6 Tools To Make Professional Videos For Social Recruiting Cheap And Easy

By Kyle Schmidt

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6 Tools To Make Professional Videos Cheap And Easy For Social Recruiting

Videos are perhaps the most engaging form of content to share via social media. Unfortunately, most human resources departments and recruitment agencies shy away from them because video creation is perceived as time consuming and extremely expensive. However, we are going to discuss some inexpensive, simple tools that you can use to create professional and engaging videos that will greatly enhance your social recruiting efforts.

 

The Statistics Show Video On Social Media Is A Winner

Research indicates that online videos are excellent marketing tools. For example, one study found that videos increase viewers’ understanding of your product by 74% compared to print. Moreover, 46% of viewers who watch a marketing video take an additional action afterwards related to the product. Video also increases marketing email open rates by 20% and click-through rates by 200-300%. (Quicksprout)

Additionally, video performs really well on social media. Videos are shared 1200% more on Facebook than links and text posts combined. Video views increased on Facebook by 735% between 2013 and 2014. And video engagement rates were up 25% on Facebook during the same period. (Adobe)  

 

How Recruiters Can Use Video On Social Media

It’s clear that video performs well, but you might be wondering how recruiters can use it to achieve their goals. The simple answer is that video can be used the same as any other content marketing option. Use it to offer tips to candidates. Use it to explain a concept unique to your niche that might be relatively difficult to understand. Or, use it to create a simple explainer video about your services.

Like the rest of your social recruiting efforts, be sure to include calls to action in your videos. Include your web address, telephone number, or the URLs for your social profiles.

 

Traditional Video Is Costly

Of course, most people accept the power of video as an engagement powerhouse. The problem is that traditional video production has really high costs. The costs are so high that those engaged with recruitment, accepting the largest organizations, tend to be priced out for the market entirely.

For example, professional animated video companies like Epipheo typically have minimum budgets of over $15,000. You can find freelancers who will do similar work for anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000, but the quality will suffer immensely. And if you decided to create your own animated video in-house, you’d need to spend a minimum of 100 hours to learn sophisticated software animation programs like ToonBoom.

Of course, you could just go with the “man-in-front-of-camera” video. However, these videos require the coordination of video and audio equipment as well as lighting and other factors. It’s difficult to get them looking and sounding professional without a professional production team. They’re also far less engaging.

 

Cheap And Easy Audio Tools

The great news is there are tons of new tools that make producing professional quality videos cheap and easy. Here are 6 tools that you can use to get up and running with awesome videos in no time.

 

1: Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB Cardioid Dynamic USB/XLR Microphone

The thought of silent video is unappealing to most and silent videos tend to have higher abandonment rates. Part of what makes videos so engaging is that they incorporate both visual and audio components. You can get by with some simple background music and really compelling visuals, but a good voice-over adds tons of value to the production.

Voice-overs allow you tell a story and stories are compelling. When I create videos, I begin by writing the story I want to tell and imagining the visuals that will coincide with the story. I then record the story as the voiceover for the video.

Of course, all good videos require good audio. Poor audio quality can cause viewers to abandon the video quickly. There are tons of really amazing and reasonably priced microphones on the market. However, my experience indicates that the best value for your money is the Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB Cardioid Dynamic USB/XLR Microphone.

This microphone is only $60 on Amazon. It’s great at reducing background noises and produces audio that sounds like it was produced in a studio. It’s really simple to use too. You simply plug it into your USB port and you’re ready to go.

 

2: BenSound for Background Music

While you don’t need background music in a video, it sure does make it more fun and engaging. Plus, it’s really easy to add as you will see below. However, you can’t just use any music you want because most music is protected by a copyright.

The great news is that there is plenty of royalty free music available to download. My favorite source is Bensound. All they require is that you cite them as the music producer and link back to their site. If you don’t want to do that, then you can obtain rights to use a recording for a nominal price. They have over 40 tracks available in various different genres and all of them are very high quality. You’re sure to find something that will fit your needs.

 

3: Audacity for Audio Editing

If you’re working with audio, then you need audio editing software to make it all come together cleanly. The great thing is that you only need very basic features to create the types of videos we’re talking about. I recommend Audacity.

Audacity is free and very easy to use. It’s available for PCs, MACs, and Linux systems. You can use it to record and edit your voiceovers and overlay your background music. It has every feature that you’ll need and more. It also has a passionate user base so there are tons of great tutorials available, both written and video. You can download it from SourceForge.

 

Cheap And Easy Video Creation Tools

Once you have your audio ready to go, you’re ready to start making your video. There are so many tools available for making videos that you could write a book about them. In order to avoid the paradox of choice, we’re going to narrow it down to three powerful, reasonably-priced tools that allow you to make amazing videos quickly and easily.

