More and more of our customers are uploading video into their digital signage systems, because they're discovering it's a great way to communicate with employees. They're also discovering that some videos work better than others, and are wondering what the difference is.

To help figure this out, here are some tips for making great videos culled from my personal experience and a good article on the subject quoting editors from The Times (of London) and The Wall Street Journal.

1. Shorter is better. Just because you have a 15-minute video of your CEO talking doesn't mean you have to use all of it, or even most of it. For typical workplace digital signage, you've got your viewers' attention for about a minute or less, so you want to heavily edit that video down to the key points.

2. Tell a story. You want to include emotion, humor, action or insight. For example, compare a typical PowerPoint about a charitable company event to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge videos we've all seen. They have suspense, humor and action, all in less than a minute. Those are big reasons why they went viral so quickly.

3. Let your employees be the videographers. After all, most of them are wearing a video camera (a.k.a. a smartphone). Let them know you want their videos, and then use them. You'll be pleasantly surprised by their ideas and creativity. Of course their videos won't be professional or polished, which leads to my next point…

4. Don't worry if it's rough around the edges. In fact, you'll probably get better readership with videos that are a little shaky since they're perceived to be more real and authentic. Again, think of how many of those Ice Bucket Videos were taken with wobbly smartphones.

 And in my next blog I'll cover some of the technical things (editing, titles, sharing) you can do to make your videos even better!