— Just in the past year, we have produced more than 300 videos with the help of Storykit, says Carina Nilsson, who is in charge of communications.
What are the important ingredients to get women interested in you as an employer in the content you create?
– Being honest and showing what reality is and looks like. It's important to have a personal tone with the recipient. If you want to reach women, it's important to show women in the content we create to give a sense of identification. We try to use our employees in all the content we produce for social media as much as possible, says Carina.
Peab is one of the Nordic region's leading construction and civil engineering companies that has been contributing to community development for over 60 years. Checkout some of their Storykit videos below!
Peab found that the most effective way to attract the women candidates they want, is to promote the presence of women within their workforce through video.
— To attract women, we must show the women who work for us, who are "ordinary" women that most people can identify with. For example, we have a series where female employees have filmed themselves to get more women to join the industry. These have had incredibly high engagement on social media.
Maria Wilund, the PR manager at Peab, knows that having more women in the construction industry is important.
— We know that mixed workplaces perform better, but we also have a major skills shortage. Our industry has difficulty finding personnel to recruit, so both men and women are needed - it is not just men who can build society.
When it comes to recruiting, they found that social media was a better platform for them then traditional ads.
— We used to work with traditional job ads when we were recruiting, and we noticed an incredible response with many more applications when we started recruiting on social media.
Peab knew that making more videos was crucial for communicating effectively, whether it's for ads, training, or social media and needed a solution that would enable them to do that.
Berit has been able to create videos about medical information that is perfect for social media platforms where her audience and customers are.
— The results with the Storykit videos have been amazing. In just three months, I saw a 413% increase in engagement on LinkedIn.
And after one year, video with Storykit has helped ACTA grow:
— They’ve also created alot of interesting discussions on LinkedIn, both in terms of the videos themselves, as well as the gut health and microbiome content that I’m sharing.
In addition, Berit has had people contact her separately through DMs and in conversation at industry events.
— I have had people come up to me and say, “I’ve seen your videos on LinkedIn and I love them.” I used to get a little bit of engagement, but certainly, no one ever came up to me at a party and said “I love your gut health videos”, and they do now with Storykit.
For Berit, it is really important that people not only engage with messages but that they actually learn something and act on something that they didn't know the week before — in terms of gut health they might eat differently next week.
— The feedback that I am getting is that people understand the complex topics better. So the videos from Storykit really help you communicate complex topics in a really engaging and fun way.
— The best thing is when they actually say, I’ve watched your video, I’ve learned something and I want to learn more. That’s an amazing thing.
— These text videos are also ideal for my website and health blog that is due to launch in the next few weeks and I think we will also use them for Instagram and Twitter over time.
How many videos do you create currently?
— I post 2-3 times a week and make around 10+ Storykit videos in a month. I plan to ramp that up when I move full-time with the website and health blog!
Do you have any final thoughts you would like to add?
— Storykit is a fantastic tool to help enhance science or whichever story you want to create. It helps people with no video experience, like me, share our information and content in a much better way.
— I think that investment in time and resources really pays back many times over in the feedback and engagement with your customers and with people in general.
ACTA Medical is an education and communication-based company that specializes in providing medical communication and information for the pharmaceutical industry, as well as for biotech and healthcare advocates. Their mission is to gain a thorough understanding of the scientific and healthcare information available and analyze how it impacts our health behaviors, with the ultimate goal of helping people live healthier lives. See how they are achieving this with Storykit.
When Berit discovered Storykit, she was able to take her text-heavy posts on LinkedIn and transform them into easily digestible text-first videos instead.
— Making videos out of text is great. Being a scientist, I think it is really great to have the text and video together, to really digest important health information. I didn’t think it would be possible for me to create videos like these due to cost, time and resources, but with Storykit it is.
Prior to Storykit, Berit had experience only with traditional video production. This was the first time she used video software herself.
— From getting to know the software to publishing my first video went really fast. When onboarding, the Storykit support team really helped me understand how to get the most out of the Storykit tool which is really valuable because it makes you an expert and helps you get up and running really quickly.