All of the video creation tools we’ll discuss have intuitive user interfaces that make them really easy to use. They also offer robust tutorials that walk new users through the process step by step. In a nutshell, each of them provides the user with a library of “assets”, or graphics, which can be incorporated into your video. You can also upload your own graphics. Beyond that, each tool has a unique set of features that makes it better suited for certain goals than the others.

 

4: GoAnimte for Video Creation

GoAnimate claims to be the market leader with over 10,000 customers. It has tons of amazing features including a scribe feature which provides the effect of a hand writing text that you’ve added to your canvas. In addition, GoAnimate has powerful character animation features.

The software provides users with a library of characters. These characters can be animated in various ways including walk motions and arm motions. Perhaps best of all, characters can be set to lip-sync along with voiceovers so that they look like they’re talking! Therefore, GoAnimate is great if you’re simulating a discussion or would like to simulate other robust movements with your characters.

As the most robust tool of the three we’re discussing, GoAnimate is also the most expensive. Their least expensive plan is $39 per month or $299 for a one year subscription. Their premium individual plan is $79 per month or $599 per year. However, they also have a free 14 day trial which gives you plenty of time to make a couple of videos of 2 minutes or less each.

 

5: PowToon For Video Creation

PowToon is a newer service and has far fewer features than GoAnimate. However, it’s also less expensive. Moreover, fewer options should make the program easier to use. The Pro Plan costs $59 per month or $19 per month if you pay for an annual subscription.

The service has a nice library of characters and royalty free music. Currently, the service lets you slide assets on and off the screen in various ways. You can also have assets fade-in, fade-out, pop-in and pop-out. If you’re looking to make a simple video that has fun characters then this is the tool to use.

 

6: VideoScribe For Video Creation

As the name implies, VideoScribe lets you make scribe videos. Again, a scribe video is one in which a hand is made to write text and draw images. In addition, the service has simple animation features like sliding items on and off the screen in various ways. You can also “transform” one image into another which can be used to create various movement effects.

It’s important to know how the scribe feature works with images before starting your project. When you upload an image, VideoScribe provides you with options for how to scribe it. With vector images, the scribe feature can trace the entire image and color it in if it has color. With JPEG, JPG, or PNG images, the scribe will only be able to use sweeping hand motions to color the entire image in.

Obviously, using vector images will result in a much more engaging video. VideoScribe has a fairly large library of vector images. You can also find them for free on the web. That said, VideoScribe is excellent for presenting written material. You can even upload your own fonts.

VideoScribe has a very reasonable pricing plan. You can purchase one month for $29 or you can buy an annual subscription for $13.50 per month. You can also purchase a lifetime subscription for $665.

 

Sample Results From Travel Nursing Recruitment

You may still not be convinced that these videos can be a useful tool for recruitment purposes, but consider the following results we achieved.

At BluePipes, we created a video for travel nurses in the United States which is a tiny niche. Industry groups estimate that there are fewer than 25,000. The video provides information on how to evaluate and compare travel nursing pay packages which are much more complex than normal pay packages. At the end of the video, we include a call to action that directs viewers to a landing page for an eBook on how to negotiate travel nursing compensation packages.

We loaded the video on YouTube, the world’s second largest search engine. In just over three months, it has been viewed over 675 times and has 22 likes. While that might not seem like a lot, remember, our target market is less than 25,000. Additionally, the video already ranks number one on YouTube for the key search term “travel nursing pay”. Finally, 7% of YouTube viewers convert to the eBook landing page and over 80% of them signup to receive the eBook which makes this a solid lead generator.

We also loaded the video on Facebook. Now, we’re not big fans of paid advertising on Facebook (that’s another story) but we wanted to see how the video would perform. We have a custom audience tracking pixel on our travel nursing blog. We ran a video ad campaign targeting that audience. The video reaches 155 people per dollar spent. It costs 2 cents per view.

To put that in perspective, we compared it to our most popular blog post which is about how to write an exceptional nursing resume. This blog post made it to Reddit’s front page back in the day, ranks high on Google and has been viewed over 200,000 times, so it performs really well. We ran a similar ad on Facebook using this blog post and it reached 106 people per dollar and cost 18 cents per view. The video blows it out of the water.

We hope you found this information useful! We’d love to hear how you’ve used video in your social recruitment campaigns and we’re happy to answer any questions you may have. Please share them in the comments below.

 

Kyle Schmidt is a Co-Founder of BluePipes, which provides professional networking and career management tools for healthcare professionals and travel nurses. He directs the company’s marketing and product development efforts.

 

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