Anthony Lewis: How to Make a Great Holiday Video for Your Business

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

How to Make a Great Holiday Video for Your Business

Holiday Video-01

The holidays and New Year are an ideal time for businesses to reconnect with their customers. Whether you want to express your appreciation or show a more personable side of your business, a year-end video is one of the best ways to do it. In this post, we’ll discuss the most popular types of holiday videos and give you four quick steps to creating yours this year.

Popular Types of Holiday Videos

Videos are more personal than traditional paper cards and can have a positive impact for your brand. Your holiday video should express gratitude and holiday sentiments and show your company’s unique culture and personality. Remember, this isn’t the time to sell anything. You just want to connect and wish them a happy holidays or happy New Year.

Season’s Greetings

A “Happy Holidays” video is likely the most common type of greeting, wishing viewers a great holiday season from your team. There are many paths to take in this type of video–from a simple photo slideshow featuring photos of your team, to video messages from team members. This is a great opportunity to show off the people behind your business, as they wish your customers good tidings. Here are a couple examples:

Year In Review

The “Year in Review” video recaps what happened over the past year at your company – an annual rewind if you will. If you’re inspired by this type of video, just remember to intersperse your company culture, individual team member personalities, and more into your story. Try to avoid just listing off your achievements or events. Viewers want to see you. They want the behind the scenes view of what happens at your company. Need inspiration? Check out this fun video from Geocaching. Note how it not only showcases the highlights of 2012, but also the personalities behind the Geocaching team.

Expressing Gratitude

Many companies use holiday videos to thank customers for their business. These type of videos work to thank anyone you’ve interacted with throughout the year – clients, investors, vendors, partners and more. The most effective videos usually speak directly to the audience in a heartfelt way, as in this example from Constant Contact.

If none of these video types suit your style, feel free to get creative. We’ve seen some of the most popular videos in past years tap into current cultural references or show a company’s funny and quirky side by exhibiting their talents and humor. Whatever type of video you decide upon, just remember to make it honest and genuine.

Making Your Video in 4 Simple Steps

Once you’ve got an idea brewing, let’s talk through the steps necessary to actually create it.

Step 1: Capture Holiday Photos & Videos of Your Team

There are several strategies for capturing holiday sentiments from your team. The simplest way is taking a group photo or individual shots. You could add a bit of creativity and have everyone in Santa hats or holding placards that spell out a greeting when put together. Another strategy we’ve used at Animoto is to capture short video clips of your team members wishing viewers well. Again, don’t be afraid to show off your company’s personality here. This is your time to give viewers a glimpse of what makes your company awesome.

Step 2: Choose a Holiday Style & Music

Don’t worry about the video’s style being strictly “on brand.” People usually think of holiday videos as something outside of regular business communications, so don’t over-think what you want to do to get in the spirit. Animoto has over a dozen holiday-themed video styles and hundreds of holiday music tracks to take the guesswork out of it.

Step 3: Add Text Greetings

Have fun with the text you use to narrate your video. Weave in some funny or witty photo captions or title cards that pull the user in such as

“We hope you had as much fun as we did this year.”
“Thanks for being a loyal customer and look forward to next year.”
“Here’s to an even better new year!”

If you do use text, be sure to get a few people to proofread your captions and titles internally before you send your video out. Nothing is worse than realizing you have a misspelling right after you’ve distributed anything, and that’s including holiday-themed content.

Step 4: Package It up & Send It Out

You’ve done all the hard work, and now comes the best (and easiest) part–sending out your video. Ideally, you’ll want to send sometime between Dec. 20 and Dec. 31 when people are most receptive to holiday-related materials. To learn more, check out our Animoto blog post on three holiday video distribution techniques that are sure to maximize views.