In addition to learning how to use the tool, the Storykit support team also helped Berit learn how to tell her stories in the best way.
— The personalized support from Storykit made a huge difference in really understanding how best to tell the story because I’m a bit of a science nerd at heart and go on and on. With the support from my customer success manager at Storykit, I was able to focus on what story to tell and how to tell it so that it is engaging.
In addition, the library of videos and images that Berit has access to as a Storykit user helps her enhance her stories when she’s creating them.
— The platform helps me to shape the health story, or scientific story, with images so it is more impactful. This makes it more accessible too because text and images are fine alone, but they're traditional and not as fun. I think science should be fun as well as informative.
— I wanted to find a new solution because I love science — and am particularly passionate about gut health, which isn’t a super sexy topic — and wanted to find an engaging and accessible way to communicate information that is very important for both physical and mental health.
As someone who works in the medical field, Berit knew that video was a great way to communicate health information. However, she also knew that professional bespoke video shoots take too much time, energy and money and that they aren't formatted for social audiences.
— There is a trend now towards providing bite-sized, on-the-go, evidence-based information that's available in a digestible way. Since people tend to scroll quickly through platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter when seeking health information, it's crucial to make important research and evidence available in a way that's accessible to them.
Berit knew that if she wanted to stand out on platforms like LinkedIn, she needed to be able to distribute her information through bite-sized and informative videos that she could create herself.
During their first year with Storykit, Rocket Agency have created over 1000 videos for their happy customers. To convince the customers about the benefits of working with Storykit and with video on social media, they started out with doing different experiments with a few customers.
First out, was Holmgrens Bil. Mats Johansson, head of the stores in Oskarshamn, Vetlanda, Kalmar, and Nässjö facilities, could immediately see tangible results.
– It is clear that this is great for local marketing because we can control the target groups by region. We see that the videos are becoming the 'talk of the town' in a way that no advertisement has been previously. Also, the advertising feels very personal, and our buyers often recognize both the car and the seller from the video, says Mats Johansson.
So you sell actual cars with video on Facebook?
- Yes, we do.
Video is an excellent tool for social media, says Mats Johansson
– It makes people stop scrolling. We will have just made videos about seven different cars and it will be fun to see how it goes.
The customer is now moving significant parts of their budget to Story Engine.
– It's very unusual for a car dealer who traditionally advertises a lot in print and in radio to make this bold move. We expect to make hundreds of videos for the customer, says Sarah Sinclair.
Video is an excellent tool for social media, says Mats Johansson
– It makes people stop scrolling. We will have just made videos about seven different cars and it will be fun to see how it goes.
The customer is now moving significant parts of their budget to Story Engine.
– It's very unusual for a car dealer who traditionally advertises a lot in print and in radio to make this bold move. We expect to make hundreds of videos for the customer, says Sarah Sinclair.
Another customer who wanted to test video through Storykit was the real estate agency Fastighetsmäklarna in Jönköping.
– By creating a new strategy using Storykit, we have been able to extend the period when customers see the ads and tripled the traffic to our landing pages. This has led to a significant increase in the number of visitors at our house viewings, says Sarah Sinclair.
Working with video is an essential element of the strategy.
– This allows us to present an item more descriptively directly into the users' social feeds without them needing to click for more information and images, says Sarah Sinclair. The customer agrees:
– Video is a great addition to our other marketing, I think it's necessary to use video to be able to stand out in the newsfeeds, says Michaela Granberg at Fastighetsbyrån in Jönköping.
Now Fastighetsbyrån is also moving parts of their budget to Storykit.
Rocket Agency is eager to dig deeper into Storykit and the possibilities that come with the platform.
– We see many opportunities and business areas for the tool and the results are clear. For example, we have seen a 700% increase in CTR for the videos we make with Storykit, so the tool delivers fantastic results.
Rocket Agency is a full-service digital agency that works within the media and communication spectrum. Checkout some of the videos they have made for their clients below!
Last year, they started using Storykit to create videos for a number of their customers.
