alternatively using the private share link.

Speaker A: All right. Thank you, Ronnie, for that really sweet comment. Ronnie is saying that this webinar has given me 8 pearls of wisdom to use in the future. That's really sweet. I'm glad that we could add value.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm so glad.

Speaker A: Okay, so I think we have— I think we've addressed all the questions. Yeah. All right. So thank you everyone for joining. And this is a list of resources that you should check out. I will send all of these links in an email as well. So don't worry about it. We have tons of resources such as Venngage templates, 9 types of infographic templates that's up on Venngage. And they also have a blog on repurposing your content. And we have a blog on design tools specifically for internal communications. So it has a list of all kinds of tools such as free stock photos, where to get icons from, because we talked about icons and they're such a great way of really illustrating some of your key points. So there are tons of amazing resources there that you can look into. I also want to draw your attention to our free guide that is up on our website. Available for download. It talks about our email template builder. It talks about our dashboard and how it works. It tells you exactly what Contact Monkey is all about and how to use Contact Monkey to really up your games, up your email game as an internal communicator. And just going to have a quick look at the chat again to see if there are any last comments. So I think someone uses Venngage a lot and they really appreciate how easy it is to So Sarah, something to note.

Speaker B: Well, awesome. I'm so glad to hear that.

Speaker A: All right. Thank you everyone for joining us, and I hope that you will keep tuning in for our upcoming webinars. Thanks for joining and see you all next time. Thank you.

Speaker B: Okay.