By Walt Albro
New technology today makes it possible for even the smallest community bank to affordably produce videos in-house using bank employees.
An example of a bank doing this is Guaranty Bank (assets: $628 million), Springfield, Mo.
The bank only started making videos in 2014. The first were employee testimonials designed as a recruitment tool. These videos were posted on the “careers” page of the bank’s website.
Since then, the bank has graduated to videos that promote individual calling officers. These videos are pushed out via the bank’s social media channels. The bank has also produced videos promoting the bank’s community outreach, open positions for human resources and internal campaigns such as benefit enrollment.
The biggest benefits to the bank are flexibility and affordability. “We can affordably produce a high-quality video to promote a concept or person within a matter of days,” says Carlye Wannenmacher, vice president, director of marketing. “The quality is competitive with anything we see in our local marketplace on social media.”
Video production is handled by the bank’s online marketing specialist. To create a calling officer promotion, he will take the officer to various locations that make sense for the officer’s line-of-business. Then, they shoot a combination of video and still photography, generally all in one day.
The calling officer usually changes his or her jacket/sweater/tie during the shoot to give the appearance of a greater expanse of time coverage, but essentially the entire shoot can be done in a couple of hours.
For equipment, the bank uses a Nikon D3300 HD camera with a Takstar shotgun microphone to capture video and audio. Post-production is done through Animoto, a cloud-based video creation service that produces video from photos, video clips and music, creating a versatile mp4 video file. This file can be uploaded directly to Facebook, YouTube and, if it’s short enough, Twitter.
From YouTube the video can be embedded on websites and even LinkedIn long-form and basic posts. “It is a very affordable service,” notes Wannenmacher.
Banks interested in creating their own in-house video should start by checking out Animoto and other similar services on the Web, suggests Wannenmacher. “Source an employee who has a knack for creativity and let him or her play with some file photos to create a video and see if you like the results. If you do, invest in a decent digital camera that can be used to take high quality photos and videos.
“Also grab a microphone attachment to capture better quality audio. They’re inexpensive but make a huge difference. Don’t forget a tripod to keep the camera steady.
“All of this will boost your social media efforts in a huge way.”
All the bank’s videos can be seen on its YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/GBankMO.
Walt Albro is the content editor of ABA Bank Marketing. Email: [email protected].