– We had looked into many tools, but we hadn't found any other video tool that enabled us to work so fast and efficiently with this high quality, says Sarah Sinclair, CEO of Rocket Agency.
Rocket Agency had worked with video before but had a pressing need to scale up production and lower production costs.
Maria Göransdotter wants to use Storykit to do more, in addition to videos for social media.
– I want us to build an entire video library on our website. We have lots of great material that could be of use to our target group. That is something we want to update and make available in new ways.
– Another challenge is that we have around 30 business developers, who are out making presentations where they have to share stories in an effective way to new audiences. It would be a huge help to them if they could add video that we had made and approved to their presentations.
Many dream of starting their own business. There are also existing companies that want to explore new, innovative initiatives. Others wish to restructure their businesses. They can all get help from Science Park, incubators that help individuals and companies all over Sweden to go from idea to reality.
Science Park learned how to use Storykit with an online course.
– It was super easy. Personally, I like to read up on things, so I read everything in detail, while my colleague is more practical and practiced with the tool by creating some test videos. It was a great combination. It also helps that it is so fun to work with the tool and that it is easy to create great results.
Since Maria and her colleagues started working with Storykit, they have improved the quality of their videos significantly.
– We can combine the image material we receive from our colleagues with the image libraries in Storykit and make really nice videos, regardless of whether all the individual elements are perfect or not.
Since Science Park in Jönköping started working with Storykit, they have also increased their production pace radically:
– Last year we published three videos throughout the year. Now, when we are working with Storykit, we create three videos each week.
– That was exactly how we wanted to communicate. We work towards broad target groups, but they are also incredibly niche. So, one of our biggest challenges is to tell each target group what we can do for them, and we thought script-driven video in social channels would be perfect for that, says Maria Göransdotter, Marketing Manager at Science Park in Jönköping.
– I know how I use social media personally: I tend to sit and scroll through the feeds even at times when perhaps I should not, and that is why I always turn the sound off.
Maria and her colleagues have seen that advertising is not an effective tactic for them.
– Content – good examples that people are inspired by – works best for us, and video is a compelling way to tell those stories.
However, they encountered many challenges when they wanted to get started with video production, everything from time, resources and skills, to the need to be able to make 'good looking' videos with footage that was not always top-quality.
– We are few people in the marketing team, and we do not have time to go out to all 13 municipalities to document the stories. We are completely dependent on our colleagues doing that, and that they film and take pictures.
– Yes, I make a lot of movies. About cases, white papers, and blog posts. I also create a lot of videos internally, including an employee survey presentation, and I also helped our CEO with a video for a Christmas event instead of just doing a PowerPoint.
Are you seeing any results from your videos?
– I publish 2-3 times a week on our Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts and I can see that it's widening our reach and it has improved our ability to communicate our messages.
Petra has also found that video is helpful when you want to lighten up certain complex topics.
– Our work can be perceived as pretty technically dense. Our texts tend to be quite specific and technical, but we can lighten it up by splitting it into a series of videos. That's why we have a lot of videos on our website.
Going forward, Petra wants to further increase the pace.
– There are areas I'm yet to explore with video and making videos is so much fun!
Advenica provides expertise and world-class high assurance cybersecurity solutions for critical data in motion up to Top Secret classification. They enable countries, authorities and companies to raise information security and digitalise responsibly.
It was easy to convince the company to invest in the tool, according to Petra.
– I used a simple financial argument. We were previously ordering videos via an agency, and it didn't give us a lot of videos for the price that we were paying. For the same price, I am now able to create as many videos as I want in Storykit – throughout an entire year.
Thanks to the fact that she can now make her own videos, Petra is able to work much more efficiently.
– Although an agency previously did the job, it was a slow process. Most of the time I had to write the script myself and proofreading was always required. Now I can get the work done so much faster; I just get going and before I know it, I have created a video and sent it off to a colleague. It's absolutely incredible how quick and easy it is, and it always looks incredibly professional.
- It's just as user-friendly as I had imagined. I'm just about to teach a colleague as well and I know that she will enjoy making videos as much as I do. The customer support has been brilliant whenever I've come across a problem.
Petra Lamorell, Marketing Manager at cybersecurity company Advenica, really wanted to work more with video.
– It was clear to me that video works better in social channels compared to when you only use photos and text, and that it's easier to explain something, such as a product.
For this reason, Storykit caught her interest.
– An ad popped up on LinkedIn and as soon as I got more insight into the tool, I knew that it was exactly what I needed.
Christoffer has also noticed that video content makes Bil-Nilsson more visible on Google.
– I have worked quite a bit with SEO for our website and I can see that when we are using video, which generates more clicks, our ranking improves as well.
– Video is simply a central part of the ecosystem and hopefully we it's also reflected in the business.
Having access to Storykit has been fundamental for Christoffer, since it has enabled him to create the quality content in short time:
– I can't work in Premiere Pro. It would take me far too long to create videos with traditional video editing software. Storykit has been so important for me, because it saves me so many hours. And it also looks really great.
In addition to everything else, Christoffer produces two videos per week on average.
How do you find the time?
– Since Storykit allows me to create videos so quickly and efficiently, creating videos doesn't demand too much of my time at all. The time-consuming part is doing the research and writing the articles. When I am done with the article, I just insert it into the video template, and then it's done.
Christoffer has a lot of ideas for the future:
– I want to bring our mechanics into the spotlight and make videos with car hacks and tips, and it would be fun if our employees could write chronicles. I also want to focus on some of our favourite spots in Alingsås... There is so much!
Do you have any tips for companies that struggle to find their stories?
– When I worked at Spoon, we used to talk about finding a specific sweet spot, half-way between the customer's needs and your sales goals. All companies have stories and you can always start by highlighting your employees. Another tip is to gather people from different departments and just brainstorm freely. It tends to get the ball rolling on some interesting stories.
Bil-Nilsson is a family owned car dealership and is proud to off vehicle-related products and services.
Therefore, Christoffer has established a number of various content formats to create brand recognition.
– We have our “Bil-Nilsson Story” for example, where we tell stories about our staff. It helps us to connect with the customers in a personal way, and it also works a bit like employer branding. I also do "The Classic of the Week", where we present a classic car model, which helps us to position ourselves as experts when it comes to the history of our industry, and there is a rich history to be told about the world of Volvo and Renault.
With the third format, Bil-Nilsson takes a step out from the company's premisses to contribute to the local community of Alingsås.
– When the pandemic hit, we felt a need to do something to celebrate some of the companies and entrepreneurs of our town. Those people who provide us all with local products and services, which creates a great environment for the entire community. We created the hashtag and concept #alingsåsärfantastiskt, which means "Alingsås is fantastic", and we do outdoor events in collaboration with different local companies and present their businesses. We also have articles on the blog and video in our social channels.
What are the benefits of working with formats?
– As I am the only marketeer at the company, my time is very limited, and having the format simplifies my work significantly. Especially when I create my videos with Storykit. When I have written a new article, I simply pick out the best bits to make a video with one of the templates I have created in Storykit.
Why do you have such a big focus on video?
– I can spend endless amounts of time on our website and our articles, but if I don't get any traction on our social channels it's all a waste. Videos get a lot more attention, especially in social channels.
– Video is also effective on our website. I can create a video ad for a car, or an instruction video about our process for people that bring their cars to us, instead of just writing a long boring text for the site.
Christoffer Hiding is the Marketing Coordinator at Bil-Nilsson in Alingsås close to Gothenburg; a job title that includes a lot of responsibilities.
– One day I take care of things that need to be done at the shop and the next day I create video content for our social channels. I handle the marketing department on my own, which means that I do everything marketing related.
With an extensive background in content marketing, including a role at the Spoon agency in Stockholm, Christoffer is well aware of how impactful a structured content strategy can be.
– Bil-Nilsson covers a pretty small market, so we want to approach our customers in a personal manner, with an emphasis on local engagement, and creating good content is one of the ways which we are able to do that.
